Citizens all over the world are reclaiming their urban waterways for the purpose of open-air swimming. Rising temperatures, pressure on green spaces, and leading examples in pioneering cities inspire communities to re-imagine their city waters as part of public space. They see urban swimming as a way to reclaim the rights to the city, critiquing the privatization and unsafety of urban waterways while advocating for better swimming facilities in and around city waters. But the route to swimmable cities is not a simple case of supply and demand. Initiatives are often met with resistance from local governments. Arguments point to the lack of finances to clean urban waterways, technical- and safety issues, and fears for increased nuisance around swimming facilities. On top of that, the complexity of water management and the many interests at play influence the pace in which cities respond to the need for more places to safely swim. Yet pioneering cities such as Copenhagen and Bern show that through sustained effort of both local government and citizen initiatives, high water quality and excellent swimming facilities can be achieved – initiating an urban bathing culture that creates a stronger sense of belonging and more interaction across citizens. The alluring images of the clean Copenhagen harbour encourage us to explore better swimming opportunities in our home cities Amsterdam and Ghent. Comparing them to leading examples, we want to examine what we need to make our cities more swimmable. Which barriers influence the current swimming environment in our cities now and how can they be overcome? Can we discover a ‘blueprint’ for more swimmable cities? To answer these questions, we aim to identify and analyse the key factors that contribute to creating a vibrant and accessible urban swimming environment while also addressing the challenges and obstacles that hinder the realisation of this vision. The objective of this paper is to develop an outset blueprint for fostering swimmable cities by drawing insights from case studies in Copenhagen and Bern (the good), Amsterdam (the bad) and Ghent (the ugly). We will also look into recent initiatives in Brussels (POOL is cool), Melbourne (Yarra Pools) and Berlin (Fluss Bad), to navigate best practices of community engagement in the urban swimming movement and apply them to the context of our case study cities, Amsterdam and Ghent. *Our intention is to use the gained insights to start our own citizen initiative that advocates for better swimming facilities in Amsterdam and Ghent. We believe the conference is a perfect moment to present our findings and discuss barriers and possibilities, re-inventing our urban waterways together. We are open to suggestions about the scope of our paper or adopting another form like a workshop.

In the digital media era, social media changes people’s behavior and their use and experience of the city in everyday life. Being in the city for many people now is marked by many social media posts. Meanwhile, social media changes places through peoples’ behavior as well. The phenomenon of the rise of social-media-popular places has garnered significant attention in recent years. For example, tourists line up for hours at a fries shop in Amsterdam because of a TikTok video. This phenomenon brings transformation and new strategies in those social-media-popular places and cities. Some places are already experiencing the problems of tourism-induced gentrification, overtourism, overcrowding, infrastructure strain and environmental impact after being popular. Moreover, the format of images and short videos are replacing the format of texts and audios in traditional media era, emerging social media platforms such as TikTok have not been paid sufficient attention yet. Based on those, this paper conducts an in-depth case study on the impact of TikTok on social-media-popular places in Amsterdam, by mapping the popular places and analysing social media data. At the macro level of city scale, this paper identifies the attributes of social-media-popular places through TikTok posts in Amsterdam and Amsterdam built environment data, maps and uses machine learning to cluster the spatial-temporal distribution of social-media-popular places. After that, at the micro level of place scale, this paper analyzes specific events and cases, for example, a spontaneous event about the long queue of tourists attracted and induced by TikTok at the fries shop in Amsterdam. First, it analyzes the whole process during the spontaneous event by tracking the posts and the number of views, likes, shares, comments, and engagement rates of the TikTok videos. Second, it studies the network of actors and their behaviors and sentiment through different time by users’ information, and marketing/branding keywords in the comments, and hashtags, check-ins, posts sentiment related to the destination on TikTok. Third, it finds what aspects of places changed through the process. Finally, this paper provides digital placemaking strategies for social-media-induced overtourism in Amsterdam.

Participants of programs that aim to address wicked, societal problems in urban contexts, such as inequality, malnutrition, and climate change, need to jointly create future value for a diverse set of stakeholders including the natural and urban environment, government institutions, businesses, and citizens. This is challenging as program goals are ambiguous, programs evolve unexpectedly, and participants have diverse backgrounds, organizational interests, and beliefs about what is important for the future. On top of this, participants need to work within the constraints of the physical urban context and existing institutions. Due to the complexity, uncertainty, and messiness involved, the process of joint value creation often remains implicit in program collaborations, resulting in conflicts and uncertainties that can cause delays and suboptimal outcomes in answering pressing societal challenges such as urban inequalities. It is underexplored how joint value creation evolves in programs that aim to address societal challenges in urban contexts, the specific value creation challenges actors are confronted with, how these are dealt with, and the effects this has. This study brings insight into project members' practices to anticipate the creation of future value within the multi-stakeholder collaboration of an urban energy transition project. Drawing on a qualitative, longitudinal case study of a program designed to help transform the local energy system of a neighborhood in Amsterdam, we discuss how actors’ practices of identifying, negotiating, prioritizing, and setting values play a role in defining and progressing the program. We contribute to the existing literature on value creation in projects and programs, by providing detailed insight into how conscious and unconscious value creation can enable or hinder program success, specifically paying attention to the challenge of integrating technological and social innovation. We conclude by proposing a set of guiding principles that can be used by program participants to more consciously manage joint value creation in their programs, and that form the basis for a research agenda on future value creation in project and program management.

A Living Lab is a concept and approach frequently explored and embedded in the literature on innovation ecosystems (Del Vecchio et al., 2017) when it is used as a means to illuminate the dynamic nature of collaboration among diverse stakeholders within a given context. In this vein, Living Labs offer a real-world environment for various actors, including individuals, businesses, researchers, and government entities, to collaboratively create, test, and refine innovative solutions, products, and services (Lasher, 1991). In these contexts, often aligned with the open innovation paradigm as described by Chesbrough (2003), the role of organizational culture emerges as a pivotal factor in shaping mechanisms of collaboration and competition. As noted by Dabrowska and Savitskaya (2014), organizational culture is a significant explanatory variable for human and corporate behavior in open innovation settings, influencing patterns of dealing with novelty and knowledge transfer, as well as preferences, expectations, and behaviors related to risks and trust. Therefore, it is crucial to analyze the open innovation approach in various settings. This study aims to investigate the presumed pivotal role played by Living Labs in shaping collaboration and competition within the specific cultural contingencies of Italian innovation ecosystems, which remain relatively unexplored when compared to the Dutch context. Drawing on the theoretical framework proposed by Enkel et al., (2009), this paper employs a single-case study methodology within an Italian innovation ecosystem. Data collection primarily relies on interviews with various components of companies operating within the innovation ecosystem and actively participating in creating, testing, and refine innovative solutions within Living Labs. The theoretical contribution of this study resides in its exploration of how Living Labs operate in the Italian context, expanding our knowledge beyond the more extensively studied Dutch scenario shedding a light into the critical factors that make a Living Lab an enabler of collaboration mechanisms. By focusing on Italy, this research broadens our understanding of the cultural nuances that influence open innovation practices. It seeks to identify the unique cultural factors and dynamics that influence the behavior of stakeholders, including individuals, businesses, researchers, and government entities when dealing with novelty, knowledge transfer, risks, and trust. The practical implications of this research extend to managers and policymakers, offering insights into how Living Labs can be effectively utilized to co-create, test, and refine innovative solutions, products, and services while considering the specific cultural context. This knowledge can inform the development of strategies and policies that better align with the cultural contingencies of the region, thereby promoting more successful open innovation practices and fostering economic growth and competitiveness.