Prototyping Residential Subdivisions: A participatory prototyping approach for developing capacities for sustainable futures in suburban dwelling contexts

Abstract

Sustainable living is today part of many discourses on the future of our cities towns and villages. At the core of this debate in Belgium – as in other European countries – is the transformation of the suburban residential landscape and dwelling culture due to their high societal costs (Bervoets et al. 2015, Serre et al. 2019). In urban renewal processes, such as the retrofitting of residential suburbs, sustainability is however – often – confronted in generic and universalizing terms removing in this way a space for a proper public, agonistic debate able to engage a multiplicity of voices in contextually discussing what sustainable living is and how to live sustainably (Swyngedouw 2014; Mazé 2013). In this situation, spatial policy visions and retrofitting projects for sustainable dwelling futures are facing difficulties to become part of people’s everyday life in the suburbs (Bervoets et al. 2015). For facilitating sustainability transitions there is hence a need for suburban actors to develop their capabilities for initiating and continuing dialogues on more sustainable dwelling futures which can help to re-contextualize visions on the futures of dwelling within people’s everyday life and help suburban residents and other local, suburban actors to see themselves as co-producers of those futures. With the intention to explore how design and design research can support the development of these capacities for sustainable futures in suburban dwelling contexts, this PhD thesis has investigated the participatory approach of prototyping dwelling patterns. By bringing together Participatory Design democratic dialogues with the ability of Design Anthropology to create other points of discourse in dominant conversations on ‘the future’, the approach triggers a deliberately ongoing, situated and collective dialogue which invites a growing network of suburban actors – being residents, local authorities, experts, policymakers and organizations – to share and problematize their often conflicting perspectives on (un)sustainable dwelling around the co-exploration, reconfiguration and rehearsals of situated, concrete dwelling patterns.