This book is about people.

It offers guidance to designers on consulting with local communities and enabling their meaningful participation in projects. It starts from the premise that any participation programme can and should be thought of as a research project, and as such should be carried out with a research mindset and methods. So it aims to get designers to think more like researchers and to implement some research basics to improve the quality of community participation.

Greater methodological rigour in participation programmes makes for more people-centred design processes, whatever the scale or nature of the project. It means that approaches to involving local people will be more impartial in their conception, and more thorough in gathering and interpreting information. It also means greater evidence-based design, and more transparent decision-making, authenticity, inclusion and knowledge-building. Most of all, it means the voices that need to be listened to can be heard more clearly. So communities, clients and designers all benefit.

What it covers

Chapter 2 takes a brief tour around some research essentials relating to community participation. This includes aspects such as having clearly defined research objectives from the outset, coupled with an effective strategy for gathering and synthesising information. So this chapter focuses on the three big questions to answer at the start of any research project:

1. What do we need to know?
2. Who can provide the information we need?
3. How shall we gather and analyse this information?

Chapters 3 to 8 offer practical guidance on some information-gathering methods. The chapter order follows the ‘Spectrum of Participation’ shown in Table 1.1, which characterises levels of public participation within civic decision-making from ‘no participation’ to ‘empowered’. This group of chapters starts with the ‘no participation’ options of observation and diary studies, via more consultative methods like meetings, exhibitions and surveys, to the other end of the spectrum and collaborative approaches like charrettes, workshops and co-design. Each chapter has roughly the same structure and looks at the types of information each method is suitable for generating, and then preparation, implementation and working with the gathered data. Quick guides to good practice in common aspects of these methods are dotted throughout, covering qualitative data analysis, running public events, communications and reporting on research findings.

Table 1.1 The Spectrum of Participation. The International Association of Public Participation devised the Spectrum (IAP2, 2014), which can be applied within many spheres of public life to describe levels of community involvement. The sample activities are specific to spatial design.

The two final chapters look in more specific ways at the issues involved in working with people.

Chapter 9 discusses ethical and inclusive practice, and how an approach informed by research ethics can strengthen work with communities – especially when marginalised groups, children and young people are involved. The final chapter gives a voice to participants. I interviewed representatives from a range of local groups to discuss their experiences of participation programmes and include excerpts from those discussions. These insights from real-world projects can help create relevant, engaging programmes, and highlight some avoidable pitfalls.

A word about the title. Desire lines are the paths people create through regular usage. There are other names for them: social trails, pirate paths, cow paths, donkey paths, goat tracks, elephant trails, and doubtless more. They appear where people repeatedly choose to walk, and usually signify a route from A to B that is quicker or more easily navigated than the formal path provided (see Figure 1.1 a, b, c). This can be interpreted as a design failure; the formal path was rejected because there was a better way. Or perhaps there’s no path at all. Desire lines can show the mismatch between what a designer thinks best and what people actually prefer. They also speak of a sense of local knowledge, where local people see better routes than those by designers or planners. The symbolism seems apt for a book about putting local people at the centre of the design process, and allowing their needs and wishes to shape development.

Who it’s for

The book is intended for practitioners who want to develop more people-centred, community-led design approaches. This includes architects, urban designers, landscape architects and other built environment professionals involved in placemaking or public realm planning and design. It will be useful to students in these disciplines, both as guidance on projects involving primary fieldwork and as general preparation for professional practice, where skills in working with local communities are increasingly sought after. Community groups and clients will also find some new ideas for making good use of local expertise and bringing it into the design process.

Figures 1.1a-c: Desire lines

This book addresses three main needs.

Firstly, design training doesn’t always equip practitioners with skills in managing consultation or community involvement. Yet placemaking is about people as much as places; at its heart is substantial engagement with communities, and their authentic participation and collaboration. So people-centred design requires people-centred consultation and participation programmes. At the same time, increasing numbers of designers in the built environment are looking to move away from top-down traditions and develop a more socially engaged practice that genuinely responds to local needs and aspirations. However, my perception is that this needs a greater level of rigour in collecting and analysing information. So this book offers practical guidance for practitioners who want to research and support communities more effectively.

Secondly, there are more and more people active in their communities who expect design professionals to treat them as partners in the development process, as comments in Chapter 10 show. Civic societies, heritage groups, community organisations and the like are increasingly knowledgeable. They can be valuable allies and they also know a tick-box exercise when they see one. So designers need to up their game and offer meaningful opportunities for involvement from the outset, to make the most of their knowledge.

Thirdly, streetscapes and public space are vital elements of urban infrastructure, spatially and socially. They can create value in every way. Not only this, but also the streets and spaces people navigate, and the visual and sensory stimuli they experience there have undoubted psycho-social effects, including both immediate and long-term influences on mood, stress levels, interactions and behaviour. There are more profound mental health aspects too. Depression and anxiety are known to correlate with social stress and a sense of alienation and isolation in urban environments. (Evidence shows that monotonous street-level facades and no greenery are the most effective ways to induce these states.) When designers can access knowledge that enables them to design for enjoyment and mental wellbeing, where people feel more positive, more comfortable, healthier, safer and more socially connected, why not use it? And what better way to generate this knowledge and understand people’s needs, wants and preferences than through offering them meaningful participation in the planning and design process?

There’s no one-size-fits-all solution to consultation or engagement, of course. What works with one community and project may not be appropriate for a similar community or type of project elsewhere. What this book offers is advice on the main ingredients, rather than recipes; how these ingredients are combined, flavoured and served up is for the design team to decide as the project requires. It’s also worth noting that research and engagement work should be ongoing, informing the project as it develops from inception to delivery. I emphasise the importance of an early start, but good engagement is integral to a good overall design process and should continue throughout.

The project benefits

Good research and engagement enable good design. And good design adds value. The art and science of discovering what people like and want has evolved to advanced levels in some design fields, in particular product design and digital usability/user experience (UX) research. In human terms, the research goal is maximum user satisfaction; in commercial terms this means creating value, efficiency and profitability through good design. The approaches used in these fields are discussed in more detail in the next chapter. Suffice to say that an established research cycle is central to the process, whereby users test product prototypes, which are then refined to incorporate their feedback, and re-tested and refined until optimum functionality, usability and aesthetic quality are reached. When built environment projects are driven by much the same requirements, wouldn’t the design process benefit from (a) involving users from the start, and (b) adopting a methodical approach to understanding and incorporating their needs and wants?

By providing insight into people’s views and preferences, good local participation can also reveal new perspectives and possibilities for a site. A project can only gain from being informed by local knowledge, so why not listen to the experts? Don’t start by presenting detailed plans. Involving community groups in the ideation stages increases the likelihood of producing proposals that are acceptable to the wider community, as well as a smooth passage through planning. Good participation can also generate design improvements, making fuller use of the space and improving inclusivity, for instance, and generating greater local support – which again benefits everyone.

Furthermore, genuine community participation can be a valuable learning experience for designers as well, when they’re willing to listen, to treat the community as the expert, and to work with local people as partners. Blundell Jones et al. (2005) call for ‘transformative participation’, emphasising that participation is an opportunity to develop professional expertise, not a threat to it, which should drive designers to discover new ways of working, thinking and communicating.

Figure 1.2

The community benefits

A programme offering authentic participation can yield significant community dividends. Bringing local people together to help develop a project can generate a sense of civic pride, enable new connections and networks, and build confidence, skills and knowledge, which can be especially valuable when marginalised groups get involved. Young people in particular can benefit when they’re offered a meaningful role in the process. It can help them feel they’re part of the community and have something to offer, and it gives them experience of team-working for the greater good, as well as opportunities to learn new skills. A project aiming to deliver liveability, inclusivity and increased social cohesion cannot be expected to succeed in these aims without bringing communities into decision-making. By the same token, failing to invite local communities to participate can have profound consequences.

People increasingly want and expect to be involved in local decisions that affect them. Many more now feel that their views on changes to their local environment should be heard from the outset, and that it is unacceptable at the ‘consultation’ stage to be steered towards endorsing decisions that appear to have already been made. Design can influence – for good or ill – people’s physical and mental wellbeing, local business prosperity, and an area’s economic fortunes. With these significant long-term implications, shouldn’t communities have a greater say in what they get? However, people-centred design means engaging with a wide array of socio-economic and cultural groups who use and experience public space in many different ways. So how to create inclusive spaces that meet diverse – and sometimes conflicting – needs and wishes, without privileging one group or excluding another? Only by looking, listening and learning.