From Urban Concept to Urban Engineering: The Contribution of Distributed Collaborative Design to the Management of Urban Projects

Abstract

The complexity of urban systems is an increasingly common topic in academic literature. Following in the footsteps of the industrial sector, which has understood this issue for many years, urban engineering must also tackle the challenges created by complex systems. Industrial engineering has provided a number of responses to this challenge, including design technologies, which are notably collaborative. It seems possible, at least in theory, to transfer a number of best practice methods and adapt these to the conceptualization of urban development projects (in the initial phase) in order to encourage their global management (in terms of strategic decision making) and their social acceptability. The challenge is then to formulate new methodological models, as well as to create an environment dedicated to their application.

Acknowledgements

The research described benefited from the support of ADUAN and CNFPT.

Notes

1. A bibliometric analysis by Dupont (2009, pp. 27–30) studying ‘complexity’ and ‘urban environment’ shows that among the main contributing disciplines — environmental science, engineering, earth and planetary sciences, social science and medicine—there has been an upsurge of publications since 2000. A search realized in Scopus returned a total of 604 articles published between 1980 and 2009 which were included in various disciplines. The year 2010, during which the analysis was performed, was excluded because it is not relevant. Therefore, care was taken to exclude specific keywords connected to the word ‘complex’ such as ‘AIDS-Related Complex’ or ‘Vitamin B complex’ or ‘Complex mixtures’, etc. This selection filter resulted in a final list of only 430 articles.

2. Example cited by Morin (2005a); for further explanation see: Rosenblueth, A., Wiener, N. and Bigelow, J., 1943. Behavior, purpose and teleology. Philosophy of science, 10, S. 18–24. Available from: http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/Books/Wiener-teleology.pdf [accessed 28 May 2009].

3. According to Buzan (2000), the Mind-Map notably helps to pull out the strong ideas and the hierarchies from linear information. That is an efficient tool, both to collect and represent the information of the third parts to evaluate the quality of their reflection.

4. The artefact is the industrial process or product which is created through the design process. It fuels the stage of development (output).

5. Here, the term ‘designer’ refers not only to design professionals but also to all other actors who are directly or indirectly impacted by the design process.

6. Here, one stakeholder can be a community of practices.

7. The level of interaction should be understood in terms of the complexity theory. The first level is less complex than the second, which is in turn less complex than the third.

8. Caelen quotes the following examples: brainstorming, functional analysis, value analysis, design of scenarios, cognitive walkthroughs, prototyping, end-user testing