The challenge of collaboration in urban design

Abstract

Climate change affects cities in every region of the world, and cities need to improve their urban resilience. Resilient measures are often implemented in public spaces because they are the urban voids in which infrastructures, water, biodiversity, mobility, and human life unfold. However, their institutional settings often make their design processes significantly challenging. Many complexities must be agreed upon and integrated into designing resilient public spaces. Taking a collaborative approach to designing public spaces has been said to improve their resilience by involving different actors and integrating their aims and knowledge. However, the mechanisms to do so remain unclear. This research explores how a collaborative approach can contribute to the design processes of resilient public spaces. It does so in the geographical context of Chile, a territory prone to diverse climate change impacts. It poses that revised urban design processes are crucial for implementing resilient public spaces. It focuses on co-design processes and their mechanisms and methods to integrate the diverse knowledge backgrounds of the involved actors. The studies examine the co-design processes of prominent resilient public spaces in Chile and design one in the same context. This research aims to contribute to urban design by formulating a comprehensive framework and guidelines for designing resilient public spaces collaboratively. It contributes generalisable and context-specific findings with particular emphasis on the Chilean context.