Cities today face tremendous challenges.

An Urbanizing Planet

Urban planning as a profession works to address the challenges cities face as they undergo rapid change. Working on multiple scales, planners seek to create communities that are economically viable, inclusive and sustainable.

Yet planners have had a conflicted history with the communities they’re purported to serve. Planners too often have taken on the role of experts; planning and urban design have been viewed as technical, elitist pursuits, with set rules that could be applied universally, regardless of local context or history.

Highways are a prime example of planning decisions that have negatively impacted the neighborhoods they most directly impact.
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The often disastrous results of projects that were given ‘expert’ sign-off have led to a general consensus that local knowledge is essential and invaluable in making successful planning decisions. Too, local knowledge is starkly different from technical expertise: it is situated and contextual; as social scientists Marian Barnes and Chris Skelcher say, local knowledge encompasses “meanings, values and beliefs as well as cognition.”

Public participation is vital to creating successful projects.
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The Need for Inclusive Planning

Given this understanding, planners have had to rework the decision-making process, to be more inclusive and democratic. Participatory planning aims to give people a say in the decisions that may affect them and to ensure that interventions are appropriate to the needs and preferences of those they are intended to benefit. Barnes and Skelcher note that a participatory process seeks to have citizens move from being ‘targets’ of policies to becoming deliberative partners in generating the knowledge necessary for decision-making. Too, planners shift from being technical experts to facilitators of a deliberative process.

Input cards from the opening of the new J. Max Bond Center on Design for the Just City at the The Bernard and Anne Spitzer School of Architecture.

The Digital City

Technological innovations allow for new and diverse forms of participation. Particularly exciting are applications that permit new ways of collecting data, gathering feedback, and democratizing decision-making. Improved information technology means that data can flow more freely than ever before. Instead of information only flowing “down” from decision-makers, data can move “horizontally”: to interested neighborhood organizations, entrepreneurs, and citizens. Location-based technology – where citizens can provide real-time feedback – is an emerging field with great potential for participatory planning.

The increasing prevalence of smart phones has exciting
implications for participatory decision-making.
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Although technology allows decision-makers to have access to more information than ever before, the digital divide is still an on-going problem… Planners should be aware of who has access to technology.

Dialogue: Innovation and Outreach

With these themes in mind, join GreenspaceNYC and Magical Urbanism author Mike Ernst for an discussion on participatory urban planning in New York City on Wednesday, May 9, 2012. Click here to RSVP and for further details.

We have an excellent panel made up of planners, designers and activists who are doing innovative work in participatory planning. Join us for a discussion both of emerging trends in community planning, especially around digital technologies, and how they can be effectively integrated with traditional organizing and outreach efforts.

Panelists:

• Paula Z. Segal and Eric Brelsford of 596 Acres, a public education project actively mapping city-owned, vacant land in Brooklyn;
• Frank Hebbert, who leads the Civic Works team at OpenPlans, which explores how technology, planning, citizens, and government come together;
• Kaja Kühl, an urban designer, planner and founder of youarethecity, a research, design and planning practice interested in creating dialogue about the urban environment; and
• Brendan Crain, Communications Manager for the Project for Public Spaces, where he works to promote Placemaking strategies that directly engage citizens in the shaping of their public spaces.

Please join us!

For further reading, check out this paper (0.7 MB PDF) by Marian Barnes and Chris Skelcher.

Éclats de verre, a series of colored panels arranged in a playful maze with an interactive light display, is an installation piece done by Atomic3 in Montreal.

Winner of the Créer l’hiver competition, Éclats de verre is one of three works that make up Luminothérapie 2012. The goal of this event produced by the Partenariat du Quartier des Spectacles in Montreal is to beat the winter blues, using interactive light-based installations.

Love how the light hits the snow!

Images from Atomic3′s Flickr page. Via Design Boom.

Jo Peel created “Things Change,” a graffiti installation and stop-motion animation piece on the wall outside of the Village Underground arts space in Shoreditch, London.

Says the artist:

Things Change is an optimistic look at the idea of human impermanence. The buildings and debris created by the human exploitation of our natural environment decay and give way to the force of nature once again.

Link via designboom

Please consider supporting Solo Kota Kita’s Kickstarter campaign here!

Solo Kota Kita is a small non-profit based in Surakarta, Indonesia, and New York City. They work as a team on urban planning, design, and development projects that are both self-initiated and in support of NGO and international agency programs.

Solo Kota Kita has done great work around participatory planning, mapping and neighborhood advocacy in Surakarta. Their next project they’re developing is Firm Foundation, a field guide that explains the steps for running participatory workshops and urban design charrettes with local stakeholders – especially in areas where participation in urban design is new.

As they state on their Kickstarter campaign page:

In many places around the world, design tools must be made on-the-go and with found materials. Many times, urban residents generate highly creative and innovative solutions in workshops that take place with the simplest tools.

The field guide will explain how to organize participatory design workshops and offer strategies for creating design tools with the simplest of materials and resources. The team hopes the book will be helpful as a new resource as “participatory design spreads around the world.”

These skills are important for social designers across the globe—from cities in the developing world to boroughs in New York City.

Check out this video with more about the project:

Please consider supporting Solo Kota Kita’s Kickstarter campaign here!

For more information, check out the Solo Kota Kita and Firm Foundation sites.

Vaults is a series of photographs taken by David Stephenson in cathedrals and churches across Europe. The combined series really achieves a stunning effect.

Says HUH:

By pointing the camera straight up and aligning himself in the middle of the ceiling, Stephenson turned the elaborate three-dimensional vaults into complex, often symmetrical, 2D patterns.

Link via But Does it Float

Nicholas Kennedy Sitton is a San Francisco-based photographer who created this series titled “Twisted.”

Says the artist:

These photos are a result of how intriguing the concept of distortion translates to architecture. It creates a sense of falling into itself, like capturing a moment of demolition.

I can destroy titanous steel structures with the click of a mouse and create new twisted versions of reality. I was also inspired by San Francisco. I had just moved here and being a new city was disorienting and exciting and I wanted to capture how my whole world had changed.

As for the twisted portraiture, I wanted to experiment with how twisting the face could mess with the brain’s facial recognition.

The idea that you still see the face and at the same time, everything is off. I chose photos in which the subject was making eye contact with the camera to create a sense of connection with the viewer because how much the twisting creates a distance between the viewer and the subject.

Simple idea, but very well executed.

Link to the artist’s site; image sources here; via Colossal.

Above, the very talented Brandon Jones of Make Design Not War,
whose design is used on this website!

Designer Joseph King produced a simple set of vinyl stickers to comment on how every poster design out there looks so much better when someone is holding it. What else looks better that way? The series of pictures that people have sent in — titled Poster Cred — is quite funny.

Says the artist:

[Poster Cred is a] commentary on a popular style of poster presentation in contemporary design, and the implicit credibility it seems to suggest.

Sticker installations explore new subjects as worthy to be presented.

Link

CollabCubed has this post on “The Slinky Springs Bridge” in Oberhausen, Germany. The bridge was designed by artist Tobias Rehberger and Schlaich Bergermann and Partner, and was inspired by — you guessed it — the iconic Slinky toy.

Says the structural engineers:

Following the design of the artist Tobias Rehberger, a colorful ribbon wrapped in a light, swinging spiral connects the two existing parks. The lightness of this design is due to the minimalist structural design of the stress ribbon bridge. Two steel ribbons made of high strength steel connect to the inclined supports across the canal.

The resulting tension force is transferred into strong abutments through the outer vertical tension rods. The walkway consists of pre-cast concrete plates, bolted to the stress ribbon, to which the railing and spiral are attached. The springy synthetic pavement of the walkway as well as the colorful rhythmization of the concrete and coating amplifies the dynamic experience of the bridge.

Link via CollabCubed