Co-creating the Future: Inclusion in and through Design

Abstract

Spatial design is becoming an increasingly social, participatory and inclusive practice. In the last decade, ordinary people all around the world have started to claim a shaping power over the processes of urbanization; over the ways in which our cities are made and remade (Harvey, 2013). There has been a resurgence in the number of do-it-yourself cooperatives initiated by non-designer citizens, activists, artists and designers. In parallel to these developments, a plethora of social technologies, tools and platforms have been developed to include a variety of stakeholders in the architectural design, urban design, planning and decision-making processes. Crowdsourcing and crowdfunding applications started to be widely used to tap into the wisdom of the crowd. Novel developments in parametric design and digital fabrication created possibilities for user participation in the making of customized and highly diversified products. With the combination of artificial intelligence and the Internet of Things, smart buildings, autonomous devices, robots and software started to transform into agents and active participants. The attempts to harness collective human and artificial intelligence opened up new avenues for combining practice, research and education. On the other hand, there is a growing concern over the possible negative impact of the digital devices, tools, platforms and agents integrated in the making of our buildings and cities, public, private and collective spaces. Examples of those are the potential exclusion of vulnerable and disadvantaged citizens, transfer of citizen power to the corporations, privatization of personal life and data, as well as spatial exclusion through increased technological control and surveillance.