Urban Design Lab Handbook – Dialogue-oriented urban transformation processes and practical approaches from Latin America and the Caribbean

A
Evolution
and Landscape Architecture of the TU Wien I joined
the Inter-American Development Bank’s (IDB) Emerging
and Sustainable Cities Initiative (ESCI) program
from 2014 to 2016. Given the growing interest of our
students and the transdisciplinary requirements that
surfaced along the work process, we invited two more
departments of the TU Wien (i.e. the Department of
Housing with Helmut Schramm and the Department
of Land Use and Land Management with Arthur
Kanonier) to join the ESCI program.
We decided to join the program mainly for two
reasons: firstly, we already had an established academic
network in Latin America to rely on and, secondly we
could build on two recent experiences of academic
cooperation projects with Latin American universities.
The first project, “Urban Managua” (2012 – 2014), was
developed in partnership with the Universidad Centroamericana
(UCA) in Nicaragua to upgrade an informal
settlement in the center of Managua. Within the framework
of the second project, “Urban Voids. Practice
of Social Inclusion: Vienna-Buenos Aires” (Gerscovich,
2015) we researched the practical implications of
brownfield developments in both cities in partnership
with the Universidad de Buenos Aires. The strong community-based
design processes in both these projects
left a profound impact not only in terms of the project
results but also owing to direct interaction with the
local community—this made a lasting impression on
many of the participating students.
Following the guidelines of the ESCI program to
develop an innovative urban transformation process
we created the term Urban Design Lab during a kickoff
workshop in the Austrian village of St. Aegyd in
August 2014. There, we also developed the conceptual
framework and defined the specific methodological
steps and corresponding tools needed to implement
such a laboratory approach. Our choice of tools was
strongly influenced by our first work experience within
the program in July 2014, when we developed an
urban transformation strategy for the market district
in Montería (Colombia). There, under the lead of
Colombian urban designer Fernando Cortés, we tried
out and modified several methods and tools used in
urban sociology to accompany the process.
The term “laboratory” already indicates the
experimental, flexible nature of such an approach: goals
are defined and the focus is directed towards results—
but the process of how to get there needs to be
flexible enough to respond to local needs, interests,
and demands along the way. This academic approach
innately reflects the contemporary global trends of
urban design, which are increasingly taking into account
social inclusion, human scale, and energy- saving guidelines.
The Urban Design Lab therefore stands for an
open-minded working environment as opposed to a
closed space inside academia where experiments are
conducted without any reference to reality.
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