wp1 / DC4

Prototyping policy options in spaces for experimentation and learning for urban climate transitions

Shaping fair and collaborative governance institutions is increasingly critical as climate transitions intensify conflicts over shared resources such as water, in this study, as a commons. Co-design practices in public policymaking have demonstrated the potential of designers to engage diverse actors in collaborative policy production, particularly by facilitating dialogue and making complex systems tangible through visualisation and materialisation.
Among these practices, prototyping offers a means to materialise emerging or yet-to-exist practices and knowledge through experimental approaches.

Accordingly, Claudia’s research explores design prototyping of, for, and within governance institutions managing scarce resources (such as water), situated between government and grassroots actors. It specifically investigates how designers might ‘infrastructure’ agonistic pluralism (DiSalvo, 2010) and sustain participation in polycentric governance for just resource allocation in contested contexts.

Through semi-structured interviews, observations and co-design processes involving diverse stakeholders, this study aims to develop a methodology enabling multi-actor networks to prototype equitable governance institutions for contested scarce resources.

To investigate and integrate studies of co-design, digital innovation, policy design and climate transitions to develop a basis for policy prototyping related to urban transitions.
To design, produce, test and critically assess creative and digital methods for citizen participation in policy making for urban transitions (practice research).
To synthesise results and produce a conceptual framework for designers, businesses, government and civil society organisations for citizen participation in urban transitions.

RMIT University (Australia, 6 months) with local mentors to expand and contextualise the practice-based research and creative method development toward just and democratic transitions.
Holon (Spain, 6 months) to share, test and evaluate creative visual or media artefacts and processes developed through practice research enabling citizen participation in urban transitions.