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    Lifestyles
    1: What are lifestyles
    2: Why is it important
    3: Working with it
    Question 1
    Question 2
    Question 3
    Question 4
    Question 5
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Lifestyles
Intro
 updated
11 May 2005



Demand-driven
ReUrbA is a collaboration between five partners. The aim is to exchange views and methods relating to urban regeneration, first of all to improve our own projects, and secondly to develop our understanding further and make these resources available to others.

The ultimate objective is to make urbanised areas more appealing for those already living there, but also to attract new groups. This means that the ReUrbA method is demand-driven. Working with lifestyles is an important part of the method. This section of the ReUrbA site provides background information for the lifestyle component. It deals with the following three issues:

  1. What are lifestyles?
  2. Why has working with lifestyles become so important?
  3. What can I do as a project manager in order to work with lifestyles in my own project?

When addressing these issues, we have deliberately not adopted a single fixed template for working with lifestyles. We are not trying to teach anybody a 'trick'. There are many ways of categorising lifestyles but we are not adopting any of them as our point of departure. It is better to acquire an understanding about the 'nuts and bolts' of lifestyles, to use that understanding in your own projects, and to establish your own lifestyle categories that match your specific situation.

Hans Karssenberg (Stipo Consult),
Joram Grünfeld (University of Amsterdam),
Mark Reede (ReUrbA),
Willemien Faling (ReUrbA)
May 2005

Printversion of this section of the ReUrbA site.

The cockpit and the difference between knowledge and understanding

Would you get on a plane if you knew that the pilot could only land the plane by flicking switches in the right order, without understanding what the switches are for?

When you teach a method, it makes sense to distinguish between knowledge and understanding. Knowledge consists of facts, tables and tricks that you can learn by heart. Understanding consists of experience, understanding why you do something. When a method is being taught, understanding is tanding why something happens or should happen allows project managers to use the method in different circumstances. This does not mean that knowledge is unimportant; it means that it fulfils a different function.

During a landing, pilots and co-pilots go through lists stating the sequences to follow: the switches they have to flick. This can be enough to land a plane. But if conditions change because of a single malfunction affecting one switch, the pilot can only react appropriately if he knows why that switch has to be used at that point in time. He can analyse what is going on and think of a different way of doing the same thing.

That is why this paper does not include any standard theoretical tables (even though the annex does include a few examples for the purposes of illustration), preferring practical descriptions of how project managers can establish their own lifestyle categories. (The annex is still under construction)