Participatory prototyping for learning: an exploration of expansive learning in a long-term urban participatory design process

ABSTRACT

Today, participatory design (PD) has an increasing focus on sustainable urban futures. Given the complexity of designing with and for urban sustainability, PD in this context often takes place in long-term processes which involve evolving networks of actors operating from different perspectives on this issue. This paper highlights the need for collective learning in these processes and for clarifying how PD methods support it. Hence, we explore the value of learning theories, and – more particularly – the established learning theory of expansive learning to understand how these PD practices engage with learning. We focus on the value of more carefully addressing learning theories in one particular area of PD approaches, namely participatory prototyping. This is done by reflecting on a participatory prototyping trajectory in existing residential suburbs from which conclusions are drawn on participatory prototyping and on PD in a broader sense for supporting collective learning.

KEYWORDS:

• Participatory design
• participatory prototyping
• collective learning
• sustainability
• infrastructuring

Acknowledgement

We would like to thank all the partners and participants of the project ‘CAPA.CITY: Building capacity to transform existing residential subdivisions into smart and robust urban ecosystems’. A special thanks to Thomas Lommée for its collaboration and support in developing the prototyping tools via OpenStructures.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was financed within the ERA-NET Cofund Smart Urban Futures (ENSUF) Call, JPI Urban Europe under grant agreement [No 693443] and by the Special Research Fund (BOF) of Hasselt University [BOF18].