A Socio-Technical Approach to Participatory Design: Learning from Scenario-Based Planning Practices

Architects and community planners depend on proper tools to engage and interact with citizens. Scenario planning is one of such tools enabling designers and community members to work together to address uncertainty in future community growth and develop a range of possible design solutions that may lead to alternative future conditions. This essay traces the history of scenario planning and attempts to understand its application to community design from a socio-technical perspective, which sees community design as both spatial inquiry and communicative action. This essay then discusses a demonstration project conducted between 2011 and 2014 in Texas, for which scenario analysis methods were employed to conduct community-based design processes. Key steps to implement this scenario planning project, such as visioning, compiling data, conducting community design workshop, drafting future community growth plan, are highlighted in the essay to illustrate this unique socio-technical approach to participatory design.

https://doi.org/10.35483/ACSA.AM.106.10

Volume Editors
Amir Ameri & Rebecca O'Neal Dagg

ISBN
978-1-944214-15-9