Experiential Evaluation to Create Risky Situations and Address Tensions in a Participatory Planning Process

Planning processes often cause tensions between institutions and citizens because the local knowledge and values of the citizens are not included in the decision-making process, which can cause mistrust. This article builds on an ongoing PhD research that explores the potential of experiential evaluation as an alternative and experimental approach to "hybrid forums": an approach to open the participatory planning process for diverse actors and values. In order to render tensions visible and constructive in the participatory planning process, experiential evaluation creates "risky situations" in these hybrid forums. To discuss this approach of experiential evaluation, we use a methodological and analytical framework based on the four steps of strategic navigation techniques: tracing, mapping, diagramming, and agencying. We use these techniques to analyse two risky situations that were created through experiential evaluation within the participatory planning process of the neighbourhood spatial plan (NSP) of Zwijnaarde (Ghent, Belgium). Based on the analysis of the case, we observed that experiential evaluation was able to render tensions visible, but did not yet make them constructive. However, as a framework for a dialogue between institutions and citizens, the NSP leaves room to continue the experiential evaluation process that was initiated and to take further care of tensions on a smaller scale

Introduction

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book explores the idea of urban design as a virtual space evolves as a reflexive instance between pixels and ideas that help to develop a new perception of space and social life. It explores inter alia, routines and perceptions where we often do not even recognize that the virtual has entangled with reality. The book describes a cognitive design computing system for urban planners. It focuses on understanding the relationship between an emergent structure and processes. The book discusses four game concepts ranging from very serious games to more playful virtual game-based environments. All created games may be used to facilitate participatory processes in urban planning. The book demonstrates how Volunteered Geographic Information (VGI) and virtual platforms can be implemented for a mobile device and offers ten key questions that need to be asked in the process of creating a facilitated-VGI

Dialectical design dialogues: negotiating ethics in participatory planning by building a critical design atlas

This article explores 'dialectical design dialogues' as an approach to engage with ethics in everyday urban planning contexts. It starts from Paulo Freire’s pedagogical view (1970/2017), in which dialogues imply the establishment of a horizontal relation between professionals and amateurs, in order to understand, question and imagine things in everyday reality, in this case, urban transformations, applied to participatory planning and enriched through David Harvey’s (2000, 2009) dialectical approach. A dialectical approach to design dialogues acknowledges and renegotiates contrasts and convergences of ethical concerns specific to the reality of concrete daily life, rather than artificially presenting daily life as made of consensus or homogeneity. The article analyses an atlas as a tool to facilitate dialectical design dialogues in a case study of a low-density residential neighbourhood in the city of Genk, Belgium. It sees the production of the atlas as a collective endeavour during which planners, authorities and citizens reflect on possible futures starting from a confrontation of competing uses and perspectives of neighbourhood spaces. The article contributes to the state-of-the-art in participatory urban planning in two ways: (1) by reframing the theoretical discussion on ethics by arguing that not only the verbal discourses around designerly atlas techniques but also the techniques themselves can support urban planners in dealing more consciously with ethics (accountability, morality and authorship) throughout urban planning processes, (2) by offering a concrete practice-based example of producing an atlas that supports the participatory articulation and negotiation of dialectical inquiry of ethics through dialogues in a 'real-time' urban planning process

Mini is beautiful:Playing serious mini-games to facilitate collective learning on complex urban processes

Spatial planning projects can be conceived as processes of collective learning. Planners have been looking at games and playful approaches to support these processes. Considering that planning projects are long and complex, we propose to not reason for single, full-fledged and all-encompassing games, but instead work with strings of, so-called, serious mini-games that each addresses a specific learning goal, guided by a collective learning model. This paper conceptualizes a toolbox to support the development and contextualization of such strings of serious mini-games

All Work and No Play? Facilitating Serious Games and Gamified Applications in Participatory Urban Planning and Governance

As games and gamified applications gain prominence in the academic debate on participatory practices, it is worth examining whether the application of such tools in the daily planning practice could be beneficial. This study identifies a research–practice gap in the current state of participatory urban planning practices in three European cities. Planners and policymakers acknowledge the benefits of employing such tools to illustrate complex urban issues, evoke social learning, and make participation more accessible. However, a series of impediments relating to planners’ inexperience with participatory methods, resource constraints, and sceptical adult audiences, limits the broader application of games and gamified applications within participatory urban planning practices. Games and gamified applications could become more widely employed within participatory planning processes when process facilitators become better educated and better able to judge the situations in which such tools could be implemented as part of the planning process, and if such applications are simple and useful, and if their development process is based on co-creation with the participating publics

Towards a Situational Understanding of Collective Learning: A Reflexive Framework

Based on an in-depth study of how socially innovative processes are collectively reinforced within two cases, this article builds a reflexive framework that conceptualizes socially innovative processes as situated trajectories of collective learning. The framework starts from three theories in the field of pedagogy and organisational studies that try to contextualise and operationalise how internal processes of learning, supportive relationships and external demands interrelate withinprocesses of collective learning. In line with the reflexive character of social innovation research, the article presents the framework as a means to give concrete answer on how socially innovative processes can be supported and how the dynamic character of their collective learning trajectories can be managed. The conclusion of this article further reflects on the importance of a situational and multi-layered understanding of collective learning for creating institutional support for socially innovative processes in planning and presents reflexive questions that can help external actors as planning practitioners to position themselves within this often messy and complex reality