Identifying strategies for multi sectoral partnerships in public space projects for young vulnerable communities

Abstract

The purpose of this research is a desire to understand how to develop partnerships that can improve the public space, while empowering vulnerable communities. Providing communities with the necessary tools and strategies that can transform not only their surrounding built environment but also their livelihoods and have long lasting positive effects. The project analyzes Mar Elias camp in Beirut – Lebanon where a group of young residents have taken up the adjacent field to organize football tournaments and practices. This informal approach to using public space in the city and developing activities around it has provided benefits for the community. This circumstance deals as well with the status Palestinian refugees hold in Lebanon, and how can this population and its built environment has for decade lived in a condition of temporality in their host city. In order to provide a formal space that can provide maintenance for the field, promotion of activities and support governance of the area, this research looks for best practices that involve the understanding of multisectoral partnerships. The case study analysis on Tiempo de Juego in Bogotá, which is a non-profit organization that has grown organically together with the community and works with in one of the most vulnerable, diverse and underserved neighborhoods in the southeastern limits of Bogota, is a key component which aims at providing concepts that can nourish the project in Beirut