DRS2012 Bangkok Proceedings Vol 4 - Design Research Society

Introduction
1960 Conference Proceedings
Sandra Viña
Urban revitalization has become a matter of growing interest and research throughout the
last decades (see e.g. Thackara, 2005; Fuad-Luke, 2009; Augé 1995; Carmona et. al,
2003; Gehl 2010). Generally, the regeneration of a city looks into ways to rebuild and
redefine the city image through new urban entrepreneurialism or city marketing
(Paddison, 1993). The new renaissance of cities is connected with the social and cultural
aspects of regeneration, thus questions of heritage, tradition and authenticity are putted
forward. Place marketing is a frequent theme in urban regeneration, it relates to the
complexity of place ‘products’, which tries to apply the theory of branding and, studies the
complexity of the organizational mechanism for their marketing. Usually, the approach of
the service-dominant logic of marketing and its foundational premises are applied.
However, studies argued that to design a degree of distinctiveness in place marketing
theory and practice could actually have much significance with more mainstream
marketing (Warnaby, 2009).
Research in the contemporary landscape of urban politics or urban governance uncovers
a decline in the community power, urban managerialist and collective consumption
debates. The current post-political consensus appears to be absorbed with economic
growth combined with an explosion of entrepreneurially oriented governing regimes
(MacLeod, 2011). Currently, spatial planning in cities is a form of neoliberal spatial
governance, established by an array of post-politics that has required to replace
antagonism with consensus. However, the conflicts of post-political form of planning have
been carefully displaced addressing to new avenues for disagreement that challenge
spatial planning and its communal support (Allmendinger and Haughton, 2011). In this
context, urban revitalization, is not limited to a single discipline but range from marketing,
product design, service design, political science, urban design, architecture, new media
and so on. Nevertheless, what seems to be lacking in the current understanding of urban
regeneration is a stronger study on how and why people appropriate urban places? How
can interventions help urban design and urban regeneration? And, what is the impact of
consensual and dissensual interventions in everyday city life? In this paper these
research questions will be examined as to how they pertain to the notion of participation
in the public realm. The paper also examines a variety of interventions in city places and
how they contribute to city regeneration.
However, the city is planned in terms of roads, traffic flows, buildings and drawings; which
are usually conceived in a design from above, big volumes and roads comprised in smallscale
models, and usually accomplished by architects and urban planners as the masters
of the design who often follow an architectural style. Lawrence Alloway (cited in Sadler
1998:15) initiated his accordance with Situationism by arguing against the idealism of the
rationally planned city. On the contrary, small size architecture can be defined in terms of
everyday life experiences and perspectives from a humane scale size in which
interactions within places and other people take place. “The natural starting point for the
work of designing cities for people is human mobility and the human senses because
they provide the biological basis for activities, behavior and communication in city space”
(Gehl 2010:33). People perceive and experience the city simply from a human scale
perspective. The city as a living lab is constituted besides architecture and master plans
also by its everyday designs, situations and interplay in and about places that often tell
more about the city’s identity (Beucker and Bruder, 2004); and where local culture
develops. The qualities of everyday surroundings are the ones perceived, evaluated and,
at best enjoyed by people.