title: Visual conversations on urban futures
title: understanding participatory processes and artefacts
titleType: Subtitle
Creators: name: Pollastri, Serena
Publisher: name: Lancaster University
Year: 2017
Subjects: Information Visualisation
Participatory Design
Speculative Design
Urba Futures
Future Cities
Visualisations

description: Visualisations of future cities contribute to our social imaginary. They
      can, and have been used as speculative objects for imagining new possible
      ways of living as communities (Dunn et al., 2014). However, future cities
      are usually represented through coherent scenarios that only tell one
      story (or one version of it), and rarely express the complexity of urban
      life.How can the diversity that characterises the city be represented in
      visions of the future that give voice to different, diverging ways of
      living and experiencing it? How do these visualisations contribute to
      inclusive design and research actions aimed at envisioning, prototyping,
      and reflecting on possible scenarios for liveable cities?My research
      focuses on ways of visualising possibilities for life in future cities
      that include and valorise plurality and agonism (DiSalvo, 2010), rather
      than present (as usually happens) only one story. For a lack of existing
      terminology, I am calling this approach “Visual Conversations on Urban
      Futures” (VCUF).Although there are no definitions or structured
      descriptions of VCUF, some prototypes can be found in design, art, and
      architecture. These examples show the great variety of methods and media
      that can be adopted in participatory processes of imagining futures
      cities.As a designer, I have chosen to adopt an action-research
      methodology (Kock, 2012; Rust, Mottram, &amp; Till, 2007) to conduct,
      document, and reflect on a series of design experiments (Eriksen &amp;
      Bang, 2013) that enhance my understanding of what it means to make
      pluralism explicit when producing visions of urban futures.The four main
      design experiments that I have undertaken are:-Living in the city. A first
      experiment in visualising future urban scenarios from a collaboratively
      written text.-Envisioning Urban Futures. Speculative Co-design practices:
      designing spaces for imaginary explorations and mapping them in an Atlas
      that makes visions readable and explorable-Sharing Cities. Conducting
      situated conversations on the relationship between social practices and
      urban futures: co-creating scenarios of sharing cities.-Birmingham Parks
      Summit. Visions designed to be unpacked, reworked, and developed into
      actions.The main contribution of my research is the proposal of a set of
      design principles, including a definition of the design space of VCUF. The
      design space outlined in the dissertation is a framework that can be used
      both as an analytical lens (to understand existing processes and artefacts
      of VCUF) as well as a design tool.Visual Conversations on Urban Futures
      could offer a significant contribution to the early stages of scenario
      building processes for possible futures. Manzini and Coad (2015) describe
      scenarios as “communicative artifacts produced to further the social
      conversation about what to do”. This way of imagining futures is
      ultimately about building alternatives to the dominant order by “making
      possible what appear(s) to be impossible” (Lefebvre, 1970, cited in
      Buckley &amp; Violeau, 2011).While in times of urgent change seeking
      clarity and agreement might seem a much preferable route, I argue that
      articulating divergence is a necessary step to explore truly radical
      solutions. Stepping back from a solution-oriented approach allows us to
      visualise and better understand underlying tensions, and to critically
      question assumptions about what futures are or should be desirable.