Written by:
Sophia de Sousa
Our April Chat, Designing in Democracy, was co-hosted with Daisy Froud, specialist in participatory design and co-production. Together with those attending, we formed a group that had collectively worked in the public, private, third and education sectors, and ranged in experience from recent graduates to seasoned practitioners. We were keen to explore what it means to collaborate through design within the context of a democratic society and institutions, as well as how we might bring more democratic systems and processes into design and placemaking.
Key Themes
We kicked off the conversation noting an increasing rhetoric and enthusiasm for a more democratic production of our built environment over the past 20 years. Yet at the same time, we are seeing the resources to deliver these more democratic processes shrinking. We explored some interesting questions around how we drive change within a system that is rooted in a particular tradition of democracy as well as the tensions between participatory approaches and a representative democracy like ours. With a shared desire to improve the systems that influence power dynamics and decision-making, we considered whether this was best done through gradual or radical change, as well as who is best positioned to drive that change. With this in mind, we explored the power of both individuals and collectives to shape more democratic processes in placemaking, as well as the importance of dialogue and relationships with and beyond the confines of project timescales.
Representative & Participatory Democracy
Very quickly in our conversation, we began considering the institutional power dynamics that shape decision-making, and the tensions between representative and participatory democracy. Many in our group, for example, had experienced such tensions between local authority officers and elected members. Despite both being institutionally at the service of their communities, and sharing responsibility for shaping our places, they sometimes seem at odds with each other on what constitutes democratic decision-making and how that is delivered in practice. Every local planning authority is different, and one of our group made the explicit point about this tension being present regardless of the political parties that elected members represent. This was fundamentally about the interplay, at both a local and national level, between elected officials and appointed officers or civil servants, and the operational power and responsibilities that these two spheres of influence hold.
At the same time, the very notion that one individual elected member can meaningfully represent the voices of everyone in their constituency might seem at odds with the principles underlying participatory practice and co-design. Community advisory groups and panels share this challenge, and do not necessarily reflect the diversity of the communities they are representing. We must also acknowledge that some people and groups within any locality are better positioned or equipped than others to leverage power, through their relationship with their elected member, their organising power or the resources available to them.
However, these tensions do not mean that the different systems of participatory and representative democracy can’t work together. We do need to acknowledge that we cannot include every person in every decision-making process. When thinking systemically, and on a project-by-project basis, we need to be both mindful and creative about how to bring together these two approaches to activating citizens’ voices and agency in practical terms. Participants shared both positive and less successful examples from practice, and identified the importance of setting clear briefs and accountable processes.
Gradual or Radical Change?
This took us back to a question posed at the beginning of our conversation about whether systemic change needs to be gradual or radical. Do we need to work with the current system or reject it? Our Chat participants reflected on some of their own experiences to explore this. One, who works within a local authority, spoke about the challenges of working within an established bureaucracy and hierarchy with accepted norms for how things are done. Even when there are members within the team who have ideas for how to improve systems and make them more participative and democratic, it’s not always easy to push those through the system. They felt that change is gradual and that it requires sustained ambition over time. It’s not enough to have a great idea and hope you can implement it through a single project. It’s about building relationships and influence and demonstrating benefit.
Another interesting consideration emerged about whether building co-design and co-creation into specific elements of large-scale development or regeneration, rather than the whole project, could be considered meaningfully sharing power. Views within our group varied on this, with some seeing that as tokenistic while others suggested it was better to do it in a meaningful way on an aspect of a scheme than in a tokenistic way across the whole scheme. This took us back to the question about whether we should be celebrating baby steps in progress towards power-sharing, or getting frustrated by the rate of change.
Investing in Relationships
We did agree that collaborative and inclusive processes rely on building relationships, trust and empathy. Daisy referenced Latour’s observations of baboons, and the high proportion of their time dedicated to maintaining relationships and order within their group, which far outweighs time spent on the practical tasks of food and shelter. We humans have instead come to spend less and less time on our relationships and dialogue, instead prioritising perceived productivity and efficiency. We strive for shorter and shorter meetings, and worry about falling into the trap of a “talking shop”. This creates little space for conversation, which we all felt was crucial to both relationships and shared decision-making. As one of our group put it, “Conversation is never a waste of time.”
One of the benefits of creating space for dialogue is the opportunity to develop shared language and to set principles for how people would like to work together. Members of our group stressed that this was essential at the beginning of projects and throughout and beyond project timelines. This can help us work together not only to shape processes and the built outcomes, but also to reflect on and assess them. This in turn can help us do things better, and more collaboratively, in the future.
We also talked about the value of tapping into existing local networks and expertise, making better use of the connectivity they already offer and the potential for them to create and unlock locally inclusive processes. Too often, engagement is delivered, and the narrative about it is controlled by marketing and communications teams.
Wrapping Up
Designing in Democracy had a strong focus on systems and institutions, as well as both the motivations and drivers for change. It was interesting to pause and reflect on the complexity of the intersection between placemaking and both representative and participatory democracy. We felt encouraged that this is an area of discussion and debate in the national landscape. However, we also felt nervous about how the language associated with democratic design processes is being used and potentially diminished by terms such as co-design and co-creation becoming sectoral buzzwords. We agreed that there is still a lot to do and improve, and that it will require the investment of time, collaborative action and creativity.
Further Reading from Co-host Daisy Froud
Practical guidance
- Beyond Sticky Notes – Excellent plain-speaking guidance on co-design and co-production including sensible parameters for what is and isn’t co-design.
- Community-led Regeneration: A toolkit for residents and planners by Pablo Sendra and Daniel Fitzpatrick – Exactly what the title says.
- Democracy Next – “a research & action institute focused on broadening who has power and improving collective decision making with sortition, deliberation, and rotation”. Good guide on how to run a Citizen’ Assembly for example.
Inspirational thinkers on democratic spatial practice
- Jean Hillier – in particular her ‘organisational landscape of participatory processes in planning’ chart in the 2002 essay ‘Direct Action and Agonism in Democratic Planning Practice’ in Planning Futures: New Directions for Planning Theory, eds. P. Allmendinger and M.Tewdwr Jones, London: Routledge, pp 110-135. Planning theorist who looks at how planning happens in complex real-world situations and who really helped me think about what a ‘decision’ actually is and the different ways in which they get taken.
- Doreen Massey – For her huge body of work exploring out her the spatial and the political are intertwined, and how democracy and democratic space are always something in production – a collective enterprise – and not a resolved formula that can simply be applied, combined with a lifelong commitment to practical activism and to nurturing and enabling the brains of others to challenge. For Space (2005) as a particular favourite on this specific theme.
- Sylvia Wynter – Polymath philosopher whose inter-disciplinary lifelong project interrogates what it actually is to be human, as a practice, and the implications of that for how human beings structure, inhabit and re-produce the world. Argues that our current orders, political and symbolic, are shaped by a Western European concept of Man that traps all of us within certain narratives and racialised power structures. And that it is through and with those historically excluded by those narratives and structures that alternative ways of organising society are most like to be glimpsed and recuperated. See for example, her seminal text, Unsettling the Coloniality of Being / Power / Truth / Freedom.
Inspiring London projects/organisations looking at collective structures from first principles
- Coffee Afrik – East London “lived experience led community organisation”pioneering collaborative projects with women and young people from Black and Global Majority communities that simultaneously address everyday practical community needs and reimagine how services, organisations and, ultimately, society and power are organised.
- House of Annetta – “A space for learning about the ways in which ownership of land shapes our lives and the world around us”. Itself an emergent and co-produced space, both physically – in an old house in Spitalfields – and conceptually, the organisation hosts and supports projects that are working for spatial justice, and enables development of critical systems thinking about power and space through an ongoing programme Systems RIP.