Fabricăm _ Participatory Urban Interventions in a Post-Communist Context

Abstract

This chapter discusses the Fabricăm (We build) project and reports on the development of a participatory process, with a focus on key spatial interventions in a post-communist context, Timișoara, Romania. The overall aim of the project is to bring to the fore people’s understanding of civic participation, test their reaction to community processes and facilitate the revival of public spaces. Fabricăm is unfolding in a setting subject to a general resentment of any symbolic representation of the state (e.g. public space) and a lack of culture for engaging in communal self-organization and action. As such, the hypothesis is that engaging citizens in each step of the design process facilitates common understanding of genuine and most pressing desires for public space. Furthermore, the paper concludes with a set of premises confronting participatory design projects for public space in the dynamics of a post-communist context.