Lessons in collaborative place making

Lecture in English, free of charge

Although there is growing support for the principle of citizens co-creating places together with local authorities and the private sector, there still seems to be a disconnect between the desire to engage the public, and the reality of the standard consultation procedures followed. It is time to change the way things are done and to bring communities genuinely to the heart of planning and placemaking. This lecture will present innovative methods of co-creation (i.e. collaborative place making), and how they can be applied at a local-level.  What new possibilities might open up if there was real co-creation in place-making (as to opposed to consultation, which is often only a step away from tokenism)? How should pre-event activities be fed into and help inform design-led events? How can the impact of outcomes from design-led events be tracked during the follow-on stages of collaborative community planning? What constitutes effective best practice for clarifying the level of substantive planning and design expertise a facilitator requires, if any, at any given community design event? This research presented by the lecturer provides an important scoping of the many components and steps involved. Its findings will aid understanding and ultimately enhance the output performance of community participatory design processes.

Dr. Husam AlWaer (B.Arch, MRTPI, Ph.D, BREEAM AP, AoU, Recognised Practitioner in Urban Design RPUD) is an urbansit with a background in architecture, urban planning and sustainability, who writes and speaks extensively on making better places. He is an award-winning author and curator of events, focussing on issues of place making and urban design practice and their social impacts. He is an educator and facilitator and moderates events nationally and internationally. He is a Senior Lecturer in Sustainable Urban Design and Evaluation in the School of Social Sciences (Architecture + Urban Planning), University of Dundee. Dr. AlWaer has a passionate interest in the future of sustainable places and towns, in particular the development of new thinking on processes and methods to unlock sustainable urbanism and the way these processes are facilitated and managed.

You are kindly invited to the lecture and the discussion that will follow.