Recycling the Past: The Case of the Intensive Training Programme in Urbanism “Radi Rigu!” (Create Riga!)

Abstract

This paper traces the etymology of a case in continuing professional education (CPE), restoring its historical societal roots and discussing the advantages of an integrative approach for planning education, practice, and urban development. The initiative comes from a multidisciplinary team of practitioners and scholars in planning, architecture, landscape architecture, and transport engineering. The project Radi Rigu!—a series of innovative workshops in 2011/2012—emphasised the role of urban public spaces in social revitalisation, the communicative and procedural character of urban projects, and sought to adapt spatial strategic planning to a post-Soviet context. It also introduced more communicative tools and an “emotionally rich language for planning” (Sandercock, 2001), while establishing an integrated three-dimensional format for continuing professional education, combining lifelong learning, urban action, and implementation-oriented outcomes. Inspired by Belgian workshops on public space and reconstructing the Soviet-era “talka” methodology of volunteer work, the programme highlights social heritage as an essential part of the “ecology of planning” (Schreurs, 2012).