"Designing Publics" Research Network

The "Designing Publics" Research Network addresses the lack of systematic understanding of how publics are designed via processes that produce the public realm, especially through the use of informal strategies in cities of the global south. Cities are amongst humanity's greatest creations, and the public realm is arguably their most significant aspect. The public realm consists of networks of public spaces [e.g. squares, plazas, parks, sidewalks, paths] that are places of encounter and interaction with "other" bodies, cultures and ideas. While public spaces tend to be clearly defined and bounded spaces, the significance of the public realm is equally about interconnected spatial networks through the city. We need to pay greater attention to how residents perceive and experience the city through these spatial networks, and to the ways in which private realms of the city [e.g. home, work] link up to create collective urban dynamics. In addition, power relations are deeply embedded in the public realm's ongoing spatial and social production and reproduction, in its spatial manifestations, and in the ways in which it is controlled.

The most potent aspect of the public realm lies in its capacity to deliberately and creatively generate [i.e. "design"] publics via the process of its making [i.e. "production"]. "Publics" never simply exist; they are always created. Publics are created out of groups who are made and remade by the actions of other people. For example, when there is a common concern or desire that emerges [e.g. out of crises such as the Covid-19 pandemic, urban inequality, lack of affordable housing, inadequate public infrastructure], there is a call to action, and groups of people are willing to act upon those concerns or desires; a public is thereby created or "designed." A public is thus summoned into being.

A key aspect of this study of the public realm is understanding the role of informality. We use the term informal strategies broadly to describe a wide range of methods and techniques in the spatial production of the city. We define them as the ambiguous transactions that exist between what is acceptable and what is unacceptable in cities. Informal strategies are not marginalised practices nor are their outcomes; rather, they are central to understanding the logic of urbanism because they constitute debates about what is considered legitimate and illegitimate in the city, what is legal and illegal in the city, and with what effects. We are particularly interested in informal strategies as creative and transformative design methods and techniques developed and deployed by those who have limited financial or political resources and/or are marginalised in other ways.

The Research Network will draw insights from case study analyses of multiple types of informal strategies for producing the public realm in the global south, by paying close attention to both the specifics of differing contexts and general patterns that emerge across them. What this implies for designing the future of the public realm is that there is actually far more room for creativity than we may currently imagine, which arises from the fact that every current tradition was invented previously as a creative response to the given conditions of its time. Thus, urbanists across the spectrum-from design professionals to artist activists to ordinary citizens-always possess the radical possibility of designing new and transformative traditions for the public realm, and indeed for cities. These are the types of potentially transformative approaches to designing cities that we hope will emerge from the work of the network.

Please see the attachment, Case for Support [including Timetable of Activities], for more details.