Experimental Sites of Struggle: Planetary Design from below

Keywords: urban living labs, planetary design, decolonizing, ecological reparation
Abstract Type: Virtual Paper Abstract

Abstract

In the context of contemporary crises of human-environment relations, sites for urban experiments, such as living labs, city commoning, or public-civic partnerships are being (re)discovered in urban design and architecture as capable of affecting transformative change. Characterized by participatory approaches, these sites aim to bring together diverse publics in efforts to co-create innovative solutions in ‘real-life’ settings (cf. Evans et al. 2020). The success of such experimental sites relates to their promise to provide an ideal format for integrating analytical urban research with solution-orientated design (Baxter, 2023). However, while our disciplines have readily adopted the “experimental” or “living lab” approach, there has been little critical reflection on how the design of such sites has transformed our understanding of urban ecologies. For this paper, we aim at extending a critical dialogue across our disciplines (urban geography and design), by asking how an idea of spaces and places that is rooted in the historical conditions of i.e. Latin America as laboratory of (European) modernity can be decentered in the context of contemporary urban environmental governance. In a second step, we will draw from our collaborations with “sites of struggle” across Berlin and São Paulo that experiment with novel ways of designing socio-ecological transitions, including the generation of knowledges and devices for ecological reparation and planetary healing (cf. Escobar 2022). Rooted in these experiences, we speculate on how our disciplines can learn from bottom-up urban experiments and indigenous epistemologies for transformative ways of inter- and transdisciplinary collaboration and urban political intervention.