Burak Pak

Geoweb 2.0 for Participatory Urban Design: Affordances and Critical Success Factors

In this paper, we discuss the affordances of open-source Geoweb 2.0 platforms to support the participatory design of urban projects in real-world practices. We first introduce the two open-source platforms used in our study for testing purposes. Then, based on evidence from five different field studies we identify five affordances of these platforms: Conversations on alternative urban projects, citizen consultation, design empowerment, design studio learning and design research. We elaborate on these in detail and identify a key set of success factors for the facilitation of better practices in the future.

Redesigning the Urban Design Studio: Two Learning Experiments.

The main aim of this paper is to discuss how the combination of Web 2.0, social media and geographic technologies can provide opportunities for learning and new forms of participation in an urban design studio. This discussion is mainly based on our recent findings from two experimental urban design studio setups as well as former research and literature studies. In brief, the web platform enabled us to extend the learning that took place in the design studio beyond the studio hours, to represent the design information in novel ways and allocate multiple communication forms. We found that the student activity in the introduced web platform was related to their progress up to a certain extent. Moreover, the students perceived the platform as a convenient medium and addressed it as a valuable resource for learning. This study should be conceived as a continuation of a series of our Design Studio 2.0 experiments which involve the exploitation of opportunities provided by novel socio-geographic information and communication technologies for the improvement of the design learning processes.

FixMyStreet Brussels: Socio-Demographic Inequality in Crowdsourced Civic Participation

ABSTRACT FixMyStreet (FMS) is a web-based civic participation platform that allows inhabitants to report environmental defects like potholes and damaged pavements to the government. In this paper, we examine the use of FMS in Brussels, the capital city of Belgium. Analyzing a total of 30,041 reports since its inception in 2013, we demonstrate how civic participation on FMS varies between the ethnically diverse districts in Brussels. We compare FMS use to a range of sociodemographic indicators derived from official city statistics as well as geotagged social media data from Twitter. Our statistical analysis revealed several significant differences between the districts that suggested that crowdsourced civic participation platforms tend to marginalize low-income and ethnically diverse communities. In this respect, our findings provide timely evidence to inform the design of more inclusive crowdsourced, civic participation platforms in the future.

Virtuality and Fostering Critical Design Thinking: An Exploration of the Possibilities Through Critical Theory, Design Practices and Networked Learning

This chapter explores challenges and opportunities pertaining to networked learning in architecture and urban design studio education. Today, ‘Starchitects’ have taken centre stage on the global design platform, playing the role of individual geniuses. The spotlight of attention has been on the design and the designer, but the society in which these projects are realised is often left in the dark. The chapter recognises that such imbalance is also present in the design studio pedagogy as it is being employed in most schools of architecture. Through technological evolutions and the developments of online and virtual realms, however, networked learning opens new opportunities to implement critical pedagogy and reinvigorate the social tasks of the architect during the educational trajectory. In this contribution we connect the social turn in architecture practice and education with the innovative possibilities that emerge from the integration of networked learning in design education. We demonstrate the current challenges for architectural education and argue that a critical design attitude will be imperative to tackle the future challenges in architecture. Finally, we claim that critical thinking can be stimulated using networked learning pedagogy that connects back to Schon’s conceptualisations and theorised possibilities of studio-based learning.