A field guide for experiential evaluation as a way of designing with experiences and values in neighbourhoods in transformation.

Abstract

This dissertation explores the definition of experiential evaluation as a way of designing with experiences and values in neighbourhoods in transformation. Specifically, it looks at how the situated knowledge of multiple actors can be included in participatory planning processes, a decision-making process about everyday life in these neighbourhoods. Today, everyday life in transition because we live in challenging times with crises such as wars, migration, pandemics, and ecological challenges such as heat waves, floods, storms, periods of droughts… We are all concerned about these challenges and spatial planning, as the practice that is concerned with geo-territorial issues, plays a leading role in facing socio-ecological challenges. However, when the government is dealing with these challenges and is trying to undo mistakes from the past, this can lead to resistance and protests. This is because dealing with these challenges is undoing the privileges that people have built up. This research departed from the hypothesis that in order for the decision-making in participatory processes on these matters, like densification and mobility, to have more impact, that they should depart from everyday practices and make the ‘cost and benefits’ of alternative scenarios explicit. Based on the action research conducted in the Heilig-Hart neighbourhood in Hasselt and Zwijnaarde in Ghent, the research approach was defined as ‘experiential evaluation’ because the participants in the processes were more driven by their values and their everyday experiences than rational needs that can be calculated in an analysis. Nevertheless, I struggled to develop a theoretical framework that could comprehend this change in perspective. I was able to define experiential evaluation only by re-reading the literature and writing this dissertation. Space Is Only Noise If You Can See Song by Nicolas Jaar This means that this field guide, as the development of a theoretical framework, and the journal, as a critical reflection on my work in the field, are part of the research. Engaging with situated knowledge is a matter of theory and practice (i.e. my work in the field was fundamental to developing this theoretical framework). Via the re-engagement with the literature during the writing of this dissertation, I experienced that the thinking on situated knowledge and care within participatory planning processes is more ambiguous than a matter of ‘style’ (i.e. discourse or situating a dialogue). In my reading, this is a matter of an actor-based approach versus a value-based approach. Which approach you adopt depends on your normative framework as a design researcher. Therefore, from my perspective as a design researcher, experiential evaluation is defined as a value-based approach to situated knowledge and politics. This position made it possible to define experiential evaluation as a way of designing with experiences and values, and a framework to engage with the field as a design researcher from a valuebased perspective. Looking back on my experiences in the field from this value-based perspective, I want to conclude that for me, experiential evaluation as a way of designing with experiences is not a matter of designing with care but designing with vulnerability in light communities. For me, designing with vulnerability comes without a moral judgment of the rightfulness or wrongfulness of a certain approach. However, it indicates an awareness that on multiple occasions, when engaging with relational values or with rational and constructive needs, there can be a risky situation and you as a designer are not always in control because it depends on everyday politics. In the same way that you as a designer are also not in control about how the tools and strategies that you provide are used and perceived by the actors within these processes, because you engage with light communities where the personal engagement of each person is balanced with the desire to do something together (Manzini, 2019) or not when they disagree. This approach on vulnerability departs from the idea of openness (Cipolla, 2018). It is a way of opening up to risky situations. From my perspective, it is the role of the designer to create these risky situations by staging events that offer a potential for learning to be affected in new ways, and by doing so, create the opportunity for more democratic and just decisionmaking processes.