Design Driven Cities of Design

Design Driven Cities of Design Mark Watson PhD proposal – Deakin University - August 2018 With much attention focussed upon the idea of Smart Cities, the integration and connection of data systems in service delivery of public amenity, there simultaneously are equal calls alongside technology for Green Cities and Climate Change Cities amongst a few.

At the heart of all this is Design, a definition of design by the World Design Organisation i can be ascribed as “Industrial Design is a strategic problem-solving process that drives innovation, builds business success, and leads to a better quality of life through innovative products, systems, services, and experiences.”

Established in 1944 the United Kingdom’s Design Council ii states “We aim to inspire new design thinking, encourage public debate and inform government policy. Through this activity we build on the successes of our past to improve everyday life today and help meet the challenges of tomorrow.”

The United Nations through its organisation UNESCO iii hold that “Urban areas are today’s principal breeding grounds for the development of new strategies, policies and initiatives aimed at making culture and creativity a driving force for sustainable development and urban regeneration through the stimulation of growth and innovation and the promotion of social cohesion, citizen well-being and inter-cultural dialogue……………….. In this context, cooperation and the sharing of experience and knowledge is crucial for making creativity a lever for urban development and conceiving of new solutions to tackle common challenges”.

To design is to plan, the Oxford dictionary’s version is “A plan or drawing produced to show the look and function or workings of a building, garment, or other object before it is made.”

So, in planning and developing our Cities, particularly since World War II, Design as a process is a relatively new field. Before with Arts based training and education of our Design professionals, the “lone genius” mode of practice has held sway, leading to sometimes impractical outcomes and ghost cities.

There is an emerging field of practice establishing in the form of Participatory Design, in an effort to engage citizens within the process of design to hopefully achieve better outcomes in the development of Cities. Design and Citizen Participation in the transformation or regeneration of Cities is a growing field of action research.

The aims and objectives of this research are to record practice of participatory design, and reflect upon processes and outcomes to develop better systems for development of Cities. The main focus will be upon Participatory design within UNESCO Cities of Design in Geelong, and Detroit and other select developing cities.

Participatory Design is an important field of practice in giving informed and evidence-based briefs to those charged with the serious task of designing our future cities. According to the United Nations iv nearly 70% of the World’s population will be living within urban areas. With this density of human habitation, care and thought needs to be applied in designing new or transitioning old environments to meet current and future needs. By investigating best practice in participatory design and experimenting through action research a better understanding of the practice of design and its outcomes will be of significant benefit to the City of Geelong.

As previously stated Design as a discipline has evolved post World War II from an Arts base and engaging with the Sciences through physiology, psychology and technology to meet human needs in the generation of new environments. There is much literature within the existing practice of urban design and architecture around this. The gaps in the literature appear when related to the establishment of a brief, the starting document to any urban development project.

Disciplines of Design and Science have lived in siloes from an inductive /deductive perspective, recent developments in research around grounded theory and a hybridised sampling of methodologies has led to and Abductive form of reasoning and thought which has as yet not been fully researched or actuated in practice. This research looks to engage with Grounded theory and Abductive logic to establish and test processes in an attempt to establish best practice in front end innovation and participatory design.

My previous research has lead me to a point of a great understanding of the human need of belonging and the vital cues associated with design practice in forming ideal environments for human use. The work formed around the theory of Biomic Design v as then ascribed but now widely known as Biophilic Design, with both their inceptions formed from work in the 1990’s by E.O. Wilsonvi.

This research will look at Urban Development processes from a Design-Led perspective, a field of research recently established by Roberto Verganti, at the front-end of innovation at the brief establishment stage to explore participatory design processes to achieve better practice in the establishment of urban environments.

The uniqueness of this research proposal is the linkage to Cities of Design, communities that have reached out to the United Nations organisation UNESCO identifying themselves with Design but have little knowledge or understanding of what it is and how it works. The research will engage with the City of Geelong in its exploration of what it is to be a City of Design and how best to develop its participatory processes to co-create and co-design its environments for its citizens.

By engagement with the City of Geelong on its journey of discovery in their newly established City of Design status the research will explore the processes and engage with experimentation in prototyping and testing models and artefacts as part of this development.

i World Design Organisation. (2018). Definition of Industrial Design. Retrieved from http://wdo.org/about/definition/ ii Design Council. (2018). Our History. Retrieved from https://www.designcouncil.org.uk/about-us/our-history iii UNESCO. (2018). Why Creativity? Why Cities? Retrieved from https://en.unesco.org/creative-cities/content/whycreativity-why-cities

iv United Nations. (2018) News: 68% of the world population projected to live in urban areas by 2050, says UN. Retrieved from https://www.un.org/development/desa/en/news/population/2018-revision-of-world-urbanizationprospects.html v Watson, M., & Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology. (1999). Belonging. vi Wilson, E. (1984). Biophilia. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.