Finding common ground on the threshold: an experiment in critical urban learning

The paper explores the role of academic institutions in urban commoning, which involves sharing and collaborating to manage common resources. Specifically, it analyses the impact of an experimental programme, Practices of Urban Inclusion, on fostering new forms of collaboration and cultures of sharing. The programme was co-designed and co-run by a network of four architecture and urban planning schools and three civil society organisations across four European countries. The paper mobilises the concept of 'threshold spaces' by Stavros Stavrides, to discuss if and how urban knowledge and learning can be co-produced and circulated ‘on the threshold’ between academic and civil society organisations. Practices of Urban Inclusion is thus seen as a threshold space that attempted to bring different subjectivities and forms of knowledge into connection by foregrounding experiential knowledge, fostering collaborative learning, and connecting temporalities. The paper reflects on the key characteristics of the programme and highlights some of its commoning and un-commoning outcomes. We suggest that conceptualising knowledge co-production through ideas of commoning and threshold spatiality allows for more nuanced understandings of the dynamics of academia-civil society collaborations

Practices of urban inclusion: designing an experiment in education

This report outlines the process and initial findings from a collaborative EU funded project titled: DESINC LIVE – Designing and Learning in the Context of Migration (desinclive.eu). Since September 2019, the project has brought together a group of fourteen educators, researchers and practitioners from four Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) and three Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) based in four European countries to jointly design, test and evaluate an experimental educational offer. The offer focuses on the interface between questions of migration and urban inclusion on the one hand, and the field of urban planning, architecture and spatial practice on the other

Situated perspectives on the city: a reflection on scaling participation through design

This article explores the relationship between design methodologies and the scaling of participation in cities. The article recognizes that the scaling of community-led informal settlement upgrading is a central concern in the broader debate on scaling participation, and it interrogates the potential contribution of design methodologies in connecting localized, community-led upgrading initiatives outwards and upwards. We discuss these ideas by drawing on our own experience of devising and facilitating a number of participatory design and planning initiatives titled Change by Design with the non-profit organization Architecture Sans Frontières – UK (ASF-UK). Reflecting on this experience, we argue that the inclusion of a design-based, city-level perspective in localized upgrading initiatives can be a powerful conceptual and practical tool to support horizontal, vertical and deep scaling; and we highlight the importance of constructing this design tool in an embodied and situated manner, so that scaling processes remain firmly grounded in everyday lives and experiences

Change by design: imagining equitable cities

This portfolio illustrates key research insights from the creative work undertaken by ASF-UK as part of the programme: Change by Design. The programme explores participatory design and planning as tools for advancing social justice and deepening democracy in urban decisionmaking. Through knowledge co-production and capacity development, Change by Design supports marginalised groups, so that they can affect change in the cities they live in

Micro-resilience and justice: co-producing narratives of change

Significant lessons can be drawn from grassroots’ experiences of self-organizing to challenge the uneven distribution of resources and opportunities in cities. This paper examines the strategies of low-income dwellers living in squatted buildings in São Paulo, Brazil, and asks how resilience narratives can help one understand the agency of these micro-strategies across multiple scales. The city centre of São Paulo is a key site for housing movements to challenge spatial injustice in Brazil. In a context where housing for low-income groups is in short supply and characterized by highly skewed social and spatial distribution, squatted buildings have emerged since the 1990s as laboratories for alternative ways of producing the city. The paper draws from an action-research project investigating such occupations in São Paulo. Firstly, it explores the practices of individual and groups inhabiting a building known as Ocupação Marconi, focusing on its social production as a device for co-producing local resilience from the micro-scale. Secondly, it reflects on which forms of knowledge production might allow for putting such practices into focus, interrogating participatory action research as a means to facilitate resilience at scale