beyond participation - designers taking on a new role
DESCRIPTION
Presented on 26th of August at City Development Summer School University of AntwerpTRANSCRIPT
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