Designing With or Against Institutions? Dilemmas of Participatory Design in Contested Cities

ABSTRACT

This article explores growing concerns behind the potential instrumentalization of participatory design within democratic institutions and city-making projects. Drawing on ethnographic data collected during a participatory urban redevelopment in Sydney, it analyzes the wider political, economic, and cultural dynamics shaping participatory design (PD) in contested urban spaces. As a result, the article reflects on the institutional frameworks that challenged the democratic claims of PD, analyzing three interdependent levels of institutional constraints: ideology, governance, and narratives. In doing so, the article interrogates the role of expert-led urban governance, of neoliberal ideologies, and the power/knowledge relations in the building of a consensus narrative. Finally, the article concludes by highlighting the contingency of the so-called constraints, exploring an alternative conceptualization of institutions as social relations. Following this approach, designers may challenge constraints and simultaneously work with, against, and beyond institutions.

KEYWORDS:

• city-making
• participatory design
• institutional constraints
• design in the public realm
• urban redevelopment
• citizen participation

Acknowledgments

This article was developed at the Emerging Scholar Workshop, an initiative of Design and Culture.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 I understand neoliberalism both as a rationality of government and as the emergence of specific political economic shifts during 1970. As a rationality of government, neoliberalism normally draws on diffuse power technologies such as audit, entrepreneurialism, management, outsourcing, and privatizations. As a dominant political and economic ideology, it is typically associated with the growing integration of global economy, deregulation measures, austerity, financialization, the weakening of unions, etc.

2 I undertook fourteen months of fieldwork in Waterloo as part of PhD research in Anthropology from December 2018 until January 2020. The data consists of interviews with residents and local community officers, notes from meetings, and official government documents gathered during fieldwork. Ethical clearance was provided by the Arts Subcommittee of Macquarie University with approval number 52019356612707.

3 I was not involved in the project as one of the designers; in fact, I had no direct connection with them. I collected the data as an ethnographer and as part of my doctoral research in anthropology.

4 Quotes are used to indicate categories used by institutions in reports and other official communications. The use of quotes expects to denaturalize such terms and demonstrate its use as part of the institution’s rhetoric.

5 Pseudonyms have been used throughout this ethnographic account.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Mayane Dore

Mayane Dore is a Brazilian interdisciplinary researcher working across the fields of social sciences and design. She has a BA in Design and a doctorate in anthropology. Her trajectory combines both academic and industry experience working as a design researcher in innovation consultancies. As a design anthropologist, Mayane is interested in the ways anthropology and design can work together as world-making processes toward just and sustainable futures. She is currently an associate researcher at Lancaster University, working in the Design Research Works project. [email protected] [email protected]