Beyond Design and Participation: The ‘Thought for Food’ Project in Flanders, Belgium

Abstract

The goal of this paper is to contribute to the development of methods of social innovation in participatory urban design. Based on the ‘Synoikos scenario Workshop’, an adapted methodology was applied to and evaluated within the (participatory action) research context of the European ‘Thought for Food’ (T4F) landscape enhancement project concerning the agro-industrial area surrounding Roeselare in West-Flanders, Belgium. Within this complex spatial and social context, design-based scenarios served as a tool for stimulating participants to discuss their discordant views and to understand the consequences of their activities for others.

Acknowledgements

The authors wish to express their gratitude to the following for their valuable advice and inputs: Prof. Ali Madanipour, Prof. Ruth Soenen, Prof. Jef Van den Broeck, Prof. Maarten Loopmans, Prof. Luuk Boelens and Prof. Ahmed Zaib Khan Mahsud. Special thanks are due to the participants and advisors of the design workshop: ir. Frans Pauwels, ir. Liesl Vanautgaerden, Thomas Allemeersch, Wim Van Isacker, Nel Ghyselinck, Ruth Segers, Jana Grammens, Sven Augusteyns, Amber Kevelaerts, Maarten Wauters, Evelien Vanhoutte, Koen Van den Troost and Yen Vandervoort.

Notes

^1. Joint first authorship; both authors contributed equally to this work.

^2. The term ‘workshop’ is used in different meanings in the design literature. We decided to use Title case (Workshop) to refer to a design process as a whole and lower case (workshop) to indicate a single session.

^3. ‘Thought for Food’ is a project of the Province West-Flanders, KATHO (University College South-West-Flanders) and the Flemish Land Agency, an agency of the Flemish government responsible for the layout of the remaining open space in Flanders, and obtained financial support of EFRO (European found for Regional Development) and the Flemish government.

^4. The ‘Sketch 'n Match’ Workshops were initiated in the Netherlands by the Dutch government service for land and water management. Within a time span of maximum three days, a team of designers aims to develop a series of scenarios by envisioning the wishes and aspirations of a local community.

^5. ‘Take Part’ Workshops were introduced by landscape architect Lawrence Halprin in the 1960s. These Workshops lasted only for two to three days wherein design was not yet at stake as the Workshops served to understand the characteristics of the site, create consensus on its future development, and prepare a much longer and more complex planning process.

^6. The national charrette institute organizes Workshops of four to seven days on-site, with a minimum of three feedback loops to involve the public. The Workshop's goal is to create a feasible plan and to deploy design to achieve a shared vision. This format is comparable to the ‘Enquiry by Design’ process in Britain by the Prince's Foundation.

^7. Since 2002, RUA Workshops have been organized at the Research Group Urbanity & Architecture at the University of Leuven. These Workshops last for maximum eight days, consist of three feedback loops at the start, middle and end of the Workshop, and aim at developing projects for Courtrai in southwest Flanders, Belgium.

^8. In Flanders, the place where urban design operates has continuously migrated over the last 40 years. The rise of the urban project in the late 1980s was closely linked to a debate on the renewal of the urban core and the reconstruction of the European city (Dehaene 2012). Industrial infrastructure from the nineteenth century such as slaughterhouses, barracks, railway yards and factories became redundant in the post-industrial age, making the renewal needed of the urban cores and nineteenth century belts of European cities plagued by brownfields. In the early 1990s, the initial focus of urban design in Flanders on the city centre was quickly followed by discussions on the periphery, the dispersed city, and post-war urbanization of the twentieth century outside cities' urban cores.

Additional information

Funding

This article is partly based on the SPINDUS research. SPINDUS was funded by the Flemish Agency for Science & Technology, IWT-SBO (Project IWT 090080). SPINDUS ran from December 2009 until November 2013 and aimed to develop practical and pedagogical planning and urban design methods to assess, evaluate, and implement spatial quality. For more info on the research project, see www.spindus.org.