The 2005 World Sustainable Building Conference, 17-002 Tokyo, 27-29 September 2005 (SB05Tokyo) PARTICIPATORY DESIGN AND PLANNING: AN OPEN SOURCE AND EVOLUTIONARY DESIGN PERSPECTIVE Joseph Francis WONG M.Arch., HKIA 1 1 Division of Building Science and Technology, The City University of Hong Kong, Tat Chee Avenue, Kowloon, Hong Kong, [email protected] Keywords: urban design, participatory planning and design, evolutionary design, open source design Summary In view of the rapidly increasing complexity of urban design issues and the growing demand for a higher level of public involvement in planning, present approaches to community development and renewal is urgently in need of comprehensive review and fundamental change. This paper examines a model for participatory planning and design to allow higher community involvement in decision making regarding issues about their built environment – Evolutionary Participatory Open Design (ePOD). The model utilizes the Internet to reach a much higher number of users and stakeholders than current methods of public consultation and participation in urban planning. ePOD borrows heavily from the emerging fields of computational evolutionary design and open source design, and builds on their respective principles as its foundations. A framework will be introduced to analyze the relationship between different levels of participation and the core stages of the ePOD process. 1. Introduction Faced with intense and complex demands by the public for sustainable and high quality urban and architectural design to satisfy the rapidly changing and diversifying needs of its inhabitants, government authorities and professionals are increasingly looking into participatory design and planning methodology as a means to incorporate more public input in the urban regeneration process. This is sensible because while authorities and professionals are in a good position to form the overview and identify macroscopic issues based on their experience and expertise, it is the users themselves who are most familiar with the microscopic picture because of their day-to-day experience and involvement in what actually takes place within the urban fabric. The objective of this paper is to look into the issues and implications pertaining to a model of public participatory design/planning in an “open source” platform based on principles of evolutionary design. This platform can play a key role in forming a more comprehensive development of participatory design / planning process and mechanism combining internet technology and evolutionary design principles to: 1) Involve a much wider spectrum and higher percentage of the public; 2) Provide an interactive environment for the public to contribute their own ideas and to know about other people’s ideas; and 3) Work together towards common objectives for planning and design through a consensus building process. The remainder of the paper is outlined as follows: Section 2 gives a brief discussion of key concepts relating to participatory planning/design and consensus design, some examples of current practices and suggests evolutionary design and open-source design as alternative approaches to participatory planning and design. Sections 3 and 4 introduce respectively the emerging fields of evolutionary design and open-source movement as key components of the proposed internet-based participatory planning/design model and their implications. Section 5 lays out the basic concept of a framework for Evolutionary-Participatory Open Design (e-POD) and its various models. 2. What is Participatory Planning and Design? 2.1 The Pragmatic Perspective Participatory design, or participatory planning, is a blanket term covering many fields while taking many different approaches. There is no single definition of participatory design as such as it is an emerging field that is increasingly being applied in a variety of forms in diverse fields (Luke et al, 2004) including building design, software, mobile telephones, automobiles, graphic design, and even such fields as fast food and political slogans. One of the major basic assumptions behind the participatory design movement is that the user knows what is best for them and therefore involving them in the design process can allow such preferences or needs to be known while formulating the design or product. The global computer technology organization Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility (CPSR) defines “participatory design” as “an approach to the assessment, design, and development of technological and organizational systems that places a premium on the active involvement of potential or current users of the system in design and decision-making processes (CPSR, 2004).” These are some of the reasons why automaker General Motors brought in visitors to critique designs of their new Hummer H3 sports utility vehicle over 3-day sessions during preliminary design stages “to see how much they could stretch the design” (Wells, 2005). GM designers would immediately make revisions to their - 4178 - The 2005 World Sustainable Building Conference, Tokyo, 27-29 September 2005 (SB05Tokyo) designs based on the group’s comments and prepare new designs for the next group of visitors to critique on. The process adopted by GM as described above obviously places value on the views given by the users, despite their lack of professional training and expertise on the field in question. This reflects the pragmatic, or technical, perspective of participatory planning and design: the participation of users in certain stages of the design process (decision-making process) can make significant contributions to the development of successful and high quality designs. As a methodology, the participatory planning and design process belongs to the interpretivist paradigm, which views reality and its knowledge as intrinsicly linked to the actions of the particpants in context and can only be interperted through the participants themselves. 2.2 The Political Perspective One important idea not covered by the above discussion on the pragmatic/technical perspective of the participatory process is that of empowerment . The “power” of the users and stakeholders comes from their knowledge on the processes of the “inside” which “outsiders” do not and cannot possess. Under this view of “knowledge as power”, paticipatory planning and design becomes a political process with the production of knowledge and who controls the process of knowing as its core issues. This is in sharp contrast to the prevalent practice of urban planning, labeled “orthodox planning” by Hamdi and Goethert (1997), utilizing the usual tools of outline concept plans, outline development plans, master layout plans, development controls, etc. Orthodox planning is led by an external authority, e.g. the government, and carried out by trained professionals with minimal involvement of the users or the stakeholders. One of the many criticisms of this process is that orthodox planning is often more concerned with designing plans to fulfill the statutory procedures rather than planning to achieve any real or valuable objectives in the region being planned (Devas, 1993). Hamdi and Goethert identified that one of the major trends in the new realism about city and urban development is “a new definition of public responsibility and a new role for development practitioners [ ] inspired by the trend toward “enabling” and away from providing”, which are the comparative characteristics of the orthodox paradigm and the participatory paradigm respectively (1997). 2.3 Public Participation vs Participatory Planning Participatory planning and design therefore requires more than just having public participation but focuses more on the nature and degree of participation by the users and stakeholders at various levels of the planning and design process. This is a critical issue as cases in the past has shown that “planning developed with public participation” are often projects designed by outside professionals and implemented through government authorities, relegating the “participation” part to labor tasks performed by the locals (McCall, 1987). To achieve the purposes of enabling and empowerment , one must modify, or even reverse, this conventional top-down approach and transform the planning process towards more genuine participation. To Schneider and Libercier, “genuine participation means that people should be involved throughout the project or programme cycle, from the design stage through monitoring and evaluation. Mere consultation of the people should no longer be considered as sufficient, nor should participation be limited to the implementation of activities previously defined from the outside (1995).” A 2004 research report from the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister, United Kingdom, titled “Participatory Planning for Sustainable Communities: International experience in mediation, negotiation and engagement in making plans,” labeled this type of public consultation strategy as “Decide-Announce-Defend” and associated it with important negative consequences of loss of trust, damaged relationships and an inability to resolve disputes when stances are firm, etc. (ODPM, 2004). This type of authority-led “public participation” process, often with pre- determined agendas and outcomes, must be replaced with “participatory planning and design.” 3 Evolutionary Design 3.1 Evolution Principle – Natural Selection A look around at living plants and organisms around you – a rose, a banyan tree, a bee, a jelly fish, a blue whale,