Walking alone, together participatory design as orchestrating between remoteness and situatedness in decision-making

Abstract

This paper reports on ongoing research into how Participatory Design (PD) processes can shift collaborations between public institutions (i.e. a city administration) and collectives, which we call institutioning, in the framework of socio-environmental transitions. It describes a case study during the COVID-19 pandemic where we made use of Remote Data Collection Methods (RCDMs), supported by events, in this case walks, to enable governments and collectives to engage in collaborative decision-making in a spatial transition process. We learned about the important role of events in connecting between situated versus remote decision-making, based on an explicit reflection on how situatedness and remoteness shift, depending on the position the participants are in (situated around the governmental meeting table, in the studied space or remote from one of these spaces) and how this redistributes power dynamics in a situated time and space.