Speaker
Description
The concept of participatory planning and community design emerged during the 1970s, responding to the growing public awareness of residents' rights and environmental justice issues. Prior to this shift, traditional planning systems, which focused primarily on professional expertise, often excluded non-expert citizens from decision-making processes, leading to suboptimal planning outcomes. In response to the highly technical and institutionalized nature of city planning, scholars, professionals, and citizens advocated for more inclusive planning practices that prioritized public participation. These new approaches aimed to engage a broader range of community members—particularly those without professional training—in shaping urban spaces. By the 2000s, participatory planning and community design had become widely accepted as mainstream approaches in city planning, adopted by both top-down and bottom-up methodologies. However, scholars and professionals have become increasingly aware of certain challenges in the implementation of these practices, particularly in terms of the problematic and often superficial nature of public hearings conducted by governments, as well as the frequent use of two-dimensional maps in participatory workshops, which are often too abstract for non-professionals to fully understand or discuss key concepts like "design" and "planning" (Howard, 2007).
In recent years, rapid technological advancements have led to the growing use of innovative techniques based on mixed reality (XR) and geographic information systems (GIS) in design communication and construction management. These emerging technologies, as communication mediums in design, have prompted scholars and professionals to explore their potential in the context of participatory planning and community design. This exploration aims to address the challenges faced by non-professional individuals in understanding abstract design and planning concepts, especially when conveyed through traditional tools like maps (Rohil et al., 2022; Boos et al., 2023).
Against this backdrop, this research seeks to preliminarily assess the effectiveness of utilizing both innovative design communication mediums—such as XR techniques and GIS—and traditional ones—such as maps and physical models—in participatory planning workshops. Specifically, the study adapts an under-testing system, “torinome,” to facilitate the public discussion process regarding a renovation plan for a block in Keelung, Taiwan, which includes a traditional market and 4- to 5-story apartment buildings. Developed by Prof. Shin Aiba of Tokyo Metropolitan University in collaboration with HoloLab, the “torinome” system enables both professional and non-professional users to effectively communicate their planning ideas through a card game platform. This platform integrates various communication mediums of design, including physical maps, virtual 3D urban models, and virtual 3D models of buildings and facilities that are presented on individual cards embedded with QR codes.
In the participatory planning workshops, participants use the “torinome” application on iPads to view virtual 3D models of the surrounding blocks, projected from a physical map. These 3D models are generated using GIS data from Taiwan's government database. To emphasize the presence of the traditional market and apartment buildings on the site, tangible 3D printed models of these structures are placed on the map. Participants can discuss their vision for the block by moving the 3D printed building models and adding cards representing new buildings and facilities they prefer. The “torinome” application reads the QR codes on the cards to project the corresponding virtual models. After several rounds of negotiation and repositioning the cards, participants can finalize the renovation plan for the site and save it within the “torinome” system.
Through analyzing participants' interactions with different communication mediums of design during the workshops, as well as conducting follow-up focus group interviews to gather feedback, this research provides early-stage insights into the potential for integrating innovative communication mediums of design into participatory planning and community design practices.
References
Boos, U. C., Reichenbacher, T., Kiefer, P., & Sailer, C. (2023) An Augmented Reality Study for Public Participation in Urban Planning. Journal of Location Based Services, 17(1), 48-77.
Howard, R. A. (2007) The Foundations of Decision Analysis Revisited. In Edwards, W., Miles Jr., R. F., von Winterfeldt, D. (eds.) Advances in Decision Analysis: From Foundations to Applications. Cambridge University Press.
Rohil, M. K., Ashok, Y. (2022) Visualization of Urban Development 3D Layout Plans with Augmented Reality. Results in Engineering, 14, 100447.
| Keywords | Communication mediums, map, XR technique, 3D GIS model, participatory planning |
|---|---|
| Best Congress Paper Award | No |
