The project aims to develop a co-creative approach to participatory urban planning and design for improved socio-spatial justice through co-creation. The project is situated within a broader context of ‘Them vs Us’ conflicts including rigid social hierarchies of coloniality, caste, class, and expertise that limit the extent to which and what types of communities are involved in urban development. More specifically, the project endeavoured to: 1. Reimagine the urbanist as a ‘language mediator’ whereby the urbanist experiments with ways to communicate with and between different stakeholders (inhabitants, migrants, institutions, etc). As such the urbanist becomes multilingual not just in a spoken or written sense, but also in visual and body languages, as well as silence. Together, engaged stakeholders, built trust, and an identifying of needs, wants and worries inform co-creation; 2. Recognize, access and value ‘unconventional’ knowledge and experiences to expand traditional realms of expertise. This aim focuses on the dismissal of ‘othered’ knowledge paradigms that could help in addressing pressing urban challenges; 3. Build inhabitant literacy to facilitate inhabitants not only ‘having a seat at the table’ but also an informed voice when they are there. These aims intertwine to form the central research question, ‘how can an approach to participatory planning and design use language as a means to engage with different actors, access and value ‘unconventional’ knowledge while also building citizen literacy?’. The project takes place in Rotterdam’s western Bospolder-Tussendijken neighbourhood. In response to the research questions and its Rotterdam context, the research outputs are 4-fold, underpinned by the central theme of what it means to be seen. They consist of (1) a storybook; (2) reflections on co-creative participatory approaches; (3) the report; and (4) the bonus spatial implications of the research for urban design and planning. The outputs allow for the intersectional sharing of multiple stories, exposure to other types of knowledge and experiences, and the unpacking of existing systems and hierarchies that hinder the realisation of socio-spatial justice.

Rotterdam has always been a showcase for attractive images but ignorant about developing urban impurities, by post-war being built back as an intra- and international gateway. Due to fragmentation of the spatial planning system, politicization and polarization, and a lack of depth in important political discussions, urban impurities in municipal measures express in the absence of cross understanding regarding taking care of challenging focus areas, like Bospolder-Tussendijken (BoTu) in Rotterdam. It is time to reconsider the approach. Socio-spatial character is paradoxical, while social unrest creates a lack of responsibility to sustain and maintain the (semi)public space, which causes a vicious cycle of unrest. Overstimulation with (sustainable or resilient) development plans sensitizes and therewith stigmatizes the neighbourhood. Residents are aware of this stigmatization and find themselves often in a self-fulfilling prophecy, not taking care of their surroundings. Passengers and residers move through the neighbourhood with shifting motives related to four domains of social life, living (1), labour (2), learning (3), and leisure (4). Urban planning documents are dominantly textual and theoretical, while they involve creating physical places with a practical outcome. No-boundary-botu could be the solution. By embracing asset-based community development and co-creating with the unusual suspects, an Asset Atlas could strengthen local networks and fit the needs of the different domains, aiming for true cross understanding. Through scenarios, synergies within the initiatives' network will be displayed to reclaim the (semi)public space, encourage encounters, and create safety, trust and, most important, rest.