The theme of this 4th episode of the Commoning Design & Designing Commons podcast is urban commons, and together with Anna Seravalli we discuss co-designing and commoning in the context of urban environments. The city space, and especially public space, is a crucial setting for our social life and sustainable living. During the last decade the framework of the “urban commons” has gained popularity as a way to address and tackle contemporary urban challenges varying from urban housing to urban inequality, but also as a matter of responding to the challenge of how to support and maintain public welfare in face of economic cuts, and shrinking economic resources within the public sector. Anna Seravalli works as a senior lecturer and design researcher at The School of Arts and Communication Malmö University. Anna has a background as a product and service designer and holds a PhD in Design and Social Innovation. In her work she engages with citizens, NGO, civil servants and local entrepreneurs in: developing concrete initiatives to foster sustainable transitions within NGOs and public sector organizations.
| Time code | Speaker | Text |
| 00:15 | SM | Welcome to the fourth episode of the Commoning Design/Design in Commons podcast. My name is Sanna Marttila. I’m hosting this session together with Giacomo Poderi. |
| GP | Hi everyone. | |
| JS | And Joanna Saad-Sulonen | |
| JS | Hello. | |
| 00:29 | SM | Our theme today is urban commons. We discuss co-designing and commoning in the context of urban environments. The city space, and especially public space, is a crucial setting for our social life and sustainable living. During the last decade, the framework of the urban commons has gained popularity as a way to address and tackle contemporary urban challenges, from urban housing to urban inequality. |
| 00:59 | Also, as a matter of responding to the challenge of how to support and maintain public welfare in the face of economic cuts and shrinking economic resources within the public sector. Our guest and expert today is Anna Serravalli. She’s a pioneer in this area. Anna works as a Senior Lecturer and a Design Researcher at the School of Arts and Communication in Malmo University. | |
| 01:27 | She has a variety of different backgrounds, especially in product and service designs. She holds a PhD in Design and Social Innovation. She has engaged with citizens and NGOs and civil servants and local entrepreneurs in design engagements and has developed concrete initiatives to force the sustainable transitions within NGOs and public sector organisations. We’re so happy that you could join this podcast episode, Anna. Welcome. | |
| 02:00 | AS | Thank you very much. Thank you for inviting me. |
| SM | Could you tell us a bit more about your work with the public organisations and NGOs that you have engaged in Sweden? | |
| AS | Maybe I can start by saying something about Malmo, because Malmo is a very interesting city when it comes to the themes we are discussing today. | |
| 02:29 | Malmo is the third largest Swedish city. It’s placed in the very south of Sweden. It’s very known for its achievements when it comes to environmental sustainability. It has a 20-year record or history of experimenting with sustainable housing, sustainable mobility and so forth, so very much a focus on what we would call technical sustainability. | |
| 03:00 | But it’s also a city that is facing major challenges when it comes to social sustainability. It has the highest unemployment rate in Sweden. 20% of the kids in Malmo live below the threshold of poverty. There are a number of challenges when it comes to health issues, but also an increasing economic gap between the healthier inhabitants of the city and the ones who have less economic resources. | |
| 03:39 | In this sense it’s a very difficult city. It has many challenges that need to be faced somehow. But it’s also a very interesting environment because in the work I’ve been doing this year I’ve been meeting so many passionate people. | |
| 04:00 | Both within the public sector but also within the NGOs, trying to find ways to tackle these challenges often by creating alliances across different sectors. More specifically I’ve been working with questions of city planning and development, which in Malmo is very much concerned with how to make the city denser. | |
| 04:30 | Politicians in Malmo have decided the city is growing quite fast. Approximately every year there are 3000 new inhabitants, so there is a big question of the need for new housing and the development of new residential areas. The decision on the political level has been not to expand the city physically, but rather reconvert many old industrial areas that are present in the city into residential ones. | |
| 05:03 | This, as we will discuss later on, raises a number of challenges. I’ve been working a lot within these kinds of processes together with civil servants, but also on the development of new services for waste handling. Also, with questions about culture and the role of culture in promoting city development but also a more sustainable and fairer city. | |
| 05:32 | In all of this, the idea of urban commons is coming in as a framework to make sense of and try to look at these efforts that are emerging between the city and the public sector, citizens, NGOs, but also private actors such as property owners and builders, in the quest of creating a sustainable and fair city. | |
| 06:02 | And trying to tackle different issues and also finding more concrete economic resources for being able to do that. | |
| SM | You mentioned one of the strategies that you have taken is to build alliances and partnerships. Could you give an example in an urban commons framework of how to do this concretely? | |
| 06:31 | What could be the strategies or mechanisms to create more sustainable alliances and partnerships? | |
| AS | It depends very much on the actor you are trying to engage with. Different actors have different contexts and need different approaches, but I would say the common strategy is about creating trust, first and foremost. | |
| 06:59 | It doesn’t matter if you’re working with the city or with the citizens. This, of course, requires time and engagement, being very much situated in the context, trying to understand things. As well as trying to understand what the possible different constraints are and the needs the different actors and people are moving in. For example, if you are working with the city, you probably will end up discussing a lot of formal mandates. | |
| 07:34 | Different kinds of bureaucratic processes that need to be in place for something to happen. While if you work with citizens, you will end up discussing resources and the need for engaged people, problems with long-term commitment and support. I would say it’s very much about the understanding of different contexts and the different constraints they are being shaped by. | |
| 08:03 | And how it is possible to create alliances across them, which are very much a question of trust, and recognition of what different actors can bring to a city or a process in terms of different forms of knowledge, different competencies, different understandings, and value these different contributions. | |
| 08:31 | SM | There has been in literature on urban commons, how to bring the local knowledge into play when planning for urban areas. Do you have any good examples of that? How do you bring the local knowledge of the citizens or local groups? How does that interact in connection with the so-called more formal knowledge of policymakers and city strategies? |
| 09:00 | How does that connection work? | |
| AS | In Malmo there have been several attempts. First, it’s important to say that Sweden is one of the few countries that has a very… The planning process is highly regulated, but it also has embedded the idea that you need to have dialogue. | |
| 09:30 | The law says that the dialogue has to happen after the planner has developed a proposal. After the planners first proposal, this proposal needs to be opened up for input from the citizens and different actors. In that sense it’s really interesting because your participation is ensured by legislation. | |
| 09:57 | But it’s also a bit problematic, because of when participation is supposed to happen, which is after the first proposal is planned. In the last years, these processes have been part of… Of course, it’s an issue that is also recognised by the planners themselves, that they see we need input before. | |
| 10:29 | In that sense it has been interesting to explore with the planners, in different processes, how they can rather than create a proposal out of their understanding, how they can work before, so from the beginning, with getting input from local communities. A very interesting concept that has been tested in Malmo is this idea of knowledge alliances. | |
| 11:01 | Which a colleague of mine, [unclear] has also been very much part of it. The idea is how to see the meeting between the planners, people living in the area, as an opportunity for exchanging knowledge. So, how the planners can understand better what the issues are within an area by listening to the knowledge that the citizens and the people are bringing along. | |
| 11:28 | Also, how the planners can bring knowledge about how a planning process works and how they can enable citizens in better understanding the formal process. | |
| GP | Anna, very interesting what you’re saying. I’m also with some colleagues, and Joanna too here in Copenhagen, we are interested in the developments of a natural area that is a protected area, but is also under some interest by certain construction companies and the municipality. | |
| 12:04 | These natural areas are nearby metro lines, so there has been a lot of investment done. The municipality and the construction companies are trying to tackle some of the needs for apartments or residential places here in Copenhagen, which is a very problematic issue. | |
| 12:30 | They are also starting with these processes of development and planning. We also have these platforms in Copenhagen for involving citizens in providing their opinion or their input on these planning processes. But as you were saying, often the plan has already been agreed upon and it has been submitted and accepted. | |
| 12:59 | Even if citizens or smaller organisations provide their input, this process is often set up in a way that is very easy to disregard what you don’t agree with and to move forward with the construction plan in the municipality’s interests. I was wondering if you have some ideas or insights on how this affects trust, because in this case that I was mentioning, along the whole process the municipality disregarded all the opinions. | |
| 13:34 | That plan should not have been set up there. That was a reason for spurring a lot of protest and even opposition to that plan. Basically, this participatory governance process is what generates mistrust in some ways. I’m wondering if you have some thoughts or what your experience is in this case? | |
| 14:05 | AS | Planning is such a messy and very difficult form of design, because how do you weigh these different interests? I really see the conflicts that you are raising, the kind of issues you are raising now also very much being applicable here in Malmo. |
| 14:35 | What tends to happen is that planners tend to close up because they are so receptive. I go out and I talk to people, people will just be very angry at me and they will contest everything. This is what we saw with these knowledge alliances and this idea of participation happening very much at the beginning of the process. | |
| 15:05 | It’s also about is it possible to make it visible for citizens, other constraints and how planning is very much shaped by very different needs and interests. Of course, this doesn’t mean to be naïve, because there are certain interests because of economic and political mechanisms weigh much more with the processes. | |
| But it’s also about finding ways and supporting grassroots groups in thinking about how you can use this network of interests and alliances to lift your own agenda. As an example, I’m thinking of something that happened quite recently here in Malmo. | ||
| 16:04 | As I mentioned there is this push for densification. Particularly, there is an area which has been a place for all the industries. There is a big bakery and another industry producing starch. There are small industrial buildings which are being used for small commercial activities and artisanal activities. | |
| Also, very much by artists of different kinds, cultural activities, and also a bit of illegal activities. The plan of the city was initially to transform this area into a residential one. What happened is there was this interesting alliance that emerged between the small cultural actors and the big industrial players, which put pressure on the politicians. | ||
| 17:01 | Basically, this area now is not becoming a residential area, but it’s being recognised as an area where industry and culture can make noise. It’s becoming this oasis in the middle of a city. It’s important not to be too naive. This has happened because these two big industries have threatened to move out of the city. | |
| That for sure has played a very big role. But this is allowing for these small actors to still be in that area and to be there in the long run and somehow being sure that that’s possible. It’s very difficult to find. | ||
| 17:58 | Because planning is so entrenched with these very strong interests that are coming with profiting and building and politics. The space for manoeuvring is very tight. There are possibilities of exploring how you can use alliances, like even in this case, industrial actors to open up spaces. | |
| 18:34 | At the same time, it also needs to be recognised that planners and civil servants are thinking about what is best for the community and what is best for the city, so in that sense that also needs to be recognised. | |
| It also needs to be recognised what a hell of a job they are doing, not only managing these different interests, but also getting pressures from different sides to perform and deliver. In that sense I also found that, at least working together with the planners here in Malmo, it’s how can you create support for them and create a space where they can lift this burden they have. | ||
| 19:36 | And create support for them so when things get messy, you’re not just shutting them down, but rather try to support them with engaging with these different interests. And also thinking about how civil servants. Because at the end of the day many of the planning decisions are not taken by planners but they are taken by politicians. | |
| 20:04 | So, in a sense also how planners can support politicians in learning and better understanding these controversies, because this also needs to be done. Malmo is a fairly big city, so some of the politicians are professional ones and people who have been working with decisions for a very long time, so they have good knowledge. | |
| But in many cases politicians are themselves just citizens and they lack the competencies and the understanding of the complexity of the issues they are dealing with. So, in that sense there is also this need of supporting politicians in taking decisions. | ||
| GP | Thanks, Anna. | |
| JS | Thanks, Anna. I’m enjoying this conversation so much. | |
| 21:01 | It brings me back to my doctoral thesis that I was engaged in some ten years ago. It’s very similar, from what I hear from you, the processes in Helsinki, in Finland, and what I hear from Sweden. At least in Finland back then they were still following the Planning and Building Act of 2000. | |
| 21:30 | Which, as you just said, asks for planners to get the opinions of citizens, but it’s after the first plans have been made public. I remember we were exploring in the research group where we were working then, how can an online platform, and we developed this urban media too, could allow different entries into participation. | |
| 22:03 | One of our collaborations were with urban planners from the city of Helsinki. We explored with them whether they could receive, and what does it entail to receive, the opinions and the suggestions of citizens before the actual planning process starts. I remember it was super interesting and the planners were very interested to also explore that. | |
| But something I always encounter with this aspect of participation in urban planning is the active citizens. So, whatever you do, there’s always this group of citizens who are especially active. They, in a way, take the space. They are there. They love that thing. They are the ones who are vocal, who are ready to engage. | ||
| 23:05 | We also see it in explorations of urban commons. I know from the work of Sanna and Andrea, where they explored this urban gardening space, where I also had a gardening box there. There, also, who are the people who are putting the effort, and then all these questions of fairness come to the surface. | |
| Again, this issue that you were saying that urban planners are also civil servants who need to make sure that the urban public space is fair for all. Do you have something to say on that from your own experience? I would love to hear that. | ||
| 23:58 | AS | Thank you so much, Joanna. I very much recognise this challenge. Discussing it with planners in Malmo, it came out very clearly how participation needs to be created somehow maybe within participatory design, it’s how do we infrastructure for participation in city planning. |
| This means both how do you move beyond this model where you have these public hearings, where the city invites citizens, but how planners can find other ways of engaging different groups. I bring as an example the person responsible for participation in the planning department here in Malmo. She has been doing a very interesting experiment. | ||
| 24:58 | So, something that is an issue in Malmo when it comes to planning is the engagement of families with small children. They know that they never get their input because people are too busy. So, what she did is she connected to another initiative from the municipality, which is about creating good conditions for kids in Malmo to grow up. It’s a platform that is driven by the municipality but it involves different NGOs. | |
| 25:30 | And she used this platform, to bring in the planning process, to get input from the kids themselves, but also by all NGOs and organisations which are working very close to this group of families with small children. As a participatory design we can probably very much support the public sector to rethink the concept of participation. | |
| What is the model you are using? It’s not about a public hearing. You know who you are missing, so how do you reach them? Where are they? How can you get input? Also, this idea of involving colleagues from other departments who have daily contact with certain groups and using their input and their interpretation as possible input for planning process. | ||
| 26:36 | It’s about perhaps the first part of your comment, but it also connects then to this idea of urban commons and who is participating and who is advocating there. I recognise its often very resourceful people from an economic but also very much from a cultural and social perspective. | |
| It’s people who are well connected who know to ask for support. In that sense there is a need of some reflection, especially now where we see the explosion, at least in Europe, of cities that are creating platforms for citizens to enable urban commons of different kinds. There needs to be a critical reflection on who we are involving. | ||
| 27:32 | How do we create platforms that actually allow for groups who are not the usual suspects to engage. Something that we have been discussing with planners here in Malmo was also to be a bit radical. Since the middle-class white perspective is very well represented because planners and civil servants usually belong to this group. | |
| 28:01 | It’s can we skip that group and focus only on the groups we don’t know about and we know that their reality is much further away from us. But, of course, it’s also a bit controversial and a bit challenging. It’s the difference between working towards equality, so the idea that you provide the citizens with the same opportunity for everybody, towards instead the idea of equity | |
| So, I consider what are the starting points of different citizens? What are the resources that they have access to? Then I tailor strategies and answers to respond to these different starting points. Of course, it’s quite demanding from the public sector. | ||
| 28:58 | At the same time, it’s also a strategy that can open up to create better responses that are more tailored to the needs of the citizens. In that sense what we discussed a lot here in Malmo with the civil servants I’m working with and also with the NGOs, is the role of associations and NGOs which are working with different groups, in becoming this knowledge carrier. | |
| Or helping out in this process of moving from equality to equity, because it’s impossible for a city to go out, or maybe not, but it’s going to be very expensive to go out and gather all this knowledge on how to create these more ad hoc solutions. | ||
| 30:01 | But at the same time the city doesn’t need to do that on their own. How can they build on the knowledge and the competence? There are many associations and different kinds of actors. Tapping into the knowledge as a matter of understanding the different groups better and different constellations and their needs somehow and how they can be reached. | |
| JS | Thanks, Anna. That’s fascinating. | |
| SM | Anna, you have been discussing your work a lot and how to open up these different avenues for co-design, mutual learning and sharing knowledge and commoning. I wonder, this is a very unique position and quite a difficult task for a design researcher and a designer to be in this complex web of different actors and shareholders. | |
| 31:00 | How do you see a role as a designer and a design researcher there? What are the key capabilities or key competencies that you can bring to these processes? | |
| AS | At least in the context where I’m working, there has been a shift. Initially I was working a lot with how to bring along this idea of prototyping and testing. | |
| 31:31 | Because the situation is complex. We are trying out things we’ve never tried before. There are alliances across sectors. And then bringing in this idea of we can prototype, we can test things, and then we can learn out of it. What has been happening, at least in Sweden in the last ten years, is there has been a recognition of this need for testing and trying out things. | |
| There is an increasing number of designers being enrolled within the public sector. What I’m seeing at the moment it’s instead focussing more on this question of, okay, we test things, but then how do we learn from that? How do we make sure that all these projects and testing interesting things that are being set up, that both the people that are engaging reflects on and what is happening. | ||
| 32:31 | And here, of course, as academics we are trained to think critically, so we can provide really good support in asking difficult questions or questions that people haven’t considered. But also thinking then how this learning that is developed in these different processes doesn’t just stay with the people there but actually is brought back within organisations. | |
| 32:59 | In particular I would say the public sector. This at the moment is really my concern. I don’t have a good answer for how that can be done. Having worked now for quite some years with the city, and maybe it’s not unique for Malmo, but there are many projects that are initiated, a lot of learning happening for the people involved. | |
| But then the project ends and basically all the learnings that happened there stay with the people but are not brought back within the organisation. I’m really interested at the moment in what does it mean to create learning within an organisation. It’s really interesting because it’s very challenging, because learning is also about transforming things. | ||
| Because as an organisation you might recognise that the way you are organised is not fit for the challenge you are up to. This means to challenge a lot of formal and informal power structures in an organisation. Of course, that’s really tricky. It also means to shift the understanding of what is the role, for example, of the public sector. | ||
| 34:31 | From delivering solutions to becoming an urban commons enabler or partner for creating solutions. And also moving from an organisation that is made up for delivering service, making sure that you respond to certain economic constraints and you follow procedure, so you deliver exactly the same service for everybody. | |
| 35:00 | To rather shift to an organisation, which instead focusses on how can we test, and how can we focus on learning, on improving continuously the way we respond to citizens. Of course, it’s also posing challenges to citizens, NGOs, as well as the private sector, because their role is also changing. As citizens you are also somehow called to be more active. | |
| This, of course, also has possible backlashes in terms of, it depends on what kind of resources you have and how you can use the space and how you can understand what is possible to do here. Of course, NGOs, demands a very big jump. | ||
| 35:59 | At least in a Swedish context, where NGOs and third sector are deemed very much as having this role of promoting democracy and having a very important role in society, but also very much being a bit about leisure. It’s the public sector that delivers welfare. What happens if NGOs start to be part of that? What is that demand from them? | |
| 36:28 | But also, again, what are possible risks? We have very good examples around the world, where we see what happens when the public sector, I’m thinking about the UK, when, for economic reasons or ideological reasons, starts to move back and not being as engaged in the delivering of services. | |
| It’s a very tricky situation to be in but an interesting one. I don’t know, now my answer just swallowed… | ||
| SM | It was a good answer because it really points to the complexity and urban commons and the different stakeholders that we are engaging with. | |
| 37:29 | One thing, before we close this session, I would like to go back to the question of mandate. You were saying about who has the madidate and who has the power of the decision making and who has ownership and what are the different levels of ownership. We know the participatory design processes that we all have been engaging with that this is one of the bottlenecks. | |
| 37:58 | We have participation in the messy front or after the first plans. But I have been experiencing in many of the projects I’ve been, and the context that I’ve been working with, there comes this participation fatigue, also from those that are very resourceful and able and have the knowledge because they have given a lot of their time and effort. Then when it comes to the decision making, suddenly their input or work has not been recognised or it’s not been taken into consideration. | |
| I’m interested in how we can make that work also visible, even if we are not able to take that into consideration because of the strategy of the city or the municipality or economic reasons. In short, do you have any experiences on this kind of work? You were talking about knowledge sharing. | ||
| 39:00 | Maybe the documentation of this work that people and organisations have done. | |
| AS | I don’t have a concrete example, but it’s a really relevant question. It’s really important in that sense to set up what is the framework here. What is possible to do in this process and what is not. | |
| 39:31 | When it comes to participation it’s to make clear what is the mandate and what are the possibilities of influence. But I’m also thinking it’s something that I learned by discussing with the planners here. It’s also we tend to focus a lot, because we are designers, on this idea of participation in the planning processes. | |
| But what I learned from the planners is very much how a lot is decided in the actual construction phase. The city is actually billed and then it’s used. I’m thinking that some of this participation fatigue is also connected to this gap that there is between when you give the input in the process, so the planning, and then when things are implemented and what happens with the input. | ||
| 40:35 | Because it’s also important to recognise that even if planners do wonderful work with participation and include different policies, they are not the ones who will be implementing the decision. The implementation is up to the construction companies and property owners. So, something that I learned from the planners in Malmo and it’s a big concern of theirs. | |
| 41:00 | It’s how do we create alliances with these actors, which are very much driven by a profit agenda, for making possible provisions to be implemented. Of course, it’s difficult to put everybody in a basket, but there are very different kinds of construction companies and very different kinds of property owners. | |
| How is it possible to create good examples where, or how they can work with participation, and how they can somehow have a process that is more ongoing, that isn’t just in the planning phase and then it dies out. This way, perhaps, I’m thinking more of this ongoing dialogue and discourse with the citizens. | ||
| That doesn’t just on the planning process and perhaps it can respond to this fatigue. It’s also very important to recognise that as citizens ourselves, perhaps there is a limit on how much we can engage. In that sense, with this growing interest for how we need to involve citizens and NGOs in planning, in schools. | ||
| 42:34 | There is also a need to recognise that there are limits of time and resources and how it’s possible to think about that people can participate perhaps in certain things but not in others, and what does that mean in terms of shaping solutions. I’m also thinking that perhaps a lot of the knowledge is somehow already there. | |
| 43:02 | What I see by working a lot within the municipality, it’s not sometimes that they need to go out and talk to the people. If you have a planner who talks with someone who works within the department of schools or preschools, they can get so much input around kids and families. | |
| 43:29 | Sometimes there is a lot of focus in going out, when perhaps there is a need of creating connections within and across the organisations within the public sector, to better use knowledge they already have. | |
| SM | A very good point because that is what I have also encountered in my work. Often the knowledge is already there, but sometimes when the project starts, or new funding starts, we want to start from scratch again and go and visit the context and be in the situation and engage with the people. | |
| 44:04 | But perhaps we need to find new strategies of making use of the knowledge that has already accumulated within different NGOs, the local communities, and the local knowledge that we can tap into. We could continue forever it seems. Thank you so much for this discussion, Anna, and generously sharing your views and expertise on urban commons. | |
| We have learnt a lot about how to open up different avenues for commoning and how to create alliances. I’m looking forward to reading more about your work in the future. Thank you, Giacomo and Joanna, for this session. | ||
| JS | Thank you. | |
| GP | Thank you. | |
| SM | Looking forward to your comments and feedback on this particular episode. | |
| 45:02 | If you want to address questions to Anna or any of us, you can do it on Twitter or through our social media channels. Thank you, Anna. | |
| AS | Thank you. | |
| GP | Thank you. Bye, Anna. | |
| JS | Thanks, bye. |
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