ABSTRACT
We live in times of great change, and our cities are facing significant transformation. This paper is a study of change agency in an urban context. It explores different views of change agents, acting for formal and informal fields of the transformation of the urban environment. In the paper a fourfold classification model is created. It describes the field of change agency in urban transformation, in relation to the rate of centralization and scale. A case of Helsinki is studied through the fourfold classification model. Helsinki is currently facing major changes, both in the built environment and in the urban culture, as new self-initiated collective urban events are gaining popularity. Restaurant Day is one example of a local self-initiated event, which has grown rapidly and expanded in five years from Helsinki to 74 countries. New kind of activism is changing the scene and initiatives arising from the grassroots levels are becoming recognized. This development offers new roles and emerging fields also for architects working in urban development. The aim of this paper is to explore how bottom-up and top-down dynamics of change can be reconciled and how the roles of the change agents are interconnected. Change agency is analyzed through themes of distributed leadership and co-creation.
