Design strategies for inclusive cities: A case study approach of a city workshop

Abstract

Policy makers and city designers are more and more convinced about the urgent need and relevance for social sustainable design strategies in order to enable an inclusive society for all. Demographic shifts (ageing, migration, globalization,…) increase the quests for new methods. This papers reports upon a workshop as part of a larger city strategy to create an inclusive city for all. The workshop was part of a week full of events on Universal Design that took place during one week in Hasselt, Belgium. A group of interdisciplinary students (architects, interior archi-tects and occupational therapists) collaborated during 4 days on a square in the city of Hasselt. The workshop aimed to consolidate familiarity with a method that can be reiterated in all parts of the city, using a fresh approach to analyse the challenges that arise as a city when its constituent neighbourhoods age, develop, alter their destination of use, change their multiple demographic profiles and so on. The results furnish a blueprint of a method that can be applied under widely different circumstances in order to create a roadmap towards the inclusive city of the (near) future. Roadmapping as opposed to conventional planning, entails projecting plans towards a hypothetical target in the future and then reviewing those plans on a regular basis in the light of the macro and micro changes that take place constantly in an ever-changing world. The effect is to make practical use of a constant flow of data collection. This way it is possible to keep the plan fine-tuned to reality, in an approach that translates the concept of Smart City into a tangible improvement for the citizenry. Moreover, the architectural results of the four groups of students present the opportunities and possibilities for a city when designing for a diversity of users.