ECHO Urban Management creates clarity and momentum and secures tho connection with and between stakeholders in the initiation and definition phases of area developments. Thanks in part tot their many years of design experience, our process managers know how to provide rapid insight into the precise requirements, wishes, opportunities and feasibility of an assignment in those crucial early stages. By simultanesously identifying and supervising the right steps at the right time, we help our clients move forward faster and in a focused way. Especially:
– The task is not yet sharply defined or multiple
– The scope is still unclear
– The feasibility is unclear
– (Potenstially) many stakeholders will be involved
Process and design: a good story
Feel free to think of us as the left brain of ECHO: like our Urban Design colleagues, design thinking is in our DNA, we just apply it differently. For us, design is not an end product, but a means of creating enthusiasm in the first place: initial designs are bound to fail, but to make way for something better. At the same time, with design we initiate the interactive process needed to arrive at a powerful story for the area in question. A story, in which ideas, ambitions and the assignment find each other, to which people recognise themselves and want to connect and to which, at the same time, processes can be organised. As urban managers, we ensure that (plan) development processes run pleasantly and efficiently, are widely supported and achieve their goals.
Organisers with a mission
At Urban Management, you are dealing with organisers with a mission. Carefully and decisively, we structure and organise the steps towards successful area development. We know, what we have to do to arrive at a clear plan and commit ourselves wholeheartedly to that goal. With the milestones on the way to the project definition in sharp focus, we carefully choose from our broad arsenal of creative and interactive methods and techniques to achieve those milestones together with stakeholders. Are we exploring and broadening or are we just setting the picket lines within which the solution must be sought? What needs to be fixed at what point and what can we leave free? Who is connecting when? With the process in our capable hands, content, process and stakeholders get all the space they need.
We are doing quite a lot
We are not just there to organise and chair the process properly. We help formulate a shared ambition. We give various perspectives a place: we make choices, consequences and impact clear to the decision-makers at the joint work table and include the environment in this. We ensure that everyone is heard and that choices can be made at the right time. We guard the integrality of the area development and add the necessary depth to certain parts, together with carefully selected partners from our broad network of experts.
We get it
We have been designing area developments for fifteen years. It still makes us just as happy as the people with whom we have developed the coolest places over the years in various projects. With ECHO Urban Management we facilitate a flying start. Convincing a city council? Not just involving residents, but actually getting them enthusiastic? We know the ways, have the tools and can’t wait to get it done. Unless waiting a while is strategically the better option, of course: we do everything carefully and with policy.
Bottlenecks? We eliminate them
We have spatial glasses as well as the necessary stripes on our sleeve. So we not only know where business cases are bottlenecks, but also how to remove them effectively. So feel free to leave it to us to get the best out of your business case. A tight and feasible plan of action? We take care of it and supervise its implementation. Questions about spatial and/or programmatic optimisation opportunities? If they are there, we will show them to you. Multiple spatial value creation? We investigate it at design and process level. Participation wishes? We organise it expertly, with the right resources, at the right time.
A well-stocked toolbox
At Urban Management, we make clever use of our design knowledge to clarify and accelerate processes. By listening carefully in the first place, we can determine which tools, techniques and (intervention) methods from our well-stocked toolbox we deploy at which moment. This deployment varies from assignment to assignment and from phase to phase.
HOW CAN OUR APPROACH
WORK FOR YOU?
Koen will take the time to figure this out together with you.