Pedagogy for 'real change': the DPU/ACHR partnership
Contemporary towns and cities are shaped by multifarious dynamics, including the forces of (variously defined) capital, government, citizens' everyday practices, the often-indecipherable impact of nature. In this complex terrain, we stress that there is a need to reclaim the utopian impetus, the ethical responsibility of planning and architecture/design in the shaping of our cities. We argue that this necessarily entails thinking about (and acting on) the possibilities of co-creating just urban futures with the communities currently largely marginalised from decision-making processes. This requires genuinely acknowledging and valuing the myriad city-making processes of the urban poor that are shaping our cities, but also recalibrating the role of the 'professional' and re-instating/fore-fronting the ethics of design and planning interventions.
The presentation will showcases the long-standing and multi-faceted relationship between the Bartlett's Development Planning Unit (DPU, UCL) and the Asian Coalition of Housing Rights (ACHR) which has at its core, a shared understanding of people-centred urban development planning and design, supported by practitioners committed to a transformational practice. The presentation will draw out both the co-produced knowledge stemming from this relationship, as well as the pedagogic approach it has helped to mould.
10 minute presentation by Barbara Lipietz (UCL) and Caroline Newton (UCL).
Session two (parallel panel two): 14.00 - 16.00, Thursday 17 September, Darwin Building B12/B15.