Endeavour

Endeavour (Antwerp, Belgium), firstly, specializes in what the organization itself labels as ‘socio-spatial innovation’ as a means to pursue its mission of ‘increasing the social value of spatial projects.’ Endeavour was developed out of a shared interest in the social dimension and increasing focus on co-productive approaches in urban planning. As such, it aims to address the gap between urban design practice on the one hand and socially innovative neighborhood development on the other (Tasan-Kok et al., 2016). One example of Endeavour’s commons-based approach is the project ‘Let’s Buy the Oudaan Together’. The Oudaan, a 1950s modernist police tower in Antwerp, was declared for sale by the local government, who intended to sell it off in a market system. Against this background, Endeavour participated in a consortium of socially engaged local stakeholders in order to buy back and initiate the tower’s redevelopment as an open process by constructing a co-creative value framework. The organization argues that it could ‘not adopt a passive position over the profit-oriented sale of an object of such metropolitan importance and scope’.

For more information, please visit their website.