Using ‘design thinking’ to enhance urban re-development: a case study from India

Abstract

ABSTRACTThe discourse on urban planning and development has evolved over the last century with top-down methods of planning urban spaces giving way to bottoms-up approaches that involve residents and other stakeholders in the design process. While the notion of participation and user involvement is considered critical to the design of appropriate and acceptable urban forms, there is no clear consensus in the literature on the methodology to be used to involve users and stakeholders in the design process. In this paper, we propose that the use of ‘Design-Thinking’ – a methodology for Human-Centred Design that is often used in product design and related industries – may be an effective methodology for engaging stakeholders in the urban design domain. The Design-Thinking approach iteratively encompasses an empathizing phase where deep-dive studies are conducted to understand the users’ needs, a project brief definition phase, an ideation phase and rapid-prototyping and testing phases to arrive at an appropri...