Rigon, A; Dabaj, J; Baumann, H; (2021) Participatory design and diversity: Addressing vulnerabilities through social infrastructure in a Lebanese town hosting displaced people. In: Inclusive Urban Development in the Global South: Intersectionality, Inequalities, and Community. (pp. 198-212). Routledge: New York.

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Abstract

In a fragmented society, we argue that action-research and participatory design can build the capacity for intra-city dialogue across the different dimensions of identity of local residents. However, traditional participatory processes are often unable to deal with internal diversity, particularly when there are pre-existing conflicts. Using a collaboration between two universities, an NGO, and local residents in Bar Elias (Lebanon) as a case study, we demonstrate how the development of an intersectional methodology sensitive to social diversity can contribute to individuals and groups of residents developing an “aware participation” in city-making and in setting the vision for the city. Bar Elias was a small agricultural town until its population significantly increased with the arrival of people displaced from the Syrian war, and hosts Syrians, Palestinians, and Lebanese but presents spatial segregation. As the main site used regularly by all groups, the entrance road to the town was chosen as the site of the action-research and participatory design to plan and implement small-scale social infrastructure enhancements which could help address a number of vulnerabilities faced by different groups of residents. By analysing the process of implementing this participatory spatial intervention, the chapter argues that the outcome of the process was more than the physical infrastructure intervention; the process built a human infrastructure made of residents of the city with different identities who have been able to participate in and initiate city-making processes that have taken into account and analyse a diversity of needs and aspirations. Through the process, residents were able to exercise a new kind of participatory urban citizenship that transcends the limitations of traditional national citizenship.

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