Towards a Power-Balanced Participatory Design Process

Participatory designers have taken inspiration from other practices like the social sciences to develop socially just and horizontal processes to collaborate with communities. In the current work, we take the premise that designers do not have enough means to address concepts of power and politics in design practice. Therefore, we elaborate upon...

A collaborative learning infrastructure to build capacity for urban transformations

An increasing number of social innovators are leveraging cities as urban learning ecosystems in order to experiment with design approaches to tackle societal challenges at a local level. However, the scale and complexity of these challenges force them to constantly acquire new capabilities to advance the local experimentation towards systemic...

In search of Inclusive Participatory City-Making

Participatory methods have been widely explored in the public sector to democratize city-making projects and foster civic engagement. Although well-intentioned, participatory processes still too often exclude citizens. The current study looks for elements enabling city makers to articulate an inclusive Participatory City Making process. Starting...

Supporting Urban Innovators’ Reflective Practice

Over the past years, a growing number of local initiatives are generating solutions for societal challenges in their cities. However, the scale and complexity of these challenges force urban innovators to constantly adapt and learn, having to acquire new capabilities that will help them advance towards systemic change. In the current work, we...