Future-oriented Codesign Workshops as a Method of Empowering Citizens in Urban Infrastructure Development: A Capabilitarian Analysis

ABSTRACT

Urban mobility infrastructures have a major impact on the everyday life of city residents. Not only their mobility, but also their health, enjoyment of life and development of lifestyle preferences are affected by them. However, inclusive participation in infrastructure planning processes is difficult to achieve. We explore a foresight approach that develops desirable urban visions that involve residents in the preparation of decisions that will impact their lives. We propose future-oriented co-design workshops for the operationalisation of a capabilitarian focus on conscientisation, conciliation and collaboration to involve citizens in the visioning of infrastructure planning. The study is based on future-oriented codesign workshops held in Montreal in 2022–2023. Residents were invited to evaluate and discuss various future scenarios that re-imagine a highway currently cutting through the city. The results show the capabilitarian co-design workshops to promote critical thinking, vision creation and to a lesser extent collaboration in the discussions triggered by the future-oriented codesign workshops. The results also reveal the difficulties of making such discussions truly inclusive, as well as their ambivalent relation to urban planning processes.

KEYWORDS:

• Foresight
• co-design
• urban mobility
• conscientisation
• conciliation
• planning

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 These numbers are available for 2019 from https://statistique.quebec.ca/en/fichier/revenu-faible-revenu-quebec-2019-donnees-tendances-depuis-25-ans.pdf, accessed 10 June 2023.

2 The MTQ is the Ministry of Transportation of Quebec, it has since been renamed MTMDQ (Ministry of transportation and sustainable mobility of Quebec).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by CIRROD - Programme Synergie under Grant FRQNT R286.

Notes on contributors

Chiara Gasperoni

Chiara Gasperoni graduated from HEC Montréal and McGill University and holds a M.M. in Sustainability, as well as a BA in Psychology. Chiara excels in diverse cultural contexts, bringing creativity, communication skills, adaptability and human sensitivity to projects. For Alliium, she crafted inclusive citizen meeting guides and proposed strategic changes for Montreal's highway reconstruction. She also led sustainable marketing strategies by securing funds, and implementing innovative sales strategies for a startup specialised in permaculture. She also helped develop a research-backed business plan for a Zero-waste store in a food desert. Chiara's expertise bridges sustainability, project management and research, fostering collaboration for urban transformation.

Camille-Charlotte Gilbert-Lapointe

Camille-Charlotte Gilbert-Lapointe, BBA in Logistics & Supply Chain Management and Master in Sustainable Development Management (HEC Montréal), is the co-founder of KELP strategies, a sustainability and strategy consulting firm. Camille’s expertise lies at the intersection of sustainability, project management and research: she likes to translate ideas, concepts and aspirations into tangible actions, realistic timelines and adaptable processes. Through both her consultancy mandates and her research projects with Alliium (Alliance pour l’innovation dans les infrastructures urbaines de mobilité), Camille is interested in experimenting with different sustainability strategies while fostering collaboration towards sustainable urban transformation.

Lya Porto

Lya Porto is a researcher and project manager with more than a decade of experience in research and participatory planning with vulnerable communities, carrying out mandates for governmental, non-governmental, international and private organisations in both Brazil and Canada. She holds a BSc. in Public Policy and Management from the University of São Paulo and a PhD from the Fundação Getulio Vargas. She did her post-doctoral work at HEC Montréal and currently works as a project manager at Montréal Métropole en santé. She's published 25 scientific papers and 20 technical reports on topics such as governance, participatory planning and sustainability. She has also co-directed two documentaries on urban agriculture in vulnerable areas.

Franck Scherrer

Franck Scherrer, M.Sc. in Geography (Ecole Normale Supérieure de Paris), PhD in urban planning (Institut d’urbanisme de Paris), is a professor at the Faculty of Environmental Planning at the University of Montreal. He was director of the School of Town Planning and Landscape Architecture, and of the Environment, Sustainable Development and Circular Economy Institute (IEDDEC). His research focuses on urban infrastructure studies, metropolitan policies and urban sustainability transition. He is currently associate vice-rector for research, discovery, creation and innovation at UdeM and director of Chemins de transition, a mobilisation and knowledge transfer project on the socio-ecological transition in Quebec.

Rafael Ziegler

Rafael Ziegler is a professor at HEC Montréal. He holds a BSc. from the London School of Economics and a PhD from McGill University. He is associate editor of the Journal of Human Development and Capabilities and the Journal of Social Entrepreneurship, and member of Alliium (Alliance pour l’innovation dans les infrastructures urbaines de mobilité). Rafael has published the books Creating Economic Space for Social Innovation (Oxford 2019, with Alex Nicholls) and Innovation, Ethics and Our Common Futures (Edward Elgar 2020). Rafael is interested in innovations and ideas contributing to transformations towards sustainability; and he is grateful that he can bus, cycle or walk to work.