In the times of ageing populations, unpredictable prospectives of young people, distrust in traditional democratic institutions, growing awareness of the need for more participatory processes in producing urban space, rising »the right to the city« urban movements and increasing power of cities, the »TBI method«, employed for the first time in UNESCO Idrija (Slovenia), shows a way for other cities around Europe. The participatory method guides young people of different ethnic and professional backgrounds through conducting analyses (social, economic, cultural, political and spatial), working with local decision- and policy-makers and skilled mentors, gathering ideas, and eventually creating a comprehensive long-term vision with architectural and societal proposals for the city. A pop-up exhibition and adoption of the mindset and proposals by the local stakeholders lead to gradual transformation of youth's visions into municipal plans and finally, implementation of the vision.
TBI method is a step-by-step process of defining the issues, interdisciplinary analyses, presentation of the results and implementation of proposal – by and for young people.
Young people participating with the public. Presenting case studies, collecting ideas and testing the grounds for new concepts. Participatory process gathers lots of information "on-site" and furthermore, provides a solid starting point for establishing project goals.
Young people in discussion with local stakeholders - meeting them in the formal environment of the city's town hall. Young people are in the position to get the required information from the municipality, getting to know the local political environment, and establishing the possibilities and limitations.
Young people at work - sketching the new ideas after first observations, and later transferring the sketches into real urban plans, small projects, local initiatives and future architecture ideas.
The collage of new ideas, all developed from the specific possibilities and limitations of the local environment. Ideas are developed in a scalable way - every big project starts with a small initiative (small and low-cost event), that eventually leads through other stages, to the actual and permanent physical manifestation in the local environment.
