How Co-design Processes Improve Public Space Resilience:

Abstract

With the social, ecological and sanitary pressures on urban settlements
and the public sector being unable to successfully provide such answers
alone, co-design can play a crucial role towards urban transformations
and resilient public spaces. We understand co-design as a process in
which institutional networks of public, private, citizens, non-public
organizations and partnerships collaborate in different levels within
design steps. We understand public spaces as socio-ecological systems
that unfold spatially and functionally. This study posits that co-design can
improve the evolutionary resilience of the public space projects when
the involved institutional networks bring socio-ecological knowledge
and values to such processes of design. The question remains how does
co-design actually influences the socio-ecological resilience of public
spaces? And how can we analyze such co-designed outcomes? This article
proposes a framework to analyze the resilience of co-designed public
spaces, and studies two urban parks in the Atacama Desert. Findings
suggests that a socio-ecological resilience approach to such co-design
processes improves the local context-specificity and suitability of the
designs emphasizing the transformative capacity of such collective urban
spaces. And while doing so, it may improve their legitimacy and set the
basis for the co-operation of such projects. The framework may be useful
for future conceptualizations of urban co-design, as well as to plan such
collaborative urban processes in practice. Although the cases are framed
in Latin America; the findings may be useful elsewhere.