Future Fictions Godsheide

Abstract

In the village Godsheide (BE) controversy exists on the role participatory processes play in defining the decision-making in spatial planning design. This is due to ten years of inadequate communication between the citizens, policy makers and property developers. In 2014 the citizens started a Participatory Design (PD) process with our research group to re-open communication between all actors. We used a Design Anthropological approach wherein we followed everyday activities in Godsheide through Action Research to build collaborative relationships with the participants (Bradbury, Reason, 2003). At the same time, via co-design workshops we engaged more actively with how people perceive, create, and transform their environment and guided this towards spatial scenarios addressing different timelines: past, present and future (Gunn, Otto & Smith, 2013, xiii; Sanders & Stappers, 2008). In our co-design sessions the citizens and us critically engaged with newspapers’ scriptings (McQuail, 2010) to produce a publicly spread newspaper about spatial scenarios for Godsheide in 2024. This newspaper was intended to function as a public resource of the participatory decision-making process and as a source of public debate. In a scenario workshop, small stories were told in newspaper articles and still images/tableaux vivants of the stories were collaborative performed in the spatial context. The design proposals were gathered in the newspaper, titled The future is today. This newspaper narrated about a participatory process that started in 2004, co-design workshops in 2014 and imagined designs in 2024 that were presented as if they took place today.The design process and the results, being the spatial design proposals and the newspaper were exhibited and published at several artistic and scientific fora.