Participatory Design in an Urban Context

The general theme is democratic urban innovation and participatory design processes. The project aims at examining and assessing the possibi-lities for increa-sing public participation and citizenship in the urban development. Furthermore, the project aims at strengthening the understanding of the conditions necessary for estab-lishing urban social networks, and different methodologies for doing so are examined. As part of this, a study is done on electronic democracy, i.e., different forms of information and communi-cation technologies (IT/ICT, Internet) that are actually and potentially applicable to innovative urban community development. The project combines theories of communication, dialogue and innovation with theories of systems, information, media and decision making. The project involves a comparative study of selected projects in the capital regions of Den-mark (Copenhagen) and Japan (Tokyo). Theoretical inspiration comes from, e.g., Richard Sennett, Raymond Williams, Iris Marion Young, Johan Asplund, Oskar Negt, Hannah Arendt, Carole Pateman, Donald Schön, and Peter Checkland.