The Association of American Geographers Annual Meeting 2018, New Orleans, April 10-14

 

Designing Politics | Politicizing Design - (In)visibilities of power through the urban and social fabric

 

Organizers:

Gabriele Schliwa, The University of Manchester ([log in to unmask])

Mark Usher, The University of Manchester ([log in to unmask])

 

Sponsors:

Digital Geographies Specialty Group

Political Geography Specialty Group

Urban Geography Specialty Group

 

Summary:

Whilst urban design and political organization have always been linked through the material fabric of the city, from the Baroque aesthetics of the absolutist era to the Fordist functionalism of the International Style, this relationship has become increasingly ambiguous, sophisticated and discreet. At the same time, we have witnessed an ever increasing visibility of ‘design’ in popular and academic discourse, which tends to circumvent or downplay questions of the political in favor of technical and environmental concerns (Montgomery 2013; Tonkiss 2013; Armstrong 2014). This suggests that the ways in which design plays out in contemporary society is undergoing a number of transformations with profound implications for urban and political life, from the decentralization of government through integrated infrastructural management systems to the affective and behavioral manipulation of the population via smart technologies. However, current understandings and debates on design in the urban context, and their political and cultural implications, are still poorly developed and theorized. This represents an academic as well as practical challenge in need of an interdisciplinary field of study, which calls for critical geographical inquiry into design research, political theory, human-computer interaction, smart cities and urbanism.

 

This session therefore seeks to raise attention within geography to the politics of design and critically engage with this trend by focusing on notions of ‘designing politics’ as well as ‘politicizing design’. Enthusiastically celebrated initiatives aimed at developing cities at the ‘human scale’ through participation in various ‘co-processes’ (co-design, collaboration, co-production etc., see Bason 2014; Manzini 2015; Concilio and Rizzo 2016) can also result in enhanced social control and governmental techniques, and processes of de-politicization (Swyngedouw 2005). At the other end, how can we conceive and enact alternative forms of design politics to that of capitalist modes of production and create new types of collective commons (Boehnert 2014)? What kinds of ‘wicked problems’ (Buchanan 1992) may arise when thinking design politically? How does the design discourse relate to ontological shifts towards contingency and complexity (Machard 2007)? Can new ways of living together be designed from below? And how can the public realm be designed along more democratic or radical lines?

 

We welcome empirical, methodological and theoretical contributions that critically engage with designing politics | politicizing design in an urban context. We intend to explore the relationship between design and politics from multiple perspectives, therefore we invite submissions that may include, but are not restricted to, the following themes: 

 

- Theoretical and methodological developments on design and politics

- Designing in relation to crisis and austerity (Armstrong et al. 2014)

- The public realm, the state and design politics

- Designing and the new military urbanism (Graham 2010)

- Biopolitics and governmentality through design

- Designing subjectivities and cyborg citizens

- Resilience thinking, governance and design thinking (Chandler and Reid 2016; Cowley 2017)

- History and the genealogy of design (Mareis 2011; Halpern 2014)

- Digital and smart urbanism (Marvin and Luque-Ayala 2015)

 

Please can those interested in contributing to the session send an abstract conforming to the requirements of the AAG (see annualmeeting.aag.org) by October 13 to Mark Usher ([log in to unmask]) and Gabriele Schliwa ([log in to unmask]).

 

 

 

Selected references:

 

Armstrong, L., Bailey, J., Julier, G., & Kimbell, L. (2014). Social Design Futures: HEI Research and the AHRC.

 

Bason, C. (2014). Design for Policy (Design for Social Responsibility). Routledge, London.

 

Boehnert, J. (2014) Design vs. the Design Industry. Design Philosophy Papers, 12:2, 119-136. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.2752/144871314X14159818597513

Buchanan, R. (1992). ‘Wicked Problems in Design thinking’. Design Issues, 8(2), 5-21.

 

Chandler, D. and Reid, J. (2016). The Neoliberal Subject. Resilience, Adaptation and Vulnerability. Roman & Littlefield International, London.

 

Concilio, G. and Rizzo, F. (2016). Human smart cities – Rethinking the interplay between design and planning. Springer, London.

 

Cowley, R. (2017). Resilience and design: an introduction. In: Robert Cowley , Clive Barnett , Tania Katzschner , Nathaniel Tkacz & Filip De Boeck (2017): Forum: resilience & design, Resilience, DOI: 10.1080/21693293.2017.1348506

Graham, S. (2008). Cities Under Siege: The New Military Urbanism. Verso, London.

 

Halpern, Orit (2015). Beautiful Data: A History of Vision and Reason since 1945. Experimental Futures

 

Luque-Ayala, A. & Marvin, S. (2015). Developing a Critical Understanding of Smart Urbanism?. Urban Studies. 2015;52:2105-2116.

 

Machard, O. (2007). Post-Foundational political thought. Political Difference in Nancy, Lefort, Badiou and Laclau. Edinburgh University Press.

 

Manzini, E. (2015) Design, when everybody designs: an introduction to design for social innovation. Cambridge: MIT Press.

Mareis, C. (2011) Design as knowledge culture. Interferences between design and knowledge discourses since 1960. Transcript Verlag, Bielefeld.

Montgomery, C. (2013) Happy city: transforming our lives through urban design. Penguin, London.

Swyngedouw, Erik (2005). ‘Governance innovation and the citizen: the Janus face of governance-beyond-the-state’. Urban studies 42 (11), 1991- 2006

 

Tonkiss, F. (2013) Cities by design: the social life of urban form. Polity, Cambridge.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Gabriele Schliwa
Doctoral Researcher in Human Geography

School of Environment, Education and Development (SEED)

The University of Manchester

T: +44 74 72742047 | Twitter: @GabrieleSchliwa