Co-Design: A 6-step process
WORK — PROJECTS
Co-design blends local and expert knowledge to design public spaces that respond to community needs. Why co-design? Designing with communities promotes tailor-made solutions, empowers residents, encourages participation in political processes, and is educational for all involved. We have used this approach in Bridgeland, Acadia, Marlborough and High River, leveraging built projects in each community. Check out our library of co-design tools on our national website.
The co-design approach emerged from the Active Neighbourhoods Canada network, composed of Sustainable Calgary, the Montreal Urban Ecology Centre (founding partner) and the Centre for Active Transportation in Toronto.
We practice co-design.
Co-design blends local and expert knowledge to respond to community needs. It makes urban planning community-driven, accessible and fun, and can lead to tailor-made and innovative solutions for local public spaces. We use the six-step process outlined below, adapting it to the needs and capacity of each community we work with.
Launch: Establish a partnership with local stakeholders and lay out an action plan.
Understand: Hold community engagement activities and create a Community Portrait describing the use of public space.
Explore: Hold an Urban Design Invitational where designers identify ideas to meet community needs.
Decide: Invite residents to vote and provide feedback on proposed solutions at Design Selection Kiosks.
Act: Implement the design solutions and advocate for citizen vision.
Celebrate
Understand
We develop and use tools to learn about community needs and priorities.
In step 2 of the co-design process we gather information about communities, their needs and their priorities. We draw on information that already exists, such as the City of Calgary’s Community Profiles, the City Census, Statistics Canada, and information collected by communities themselves. We also use engagement tools to gather new information. We organize what we’ve collected into a Community Portrait that can be used in the next phase of work: the Urban Design Invitational.
Pro Tips:
Go where the people are. When engaging with your community, ttry to take advantage of existing events.
Honour community contributions. Include past engagement work, and make your results available to the community for future use.
Inspire. Expose community members to new practices in the design of healthy places as part of engagement work, to increase their knowledge of design possibilities.
Sample Tools:
Emotional Walk Audit Explore a community based on how it makes you feel at selected locations. Choose from a list of emotions and use colour-coded stickers to describe whether the feeling is positive or negative. Performed as a group, you’ll have a colour-coded emotional map of the community, which may identify priority areas for design changes.
Community mapping: Set up at a community event with a large map and themed stickers - “best place to play”, “address pedestrian safety here”, “I have many memories here” - and find out where the key spots are in the community. Try to include both concrete (pedestrian safety) and abstract feedback (memories) to gather different perspectives. Don’t forget a pen and paper to document all the stories visitors will share.
Location Observation: Use your five senses, and remain open to documenting what you observe, whether or not it seems relevant. It is helpful to consider a few things you would like to observe ahead of time - # of conversations, # of trees, things that move - and the way you would like to document them, whether as lists, timelines, diagrams, or other. However, this exercise is also about being open to what emerges and challenging your ideas of what you consider important.
More at participatoryplanning.ca.
Explore: Urban Design Invitational
We invite professionals to help you imagine new possibilities.
Our Urban Design Invitational welcomes professionals to spend a day with us. The morning is spent walking, getting to know the neighbourhood and getting acquainted with local priorities, with the help of the Community Portrait. We stop for great local food and hear from local residents and businesses along the way. The afternoon is spent developing 3-5 design ideas that address community priorities. A professional designer then takes these ideas and turns them into a set of Design Schemes. These go back to the community for voting and feedback at the Design Selection Kiosk.
We draw on research, best practices and experts to influence design work.
The research linking health and the built environment continues to grow, as do best practices for designing healthy places. We draw on this and on the expertise of local designers and academics, who collaborate in our work through design workshops and research.
“Generally, areas with higher population density, a mix of residential, commercial, educational and employment areas, connected streets, good access to destinations, bike paths, good sidewalks, good public transit, green spaces and attractiveness have been linked to more active transportation or reduced driving,” says Dr. Theresa Tam.
Act
We collaborate to identify design implementation opportunities.
Our approach changes according to community capacity, opportunity and context. One community we worked with relied on its own networks and raised funds to implement design schemes. In two other cases, we applied to grants to develop design prototypes. With two more, we worked with municipal departments to integrate design projects in the municipality’s capital projects.