FOSTERING COMMONS-ORIENTED PLANNING WITH RESEARCH THROUGH DESIGN, THE WORK OF THE BSI-BCO

De Visscher, Jean-Philippe [UCL] Mezoued, Aniss [UCL] et al.

Through an analysis of the work of the Brussels Studies Institute-Brussels Centre Observatory (BSI-BCO), a multi-disciplinary and multi-university research platform working in close collaboration with public and associative stakeholders towards a sustainable transformation of the Brussels downtown area, this presentation aims to assess how useful is Urban Research Through Design [URtD] for the development of commons-oriented planning policies. For approximately a decade now, the concept of the commons has become central to innovative urban practices and theories. Various authors refers to the commons (or rather practices of commoning) as a way to resist social exclusions inherent to market-led developments, as an agile alternative to the rigidity of public management, or, more globally, as a claim for the care of ourselves and our environments. While mostly tacit, transdisciplinarity is nevertheless at the core of commons-oriented approaches. First, a commons is not only a shared resource, but also a collectivity and a governance system taking care of it. Technical, environmental, socio-cultural, legal, economical, etc. issues comes altogether. Second, commons are the outcomes of sharing practices bringing together various public, private, associative, innovative and academic stakeholders. Commons do not happen out of those collaborative experiments. However, practicing the commons within complex urban contexts is an ideal facing numerous difficulties. On the one hand, recent researches on urban practices of commoning point out a necessity to get support from public institutions and to “hack” existing urban regulations. Conversly, recent researches in the field of participatory planning refer to urban commoning as a mean to resist excessive subjugation to state power. In between, our hypothesis is that URtD –understood as a design-based methodology to cope with complex urban issues through collective learning process- is a useful tool to mediate commons-oriented multistakeholder relationships. The presentation depicts how URtD has been used by the BSI-BCO as a means to that end. First step (2015-2018) was the set up of the research platform and the reframing of the urban issue as a commons problem. Second step (2018-2020) was the choice of URtD as the most appropriate method and first collective experiments that led to significant impacts on Brussels mobility and development plans. Third step (2020-…) was the use of design outcomes as means to initiate new commons-oriented planning practices. The outcomes of this research process are analysed through three dimensions: - Ressource: Did the URtD process help to understand urban spaces as a depletable and non-excludable resource and to objectify the necessity of pooling and resist exclusions? - Community: Did the URtD process lead to the development of new multistakeholder partnerships, including public, private, civic society, academia and social innovators? - Governance: Did the URtD process lead the public stakeholders to act as enablers rather than managers, and to share power and responsabilities with other members of the collectivity? The main finding is that the URtD is quite effective when used as a base to discuss collectively the three dimensions altogether. But a notable loss of impact is observed when the three dimensions are discussed separately, leading to a mix of partial opportunistic support and conservative oppositions, with few observable shifts towards more commons-oriented planning practices.