Build4People

On 31 August 2024, about five years after its launching, the B4P Facebook page transgressed the number of 4,000 followers. This is a great success of our social media dissemination.

In general, to facilitate science-society transfer and to increase awareness among relevant stakeholders in the field of sustainable building and sustainable neighbourhood development, Build4People has worked intensively on the public documentation of its manifold research work, targeting at various types of audiences beyond the project’s own community, including media and the general public. This transparent approach of good scientific practice and visualization to provide state-of-the art science communication is a central transformative component of Build4People.

In this context, our most successful social media platform in terms of reach is the B4P Facebook page with now more than 4,000 followers. This is aimed primarily at the Cambodian public and especially at young people as agents of change and future decision-makers. The Build4People Facebook page is used to provide information not only about Build4People activities, but also on good practice examples for green buildings and sustainable neighborhood development, as well as innovative policy and governance approaches. There are currently around 90-100 postings per year on Facebook alone. The Facebook “insights tool” allows for direct quantitative measurement of the outreach and engagement levels. This has provided significant insights into the interests and awareness levels of the audience. The most successful post on the Build4People Facebook page in May 2024 reached more than 250,000 people and was shared more than 600 times. This proven figure illustrates how a smart social media strategy can complement research activities and formal academic publications by disseminating knowledge and insights to a broader public via informal channels, thus ensuring wider awareness of activities and results across large swathes of society, including among residents of the urban structures we investigated.

Furthermore, the Build4People website serves as a platform and archive for comprehensive documentation of the project activities (including news, events, press and media coverage, and publications). The density of information on the Build4People website therefore goes far beyond the annual Build4People reports to the funding provider.

Build4People’s presence on the business social media platform LinkedIn with more than 650 followers is primarily aimed at representatives from business and science.

In addition, the Build4People YouTube channel, which provides documentation of our activities as well as several webinars, also achieves a very wide reach, with the 30 videos published having tallied about 57,000 views to date.

The following overview shows Build4People’s various social media platforms and their respective reach.

On 15 August 2024, there was a fruitful exchange meeting with leading representatives of Phnom Penh Capital Hall, among them the newly elected Vice-Governor of Phnom Penh, H.E. Vannak Seng.

The meeting was about the strategic preparation of the envisaged Implementation Phase from 2025-2027.

Our team has been able to explain about the revised character of the funding line, which will be less scientific but more implementation orientated. There will be a focus on the implementation of results and products from the current RD phase and no new (single-disciplinary) research will get funded anymore. Only transdisciplinary approaches (implementation-orientated alliances outside the scientific bubble) will get supported with focus on implementation of local stakeholders which will be scientifically accompanied, guided and consulted by the Build4People team. Furthermore, the scaling-up of approaches to other cities is welcomed by the funding agency.

That is why the overall aim of the Build4People project during Implementation phase will be the fostering of sustainable neighbourhoods in municipalities of Cambodia by making use of state-of-the-art digital and participatory planning instruments as part of integrated urban development as well of sustainable and inclusive urban transformation.

Hereby, the urban-spatial level of neighborhoods is regarded as most promising to implement and replicate locally (and even at city and regional level) adapted sustainability solutions and to benefit from the inter- and transdisciplinary approach of the Build4People project team.

In the course of the meeting we introduced about our two main tangible products which shall get implemented by PPCH during Implementation phase, the PPCH-B4P Transformation Toolbox as inter-active online information, public participation and learning platform supporting data-driven and evidence-based decisions towards sustainability in urban Cambodia and the PPCH-B4P Citizen Science APP as urban diagnosis instrument and participatory tool.

Building upon the very successful inter- and transdisciplinary approach of the Build4People Ecocity Transition Labs series of the B4P RD phase we plan for an adapted transformative format in the course of Implementation phase.

As follow-up, so-called B4P Transition Manufactories will provide a new collaboration platform for infusing sustainability into neighbourhood development with the main objective to apply criteria, design and planning guidelines as well as digital and participatory planning tools, and manuals, provided by the PPCH-B4P Transformation Toolbox as well as to intensively test the PPCH-B4P Citizen Science APP in training sessions of one week duration.

After our presentation H.E. Vannak Seng provided extensive feedback and among others we jointly discussed how to integrate our products into the newly-founded Smart City Hub Phnom Penh.

#Build4People #PPCH

The main Build4People communication platform is our Build4People Facebook page which has two main purposes: We use it, 1) to provide updates about our activities and 2) as a capacity building tool to inform on good practice examples worldwide in the field of urban sustainability.

Since its establishment in August 2019 we have been able to gather about 3,800 followers, mainly from the site of our project region, Phnom Penh, Cambodia, and mostly young people, around 40% of which are between 18-24 years old and around 40% between 25 and 34.

So far, we have published approximate 600 postings and we are now very happy that just recently, the first one went viral. It reached out to about 250,000 people and was shared 600 times.

A positive side effect was that it also increased the numbers of our followers by about 15% during that short time.

Feel invited to follow us as well at: https://www.facebook.com/buildingsforpeople/

#Build4People #BMBF_SUREregions #sciencecommunication #leavingthescientificbubble

The Build4People team is happy to report that we presented about our transformative approaches at the 28th IAPS Conference “Enacting Transdisciplinar Knowledge: People, Places, Movements and Sustainabilities” in Barcelona on 03 July 2024.

The title of our cross-cutting presentation was “Supporting Sustainable Urban Transformation in Cambodia: The Build4People Project” it was jointly presented by Anke Blöbaum, Jan-Peter Mund, Michael Waibel, and it was additional prepared by Rolf Messerschmidt, Oliver Lambrecht, Núria Roig, Ellen Matthies, and Sok Serey among others.

We concluded that a mix of objective and subjective data published in a transparent way to the public are needed to support a transformative urban shift of Phnom Penh. Furthermore, we advocated for integrated approaches involving multiple stakeholders in an iterative dialogue and for engaging societal actors in continual processes of learning and change to foster implementation. Finally, we consider outreach efforts outside the scientific bubble and active communication in society as essential to maximize impacts. Overall, we are convinced that transformation as social innovation has to be carried out by a process-orientated transdisciplinary approach thereby leaving the single disciplinary comfort zone.

More info: https://www.iaps2024barcelona.com/iaps-topics