BEYOND PARTICIPATION

IP City Development UA 20/8/13

Designers taking on a new role

*Increasing social inequality emancipatory urban practice?

A practice in crisis?

*Entrepreneurial city tactics & hard gentrification

*Planners plan but other things are realized...

*Participation? too late in the process

*How to deal with bottom-up initiatives?

*Repressive measures and focus on nuisance

Designer/planners:

Social professional:

Socio-spatial cooperation?

Socio-spatial knowledge = implicit

Translate experience spatial terms

No fit tools and methods to involve social profs.

Capture local knowledge, culture and dynamics?

Different actors = different values + different language!

Urbanization & growth to absorb surplus

Quality of urban life commodity

* common life is itself produced

* Expansive speculation

* ‘commoning’ as perpetual social practice

Neoliberal urbanization

* Predatory entrepreneurial tactics

Imbalance between those who produce and those who appropriate for private gains.

Urbanization & growth to absorb surplus

Quality of urban life commodity

* common life is itself produced

* Expansive speculation

* ‘commoning’ as perpetual social practice

Neoliberal urbanization

* Predatory entrepreneurial tactics

Imbalance Disappropriation of Right To The City (Lefebvre 1968)

* Quality of urban living fund. in anti-capitalist struggle? (Harvey 2012)

Right to the City

* Activism: factory to the city (Castells 1983) reproductive sphere (Mayer 2010)

* Collective right to city we produce

* Right to rebuild the city in a different image

* Slogan for struggle, seeking a unity

City?

Right?

Role of commons in urban politics only now clearly acknowledgedEmphasize spatial dimension of RTTC

Proletariat urbanization producers!

Mobilization against neoliberalization of urb. governance (Mayer 2010)

Dominant pattern of growth politics

Corporate urban development

Right to the City & Social Movements

But new convergence under RTTC

More hostile environment

Mobilization against neoliberalization of urban governance (Mayer 2010)

Right to the City & Social Movements

Moral <->legal claim

Oppositional <->juridical right

Revolutionary appropriation

Agenda / spec. rights

Inclusion in existing system

Neoliberal ‘with a human touch’

Expose the mystification

Back to Lefebvre

(Mayer, Harvey, Marcuse)

Agenda / spec. rights

Inclusion in existing system

Neoliberal ‘with a human touch’

Back to Lefebvre

(Mayer, Harvey, Marcuse)

Certain rights get locked in the local

Larger scale ties move to the background

RTTC as a unifying banner

RTTC & Space

“space may be crucial to how they organize and voice their demands, it is not usually at the very core of their discourse”

(Uitermark, Nicholls and Loopmans 2012)

urban space as a collective effort

Potential of spatial design in struggle (Thorpe 2012)

Reinventing requires tools and capabilities

Is there a role to be played by the designer/spatial professional...

RTTC & Space

“space may be crucial to how they organize and voice their demands, it is not usually at the very core of their discourse”

(Uitermark, Nicholls and Loopmans 2012)

urban space as a collective effort

Potential of spatial design in struggle

Reinventing requires tools and capabilities

...as an ORGANIC INTELLECTUAL through material practice & socio-spatial ‘reflexes’?

Traditional Intellectual

Social function

Role in class struggle

Class apart

‘Social utopia’

Organic Intellectual

(Gramsci 1971)

Organic Intellectual

The mode of being of the new intellectual can no longer consist in eloquence (...) but in active participation in practical life, as constructor, organiser, ‘permanent persuader’ and not just as simple orator (...) (1971, 10)

(...)struggle to assimilate and to conquer ‘ideologically’ the traditional intellectuals, but this assimilation and conquest is made quicker and more efficacious the more the group in question succeeds in simultaneously creating its own organic intellectuals. (1971, 10)

Organic Intellectual & Social Movements

(Gramsci 1971)

The mode of being of the new intellectual can no longer consist in eloquence (...) but in active participation in practical life, as constructor, organiser, ‘permanent persuader’ and not just as simple orator (...) (1971, 10)

(...)struggle to assimilate and to conquer ‘ideologically’ the traditional intellectuals, but this assimilation and conquest is made quicker and more efficacious the more the group in question succeeds in simultaneously creating its own organic intellectuals. (1971, 10)

Organic Intellectual & Social Movements

(Gramsci 1971)

* (self) conscious development of org. intellectuals

* Specialized knowledge & become directive

go beyond static conceptions

universalise the struggle itself

* Constituting a class as a self-conscious political agent

Designers as organic intellectuals?

Socio-spatial relations & awareness...

Impact of conception, characteristics of urban spaces...

Multiple meanings of space...

Methods to ‘spatialize’ the struggle...

urban political struggle

Organic intellectual

SpecialityUrban Social Movement

organic component

Design Activism?

Design activism’s political side in social movement terms with designers operating as organic intellectuals

Bring about change <-> design problems

Motivate informed action + propose informed alternatives

Propose and not only oppose

Help them develop a spatial program

Contribute Specific skills

Handing tools and methods to be stronger in the debate

RTTC which we all produce

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1627172835/an-oven-at-the-heart-of-anfield

International cases

Anfield Community Bakery

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mGHgT4T6B_o

International cases

Recyclart

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_GmD9h4_a8E

International cases

Park Groot Schijn

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_GmD9h4_a8E

International cases

Park Groot Schijn

Mijn Kijk op de Wijk

Gross National Happiness A key to

culturally based urban planning?

46.500 km2

70% forest

20% glaciers & snow

10% agriculture & settlements

1970

“Gross National Happiness is more important than Gross Domestic Product”

Jigme Singye Wanchuck (4th King of Bhutan)

Gross National Happiness

Gross National Happiness 2008

“The State shall strive topromote those conditions that will enable the pursuit of Gross NationalHappiness.”

Article 9 - Principles of State Policy:

Psychological well-being Living standards Health

Education Culture Time use

Good governance Community vitality Ecological diversity and resilience

Gross National Happiness A key to

culturally based urban planning?

What Design Can Do

DESIGN A DATA COLLECTION ‘METHOD’…“IN THE GREY ZONE” SURVEY - PLATFORM - TOOL - GAME - PRODUCT - INTERVENTION

DESIGN A DATA COLLECTION ‘METHOD’…IN THE GREY ZONESTIMULATES CREATIVITYGENERATES IDEAS OR INITIATIVECOLLECTS USABLE DATA: IN THE RIGHT LANGUAGESTIMULATES PEOPLE TO REFLECT ON URBAN SPACE

DESIGN A DATA COLLECTION ‘METHOD’…IN THE GREY ZONE

NOT INSTANTLY USABLEGETS ‘LOST’NEEDS ELABORATE TRANSLATIONFEEDBACK TO NEARLY FINISHED PRODUCT

STIMULATES CREATIVITYGENERATES IDEAS OR INITIATIVECOLLECTS USABLE DATA: IN THE RIGHT LANGUAGESTIMULATES PEOPLE TO REFLECT ON URBAN SPACE

PRO-ACTIVE

DEFINE ASSIGNMENT

COLLECT DATA

CONVENTIONAL

PROPELLING

DATA CAN TRIGGER INITIATIVE

DEFINE ASSIGNMENT

COLLECT DATA

CONVENTIONAL

DESIGN A DATA COLLECTION ‘METHOD’…“IN THE GREY ZONE” SURVEY - PLATFORM - TOOL - GAME - PRODUCT - INTERVENTION

Den Dam2060

Designing a process

ndvr.be