Towards a framework for urban landscape co-design: Linking the participation ladder and the design cycle

• Published in: CoDesign 2023-07, Vol.19 (3), p.233-252
• Main Authors: Gaete Cruz, Macarena, Ersoy, Aksel, Czischke, Darinka, van Bueren, Ellen
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Chile; Co-design; Collaboration; collaborative design; Cooperation; Design analysis; design process; Landscape design; Project feasibility; public space; Urban environments; urban landscape
• ISSN: 1571-0882; 1745-3755
• DOI: 10.1080/15710882.2022.2123928

With the increasing social and ecological pressures on urban settlements, re-thinking how we produce them becomes a growing concern. Due to the diversity of actors across sectors and backgrounds involved in such design processes, collaboration is of utmost importance. Co-design can thus play a crucial role in integrating aims and knowledge as an evolving institutional process toward feasible, suitable and legitimate projects. While many studies on co-design focus on one-time activities, little attention is paid to conceptualising how such processes occur, involving several actors in dynamic participatory ways. We propose a Co-Design Framework and suggest that collaboration is achieved at many levels within different design steps in the process. Analysing three Chilean public space co-design processes through the lens of our framework, we highlight the intrinsic diversity of such an approach. This study posits that three co-design arenas interact (strategic, transdisciplinary, and socio-cultural) according to their main aims to enable, inform, and legitimise the projects accordingly. Our framework contributes to conceptualising and analyzing co-design and may also be useful to plan and develop such processes in academia and practice.