Heritage Requires Citizens’ Knowledge: The COST Place-Making Action and Responsible Research

Abstract

This chapter reflects on responsible science with an eye toward concrete research practice. To this end, we briefly introduce the RRI paradigm (Responsible Research and Innovation) and then highlight seven EU research projects in the context of a transnational COST Action project. This COST Action will investigate how placemaking activities, like public art, civil urban design, and local knowledge production, reshape and reinvent public space, and improve citizens’ involvement in urban planning and urban design, especially in the context of heritage sites. The chapter introduces heritage case studies that either contrast, differentiate, and add to existing knowledge and practices in placemaking through specific initiatives, or enable the establishment of common ground within a wider constellation of societal actors and both, as we see, contribute in different ways to responsible research. We analyze how the four criteria of RRI, namely anticipation, reflexivity, inclusion, and responsiveness are considered and implemented, and the extent to which digital tools are supportive. Obviously, coproduction of knowledge is not sufficient when we call for responsible science in the narrow sense, hence the development of common ground also appears necessary.