Creating places through participatory design: psychological techniques to understand people’s conceptions

Place making is fundamental in creating human settlements. It is now understood that wholesome places cannot be created by professionals without the active participation of people who should be able to transform them as their own. Approaches to place making such as the Pattern Language of Christopher Alexander and Supports of Nabeel Hamdi attempted to engage people in the process in a number of ways. Participatory techniques are central to these practices, but there remain a paucity of appropriate techniques that can be adopted in facilitating people to articulate their perceptions useful to create places. This paper examines two psychological techniques; sorting task and location task and their applicability as practiced in a recent housing project implemented in Sri Lanka. The tasks divulged a number of facets of people’s conceptualizations of their settlements; those related to the present setting, the specific places in the existing settlement, those related to the imagined places and finally the desired geographical features of the imagined places. The paper then interprets and discusses how these conceptualizations have been directed towards articulating the spaces in the designed setting so that they could be transformed by the people to become wholesome places. It demonstrates that when the idea of ‘place’ is the focus of participatory practices and by using the techniques described, meaningful places can be effectively created.     

Between ‘true believers’ and operational experts: UNESCO architects and school building in post-colonial Africa

Following decolonisation in the late 1950s, Cold War competitiveness and economic globalisation prompted old and new foreign powers to invest in the development of Africa. By means of building and urban planning, they sought to transmit their specific models of modernisation to the continent. Architects from divergent contexts and backgrounds embraced this opportunity to transfer their expertise to Africa, in particular through development aid organisations. This paper will shed light on the expert(ise)s that were exported to, and generated within, Africa in the 1960s and 1970s through one particular international aid agency, namely UNESCO. The focus will be on the organisation's activity in the field of school building, a crucial sector of development in Africa following the independence of former colonies across the continent. Through this agency, a transnational network of expert-architects with highly divergent backgrounds was generated. Taking UNESCO as a starting point, we identify a number of such globally operating architects who had a crucial impact on the design and construction of educational facilities, but remain unstudied to date. By an analysis of their work the paper reveals the design knowledge that was generated and the building expertise that circulated through UNESCO in Africa, while simultaneously untangling the complex networks and mechanisms behind this unique architecture production.     

‘CHASTE’: construction hazard assessment with spatial and temporal exposure

CHASTE—‘Construction Hazard Assessment with Spatial and Temporal Exposure’—is a conceptual model that enables forecasting of safety risks in construction projects for different trades, at appropriate levels of detail and reliability for different planning windows and managerial purposes, in a highly automated fashion. Unlike earlier models, CHASTE explicitly accounts for the fact that construction workers are frequently endangered by activities performed by teams other than their own. The risks to which workers are exposed change through time, as the activities performed and the physical environment of construction sites change. CHASTE uses a knowledge base of construction activities and probabilities of loss‐of‐control events, coupled with a project’s construction plan and a digital building model, to forecast risk levels for work teams. It has been implemented in prototype software and tested on two projects.     

Developing creative quarters in cities: policy lessons from ‘Art and Design City’ Arabianranta,Helsinki

Many cities invest in creative quarters, cultural clusters or design cities to support their creative industries. The development of such areas is far from easy, and success stories coexist with failures. This article reviews the case of Arabianranta in Helsinki, in order to gain insight into its critical success factors that, when properly contextualised, may help other cities to develop such locations. Although an important part of its growth and development, as such, has to do with well-established art and design dynamics in Helsinki, deliberate policies attuned to keep a thematic focus and functional mix in the district have been pivotal.     

‘To make something with nothing’: Le Corbusier's proposal for refugee housing—Les Constructions ‘Murondins’

This paper discusses the complex political trajectory of Le Corbusier's little-known project for war refugees, Les Constructions ‘Murondins’, and examines how it embodies a significant transformation in both his social orientation and formal ideas during the 1930s and the Vichy period.

In 1940, Le Corbusier and his partner Pierre Jeanneret designed the ‘Murondins’ scheme as a means to erect provisional housing and villages rapidly (including a school, club and youth centre). Le Corbusier proposed that these structures would be built by local youths using pisé (‘rammed earth’), tree trunks, branches and other readily available materials. Beyond housing those in need, he hoped that these new settlements would be the foundation of a new grassroots regional culture that would revitalise the French countryside. For the following two years, he actively promoted the ‘Murondins’ project to the Vichy government (unsuccessfully) as a means of mobilising rural youth; after France's liberation, he campaigned for it again as a solution for housing war victims. Nor did he abandon it in subsequent decades: in 1955, he proposed it to Abbé Pierre's Faim et Soif as a solution for sheltering the homeless; and in 1963, he offered it as a means of housing Algerian Muslims fleeing to France after the Algerian war.     

Rural networks and planned communities: Doxiadis Associates’ plans for rural settlements in post-independence Zambia

The paper focusses on the planning of rural settlements by the Athens-based firm Doxiadis Associates (DA), a key, even if unrealised, project for Zambia's nation-building and development efforts in the mid-1960s. In line with post-war discourses of modernisation, DA employed Christaller's 1933-Central Place Theory and its abstract hexagonal geometrical model to organise different-sized settlements within a single spatial system. By introducing a hierarchical rural network over Zambia, the firm aimed to standardise rural settlement patterns and to formulate a strategy to alleviate rural-urban migration. DA's top-down, large-scale approach even exceeded the State's aspirations and the firm's visions eventually faced two challenges: First, DA's modernist planning was questioned by the social/ecological considerations as formulated by George Kay's counterproposal on resettlement policy. Secondly, DA's ‘urbanising’ visions for rural areas were forestalled by some of the country's realities, which remained out of the planners’ field of control, and eventually called for more cautious responses to the realities on the ground. By exposing the challenges DA's rural proposal faced, the paper ultimately contemplates the multiple, and even conflicting reactions towards Zambia's rural settlement projects, and also adds nuances to the wider histories of rural development in Africa.     

‘The field of grain is gone; It's now a Tesco Superstore’: representations of ‘urban’ and ‘rural’ within historical and contemporary discourses opposing urban expansion in England

Ideas about the difference between rural and urban areas are woven into the fabric of English society. This paper asks how two different campaigns against urban expansion and rural homebuilding in England – one interwar and one more contemporary (related to the production of the ‘National Planning Policy Framework’ document) – represent the difference between ‘rural’ and ‘urban’ and how they use these representations to justify and naturalize their arguments. Utilizing interpretive textual analysis to compare the two periods, we show that, whilst planning has undergone significant paradigm shifts during the period between the two campaigns, in both archives a dominant ‘rural idyll’ is (re)produced and reinforced through the representational themes of beauty, nature, purity, an elite educated class, and a traditional social order. This is strongly contrasted to the representation of the ‘urban sphere’ as an unnatural, ugly, modern, and socially fragmented dystopia. ‘Urban’ areas are therefore constructed as the constitutive ‘Other’ to the rural idyll. In this way, the apparently natural urban characteristics associated with built-up areas are represented as ‘out of place’ within the rural sphere. These representations work to justify the argument that ‘development’ is a threat to the intrinsic characteristics of the countryside and should not be allowed to take place. This rural idyll/urban dystopia binary is argued to continue to have an important influence on shaping policy debate.     

Beyond ‘What do I get?’ Functional and procedural sources of Dutch citizens’ satisfaction with local democracy

This paper deals with a dual question: (1) How important are procedural value orientations (pertaining to the democratic quality of decision-making) and functional value orientations (pertaining to the governmental performance in solving problems and delivering services) for Dutch citizens’ ideas about what constitutes good local governance? (2) To what extent and how do these functional and procedural evaluations affect Dutch citizens’ overall satisfaction with local democracy? These questions will be answered on the basis of data collected through a survey amongst 1060 Dutch citizens.     

Indoor thermal environmental conditions near glazed facades with shading devices – Part I: Experiments and building thermal model

This paper presents an experimental study of indoor thermal environment near a full-scale glass facade with different types of shading devices under varying climatic conditions in winter. Interior glazing and shading temperature, operative temperature and radiant temperature asymmetry were measured for façade sections with roller shades and venetian blinds at different positions. Interior glass surface temperatures can be high during sunny days with low outdoor temperature. Shading systems significantly improved operative temperature and radiant temperature asymmetry during cold sunny days, depending on their properties and tilt angle. During cloudy days the impact was smaller, however the shading layers could still decrease the amount of heat loss through the façade. A transient building thermal model, which also calculates indoor environmental indices under the presence of solar radiation, was developed and compared with the experimental measurements. Part II of this paper uses this validated model with a transient, two-node thermal comfort model (including transmitted solar radiation) for assessment of indoor environmental conditions with different building envelope and shading properties, façade location and orientation.     

‘Day Labour’ and ‘Xenophobia’ in South Africa: the Need for Mixed Methods Approaches in Policy-Orientated Research

Much policy-orientated research in South Africa relies solely on large-scale surveys. Little or no case study research is undertaken as part of studies despite broad international acknowledgement of the benefits of mixing methods. In the South African poverty and demographic literature, strong arguments have been made for the incorporation of case study approaches to arrive at a deeper and more accurate understanding of social phenomena. This paper, which draws on an ethnographic study of ‘day labourers’ (both South African and foreign) in Cape Town, together with an extensive range of relevant literature, extends this line of argument to research on casual employment and relations between South Africans and foreign nationals. It highlights a number of questionable assumptions and superficial analyses present in previous survey-based research on these topics. It also discusses the potential contribution of more case study work and some of the practical issues associated with linking methodologies in development research.     

‘Happy Meals’: Finding Happiness with Hans Becker and the Humanitas Care Model

Hans Becker , originally a professor at the Erasmus School of Economics in Rotterdam, is a seemingly unlikely guru for elderly care. In 1992 he was appointed Chair of the Rotterdam-based housing association Humanitas with the task of overturning the outmoded and failing commercial model of its nursing homes. He set about replacing them with ‘apartments for life’ that promoted independent living. In order to understand more about the successful Humanitas model, David Birkbeck , Chief Executive of Design for Homes in the UK, interviewed Becker and found out how the move to a new housing type was enabled by a philosophical shift that placed an emphasis on the engendering of happiness among its residents – with food and the creation of convivial on-site restaurant facilities proving a critical tool.     

‘Yes we can’: identity politics and project politics for a late-modern world

There is widespread agreement in mainstream participation studies that social capital and civic engagement in Western democracies are in steady and continuous decline. How did it happen, then, that Barack Obama was able to mobilize tens of millions of volunteers and supporters for his spectacularly successful and novelty-creating presidential campaign? Part of the answer is that his campaign was directed to building political capital for solving common policy concerns. This marks a creative shift in political communication from being oriented towards keeping government effective and legitimate to getting people freely and actively to accept and help in executing what has to be done in order to solve common concerns. The paper discusses why this shift has not been detected by mainstream participation studies, following their development in Almond and Verba's civic culture, through Putnam's social capital framework, to Norris's cause-oriented politics. Later, Marsh et al.'s new politics of lived experience is introduced and connected to the project politics model for studying ‘everyday makers and expert citizens’. The conclusion is that Obama's rhetoric in particular appeals to everyday makers and expert citizens, and that their reciprocal resonance opens for a fusion of identity politics and project politics in a new, much more communicative and interactive democratic model for doing what neither neoliberalism nor statism apparently can do: getting things done in prudent manner by establishing more balanced and discursive two-way relations of autonomy and dependence between political authorities and lay people.     

Urban planning and the design of towns in the Middle Ages: the Earls of Devon and their ‘new towns’

This paper examines what processes might have been involved in the design and planning of new urban landscapes in the High Middle Ages. It does so by looking in detail at the morphology of a group of late twelfth century ‘new towns’ established by one particular aristocratic family in southern England. The paper seeks to encourage a move away from orthodox interpretations of medieval urban forms, and challenges the view that irregularities in plan-form signify a lack of planning.     

Beyond Design and Participation: The ‘Thought for Food’ Project in Flanders,Belgium

The goal of this paper is to contribute to the development of methods of social innovation in participatory urban design. Based on the ‘Synoikos scenario Workshop’, an adapted methodology was applied to and evaluated within the (participatory action) research context of the European ‘Thought for Food’ (T4F) landscape enhancement project concerning the agro-industrial area surrounding Roeselare in West-Flanders, Belgium. Within this complex spatial and social context, design-based scenarios served as a tool for stimulating participants to discuss their discordant views and to understand the consequences of their activities for others.     

A Better Future for Development Plans: Making ‘Plan,Monitor and Manage’ Work

‘Plan, monitor and manage’ has recently emerged as the UK government's preferred approach to provision of housing land through the planning system. However, the transition from the previous system of ‘predict and provide’ has been driven by events and lacks conceptual underpinning. The full potential of a more flexible response to changing circumstances may remain unrealized unless allied to changes in the conceptual basis for planning policies involving quantities and dates. The article describes the way in which national policy has evolved, the relevance to this problem of ‘strategic choice’ theory and, using case studies, the implications for practice.