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No 8 (2019): NORDES 2019: WHO CARES?, ISSN 1604-9705. Espoo, Finland. www.nordes.org 1
(UN)CURATING THE CITY:
PARTICIPATORY DESIGN AND URBAN
HERITAGE
MELA ZULJEVIC
FACULTY OF ARCHITECTURE & ART, HASSELT
UNIVERSITY, BELGIUM
MELA.ZULJEVIC@UHASSELT.BE
LIESBETH HUYBRECHTS
FACULTY OF ARCHITECTURE & ART, HASSELT
UNIVERSITY, BELGIUM
LIESBETH.HUYBRECHTS@UHASSELT.BE
ABSTRACT
This article explores the relations between
participatory design (PD) and critical heritage
studies (CHS) in the context of urban planning and
development. In searching for a PD approach
which can critically address the role of heritage in
urban development, it problematizes the focus on
economic viability in urban renewal practices and
the lack of care for socio-political values and
challenges. The article searches for a PD
framework that could support alternative regimes
of care, via the notion of design space as the terrain
for selection, articulation and curation of values.
This framework will be outlined by reflecting on a
case study related to a historic industrial area in
Leuven, Belgium.
INTRODUCTION
This article explores how participatory design (PD) as a
field can support the articulation of alternative regimes
of care at the intersection of heritage and urban
planning. PD has a tradition in rethinking care, starting
with the workplace democracy movement in the 1970s
Scandinavia. Designers collaborated with unions and
workers in the struggle against deskilling and
managerial goals by articulating processes of care for
their rights to participate in the design of the workplace
and working process. Since then, PD is active in many
different contexts, including urban planning (Dalsgaard,
2012) and heritage institutions (Smith & Iversen, 2014;
Engberg et al. 2017). While there is already experience
in how PD can provide a framework for participation in
heritage-making, we want to explore this practice
further to address heritage debates in urban space
contexts, primarily by learning from the field of critical
heritage studies (CHS).
Critical heritage studies is an academic field “which
grew out of early critiques of the use of the past in
nation-building”, and developed towards dealing with
“the politics of representation and the idea of heritage as
a series of discursive practices” (Harrison, 2013). To
CHS, politics of heritage is the crucial aspect of
understanding the governmental capacities of heritage
and its role as a regime of care in normalizing and
historicizing different inequalities (Harrison, 2015).
While deeply critical of this, the field aims to consider a
range of alternative forms of caring for the future
(Harrison, 2015) and argues for “a dialogical model of
heritage and a more democratic approach to heritage
decision-making processes” (Harrison, 2015), an
endeavour which is in line with the PD mindset.
In the context of urban planning, heritage is often
rendered through the lens of preservation and built
authenticity, favouring the material value (Orbasli,
2000; Nasser, 2014), while decision-making on what
should be preserved in a city generally leans towards
finding new economic viability for the site (Ashworth et
al, 2007; Nasser, 2014). The discussion on the social
values of heritage often comes up too late and in
reaction to a threat (such as urban renewal), rather than
addressing them in a systematic way (Hayden, 1995;
Jones, 2017). The goal of this article is to investigate
how this established regime of care could be challenged
within PD by countering the market-focused curation of
heritage values in urban planning. It searches for a PD
framework which could support the articulation of
alternative regimes of care, by looking into curation of
design space as an act of ethical and political
positioning, while expanding on the understanding of
heritage as a future-making process (Harrison, 2015).
2
DESIGN SPACE AND HERITAGE FUTURES
Our exploration of this PD framework starts from the
concept of ‘design space’, which is here understood as
the imaginary space where different actors come into a
discussion on urban planning. In PD theory, design
space is described as a complex conceptual space
containing “all the possible design solutions that would
work; that prospective users and other stakeholders
would find meaningful” (Westerlund, 2009).
Additionally, it is discussed as an imagined field of
work explored through the design process and created
through interactions with multiple and diverse
constituents - “things, artifacts, or 'representations'” (A.
Telier, 2011) which represent different actors in the
process. In this article, we contribute to the discussion
on design space by understanding it as a conceptual
terrain which has a history. It is not only the proposals
for the future that are represented here but also the
constituents of the past which condition the selection of
values preserved by the future design. Since the socio-
political values of heritage are our main interest, we find
it crucial to understand how values are curated in the
design space and how different regimes of care shape it.
To do this, we explore if design space in heritage
contexts can be understood as produced by design and
heritage as processes of future-making. Here heritage
presents a “creative engagement with the past” which
“is fundamentally concerned with assembling and
designing the future” that could, through dialogue and
encounter of multiple actors, “be oriented toward
composing (…) ‘common futures’” (Harrison, 2015).
Heritage, traditionally past-oriented, can be assisted by
design in this process, while design, as a future-oriented
activity, can broaden its focus by engaging with the
past. However, the future-making orientation in both
heritage and design should also be considered in a
critical way, by addressing its “defuturing” (Fry, 2009)
aspects. As Fry argues, design needs to redirect itself
from taking away the future as an active contributor to
unsustainability processes. Can we also think about the
defuturing aspects of how values in design space are
curated? For example, urban revitalization entails a
curation of urban life where decisions are made on what
is valuable and what can be eradicated. Sustaining
certain values and roles of heritage, such as economic
ones, can lead to exclusionary narratives which
marginalize and defuture socio-political values. Thus,
there is a need for a critical reflection on the affirmative
notion of future-making that closely examines how
values are cared for, or defutured, in participatory
engagements with the design space.
Following the political tradition of PD in caring for the
marginalized groups, the design space could become an
interface where to challenge existing and possibly
defuturing regimes of care. The staging of design space
can support different participants to “interrupt a
particular order and redistribute the sensible”
(Keshavarz & Mazé, 2013). Thus, by setting up the
design space which can help articulate marginalized
narratives in a confrontation with dominant voices in
urban renewal practices, we can attempt to stage an
alternative regime of care as an interruption in how
future is imagined. This builds on Keshavarz and
Mazé’s understanding of dissensus as a “break within
one world, seen and realized as 'factual present' in
which another that might be invisible, excluded or not
present could somehow be represented” (Keshavarz &
Mazé, 2013).
THE VAARTKOM TRANSITION
To explore this approach of design space curation as an
act of presencing alternative regimes of care, in 2017,
we collaborated on a project interested in the urban
transition of the Vaartkom historic industrial area in the
city of Leuven. It was a research residency of our living
lab, De Andere Markt, at the LUCA School of Arts
exhibition titled ‘(Let yourself) fall’ within which we
decided to focus on the Vaartkom neighbourhood,
where Keizersberg abbey - the exhibition venue - was
located. Vaartkom is a space of contrast and diversity,
but in particular, of an extensive urban revitalization.
The former industrial artery, the Vaart canal, is being
redefined as a marina, while new residential buildings
and creative industry offices start replacing previously
squatted industrial buildings. This once important
industrial area (the first Stella Artois brewery was
started here centuries ago), with an exciting recent
history of subcultures reclaiming the abandoned
industrial buildings, is being reinvented as ‘Vaartopia’ -
a hub of affordable space for the creative sector in the
region. Heritage-making is an important aspect of
spatial development and place branding, as the new
space for creativity is described as a continuation of the
innovative and entrepreneurial spirit of old industries.
We envisioned the residency as an intensive dive into
the context by relocating our living lab office (normally
based in the city of Genk) to the Keizersberg abbey. We
started with a workshop, where we invited spatial
planners and researchers interested in the site and its
issues, along with Leuven city officials who worked on
Vaartkom spatial development. The aim of the
workshop was to learn about the ongoing development
strategies and frame the planning problems and future
scenarios together with the stakeholders. We used a
mapping methodology with an atlas (figure 1) of three
categories of elements: (1) spaces, (2) actors and (3)
their relations. The map was created in three views
(past, present and the future - figure 2) to visualize how
the relations in space evolved from the past to the
present and how their future was designed in the official
and expert narratives. The next step was to challenge
this problem framing and the map of the design space
by engaging with different individuals and groups living
or working in this area. In doing so, we used different
methodologies. We interviewed the local community
actors and did site visits to continue mapping the spaces
and actors in the area. All participants were invited to
No 8 (2019): NORDES 2019: WHO CARES?, ISSN 1604-9705. Espoo, Finland. www.nordes.org 3
discuss the problems in Vaartkom and interact with the
workshop map, as well as to give statements on the
values that they would like to take forward. Finally, we
set up the abbey office as an interactive design space
installation where the broad exhibition audience could
take part.
Figure 1: Three categories of the atlas elements
Figure 2: Workshop mapping showing the past, the present
and the future view
The office was designed as an interface where to
continue collecting, presenting and discussing findings,
by creating an imaginary representation of the
Vaartkom with an abstract map of the site drawn on the
floor (figure 3). The map visualized not only spaces but
also the different actors and their statements on values
they attribute to the site. Furthermore, actors and spaces
from the past were added by collecting historical
information through desk research and conversations
with participants. The mapping installation became a
staged design space where we invited visitors to talk
about the neighbourhood transition and to position
themselves in relation to the values represented in the
map. The visitors gave statements by using different
tools: after making their own billboard with a value
written on it, their story and a photo of them holding the
billboard was printed on a postcard, and they were
invited to position it somewhere in the mapping space
(figure 4). Thus, the postcards were placed on different
poles across the floor map, clustering the participants in
relation to spaces and values they speak of.
Figure 3: The abbey office with the abstract map of the
Vaartkom
Figure 4: One of the visitors with ‘Iedereen’ (Everybody)
written on his billboard – the value he talks about is the
accessibility of space to everyone.
To reflect on the findings of the research residency, we
organized a follow-up workshop with the stakeholders’
group and compiled the reflections into a foldable
magazine that could be assembled into a large map of
Vaartkom (figure 5). The map differentiated the layers
of past, present and the future - as well as actors, spaces
and their relations. Actors’ statements were placed on
one side, while the interpretation of their positions and
relations in space was presented on the other side to
visualize the possible scenarios challenging the current
transition trajectory. In a follow-up exhibition and
online, the map was shared with all of the participants
and offered as a tool for the community to build upon in
their future negotiations with the city officials.
4
Figure 5: The final map with spaces, actors, relations and
possible scenarios
(UN)CURATING THE CITY IN DESIGN
SPACE
By using different methods and tools described above,
the staging of design space entailed a process of
continuous collecting, visualizing and communicating
the discussion on urban values. How we organised the
design space tried to reflect a variety of emerging issues
that were symptomatic of the tension between caring for
economic vs. socio-political values of urban heritage.
Three main aspects appeared to us as relevant in
outlining a PD approach that could tackle these issues:
(1) the importance of expanding the timeline of the
design space to include actors, spaces and relations from
the past, (2) the aspect of positioning and navigating
ourselves in relation to values in design space and (3)
the importance of acknowledging the flip side of future-
making - the curation of values which can defuture less
powerful positions.
One of the first goals in setting up the design space was
to engage with the longer timeline by introducing a
discussion on the past of the neighbourhood, in order to
understand how it conditions the proposals for future.
Adding past actors, spaces and their related values to the
map triggered the visitors’ motivation and provoked
value associations which guided them in positioning
themselves within the map installation. The older
generations picked up postcards representing old
industries, such as the bottle factory, to talk about past
values less prominent in the brewing history focused
official narratives. On the other hand, the younger
generations recognized images of artists and spaces
from the recent history (such as an electronic music club
shut down for noise complaints) - expressing their regret
that the subcultures which maintained the spaces in
Vaartkom have been removed as it’s developed into a
‘clean’ and upmarket neighbourhood. While the distant
industrial past was used in the ongoing urban renewal
process to establish continuity with values promoted in
the place-branding narratives, the recent history of a
messy space for youngsters to enjoy music and create -
along with actors and spaces building upon its values -
was being removed in the process.
Secondly, the focus on the act of navigating and
positioning oneself in relation to the floor map
encouraged the participants to articulate more carefully
where they stand in the discussion on values. The map
installation grew into a complex representation
challenging official development visions, as well as our
initial presumptions - for example, a number of
participants pointed out to a lack of interest in the issues
of a neighbouring village and its own set of values
which were under threat due to the transition.
Furthermore, while the official planning agendas (such
as Vaartopia) offered a vision of ‘hip’ neighbourhood
with affordable space for creatives, several participants
in the mapping revealed the limited conception of what
was valued as ‘creative’ in this process, having in mind
that most of the informal spaces started by artists in the
area were vacated or becoming too expensive to rent. As
PD researchers, while aligning politically and ethically
with the interest of groups in marginalized positions
(artists, informal collectives and residents of the
neighbouring village)– we did not try to find a
consensus between the different sides. Rather the output
was presented as a dissensual (Keshavarz & Mazé,
2013) design space mapping, making visible the
different confrontations in the curation of values in
urban space, while the magazine articulated possible
alternative scenarios of care which can appreciate the
values of accessible, informal and underdeveloped
space that can be appropriated by different groups.
Finally, in struggling with the tension between future-
making and defuturing, we attempted to bring to the
surface different narratives of the past that were left out
of the official development vision. While the brewing
history was selected as a valuable asset in the effort to
upscale the neighbourhood development, spaces and
values related to other historical narratives were being
defutured, as well as the efforts to build upon them. For
example, when positioning themselves on the map,
younger participants made strong statements
problematizing the branding of Vaartkom as the synergy
of old beer industry spirit and new, clean, creative
economy. As the mapping visualized how alternative
creative spaces were removed through development, the
youngsters were encouraged to articulate clearly in their
statements why they don’t feel welcome in the future of
Vaartkom, or the writing of its history. By mapping the
design space for the site, we engaged ourselves as
design researchers in taking care of these less articulated
and uncurated positions to discover the ways in which
they were historically conditioned. We learned that a
more careful crafting of the design space as a way to
create alternative - and more just - regimes of care in
participatory ways, can make our and other actors’
positions stronger and more visible in resisting the use
of the past as a marketing resource and supporting the
struggle for more common futures.
No 8 (2019): NORDES 2019: WHO CARES?, ISSN 1604-9705. Espoo, Finland. www.nordes.org 5
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