CO-DESIGNING PUBLICS

Co-Designing Publics brings together a mix of academics, activists, and practitioners to discuss and debate discourses from scholarly research, grassroots activism, and design ideas for future action. The “Co-Designing Publics” global research network, funded by a grant awarded by the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council, has a sustained focus on the public realm and its production through informal strategies in cities of the global south. As cities are increasingly confronted by multiple crises [e.g. Covid-19 pandemic, climate crisis] and conditions of precarity [e.g. urban inequality, inadequate public infrastructure], such circumstances call for more interactive, collaborative, and creative approaches for [re]designing their public realm. Based on these premises, the book integrates discussions of three critical and interrelated phenomena: creative ways of mobilising communities around common concerns and desires [i.e. co-designing publics], deployment of grassroots tactics and social innovations [i.e. informal strategies], and production of spatial networks of public spaces intertwined with their ongoing governance [i.e. public realm]. Contextually grounding these discussions in cities of the global south enables us to learn how innovative co-design practices operate around issues such as homelessness and affordable housing, sustainable and equitable energy systems, waste management, cooperative models of property ownership, the promotion and protection of human rights, and the production of peace in contexts of violence. The book thereby draws from and presents public conversations between academic research and case studies of activism [from Bogota, Bengaluru, Cape Town, Jakarta, Phnom Penh, and Sao Paulo].