Siberian imaginaries: evaluating participatory placemaking as a tool for civic development of shared spaces in the postcolonial contexts of Yakutsk and Lensk, north-eastern Siberia

This PhD by practice examines the potential of participatory placemaking as a tool for the civic development of shared urban spaces in the postcolonial contexts of the cities of Yakutsk and Lensk located in the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia), North-Eastern Siberia. Inhibited by its colonial history and forced urbanisation during the period of Soviet rule and the rigidity of the current Russian-based planning process, the citizens of Yakutia have little involvement in the imagining and making of the fabric of the city. The research asks: how can participatory placemaking contribute to the civic development of Yakutsk and Lensk by embodying the aspirations of residents and employing other local contextual affordances at city, neighbourhood and building scales? The research methodology is built on three stages of Investigator, Narrator, and Maker in three case studies and two surveys. The facilitate participatory placemaking, Lefebvre’s methods of deduction, induction, translation, transduction, and transposition were applied to provoke the imagination and aid the representation of alternative futures by participants. The research methods used for data collection included facilitation of co-design workshops, hands-on building initiatives, and snowballing interviews. These research methods use the community auto-ethnographic lens to empower local participants as the main decision makers. The case studies of Oyuur Park in Lensk and Dog City in Yakutsk test the top-down and bottom-up approaches of participatory design. The third case study of the Amphitheatre Project in London was added to compare Yakutian learning-by-making practices with western ones. The survey of snowballing interviews assesses newly emerging participatory design practices in Yakutia in comparison with the practices in Canada, Greenland, Scandinavia, and the UK to define its characteristics. The final survey of Siberian Imaginaries built on found local affordances tests further the theory of urban imaginaries through online participatory design workshops. Throughout the research process an optimal 4-stage PP structure was applied based on the heuristic adaptation of PP processes and methods in the Yakutian context. The research demonstrates that Participatory Placemaking can be successfully used as a tool for the civic development of shared spaces in Yakutsk and Lensk through the assembly of urban imaginaries. In addition, the urban learning forums created by PP can contribute to design creativity and participants’ capacity to participate, expand affordances through co-making of narratives and artefacts, and subsequently, expand the urban imaginaries which embodying the aspirations of residents. Yakutian Participatory Placemaking is characterised by its fundamental embodiment of the conditions of the context such as extreme climate, remote location, and scarce resources. Additional contextual factors were the lack of time and low experience of civic action by participants. The research contributes to knowledge by helping to fill the gap in the application of participatory placemaking in the postcolonial Far North. The recommendations evaluate the most effective design approach, timing, process structure, and scale for PP in the research context. The recommendations can be tested further to scale up the local initiatives in Yakutia and in regions with similar contextual characteristics and/or used as guidance to facilitate speculative participatory placemaking projects in other contexts