This PhD thesis, titled “Co-designing Urban Spaces with Children – Response-Able Explorations and Sensuous Entanglements” is part of the research
project “Move the Neighborhood with Children,” a research project that uses design experiments to investigate what urban spaces and design processes
look like when designed by children. The thesis has arisen from both a professional and academic need for practice-based and participatory design research regarding co-creation with children. Practice-based design research supports a growing practice field of co-design of urban spaces with children and also contributes to the academic fields of both co-design and urban design with children.
Urban co-design research is situated design research and depends on context. The thesis is a practicebased design study using three qualitative case studies.
The cases are subject to co-design methods that take an open, explorative approach to the research field to illuminate the research question: How can children and their things and matters codesign urban public spaces?
What are the conditions, challenges, response-able approaches, and potentials for urban co-design experiments with children? The empirical data of the thesis comprises three cases, in which children – in collaboration with architects,
design researchers, and carpenters – designed and built playful installations in two urban green spaces in a Copenhagen neighborhood. The cases have been
developed in collaboration with stakeholders, including a municipal urban renewal secretariat. This has provided the opportunity to investigate how co-design of urban spaces with children unfolds in the context of local urban renewal. Taking the form of co-creative ‘hybrid collectives,’ the co-design experiments have focused on design iterations through artifacts and
prototypes, design negotiations, and translations.
The co-design process was documented through design-anthropological approaches such as photographs, artifacts, and design materials complemented
by field notes, audio, and video recordings.
We conducted focus groups and individual interviews following the completion of the designs. Additional communication activities included posters documenting
the processes, two dialogue exhibitions, two short videos, and an opening event.
The theoretical basis of the thesis is constituted by New Material Theories such as co-design research based on ANT (Actor-Network-Theory) and Feminist
STS (Science Technology Studies). New Materialism is based on the notion that the world is influenced and created not only by humans but also by non-humans
– things like design. This is particularly relevant when both participants and design alter and influence the negotiations regarding the future urban space
design through artifacts that simultaneously explore and constitute visions. In Move the Neighborhood with Children, design processes and artifacts are
interwoven with their agents in structures that influence each other until they congregate in a living urban space.
The three cases examine urban co-design experiments over time. They constitute an exploration of how children design urban spaces, how their views of the
context develop, and which playful, social, aesthetic, and imaginative ideas characterize urban spaces and local urban development. The theoretical basis of the three articles provides a way to understand/unpack the cases – both the negotiations and transformations that take place and the playful design experiments that eventually turn into living urban spaces. The thesis examines whether urban co-design can involve children in the field of integrated urban renewal, and whether co-design can be used both as a public development consultation tool and to prototype public urban initiatives. The thesis’ theoretical basis aims to strengthen a practical field that increasingly applies urban co-design as a starting point for citizen involvement and development of shared urban space with urban space experiments.