Participatory Design and the Hybrid City: The Living Lab Mehringplatz, Berlin, and the Project “Community Now? Conflicts, Interventions, New Publics”

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Participatory Design and the Hybrid City The Living Lab Mehringplatz, Berlin, and the Project “Community Now?

Conflicts, Interventions, New Publics”

Bianca Herlo, Florian Sametinger, Jennifer Schubert, Andreas Unteidig Design Research Lab, Berlin University of the Arts

(DRLab/UdK Berlin. www.drlab.org) Berlin, Germany

[email protected] Abstract. “Community Now?”i is a bilateral, German-Israeli cooperation that researches ways of providing access and facilitating alternative forms of debate and engagement from a design research perspective – especially with regards to socio-political processes in urban environments. Embracing the “social turn” ii within the field of design and the related challenges, the project’s overarching goal is the inclusion of a wide range of citizens in societal and political decision-making processes that are increasingly becoming digitized. The digitization of such processes fosters participation, but also entails a digital divide that builds on unequal access of individuals to ICTs. Consequently the project aims at activating and empowering those who are passive or marginalized to take on ownership of such processes.

In the last two years, numerous spaces and frameworks, tools and interventions have been created as researchers, students and local partners from both countries collectively worked on these interrelated topics, leading to the development of contextualized tools for urban explorations. At the base of the endeavor to develop hybrid tools in a participatory and inclusive way lies the Living Lab approach. With “Community Now?” we explore both the possibilities and the restrictions of such an approach. In this paper, we present and contextualize the tools and processes that have been developed and implemented during the course of the cooperation in Berlin, at the Living Lab Mehringplatz, Kreuzberg, as well as in Jerusalem in the neighborhood of the bilingual, Arabic-Hebrew Max Rayne Hand in Hand School.

i “Community Now?” is a German-Israeli design research project (2013-2017), a cooperation between the Design Research Lab/Berlin University of the Arts, the German Society for Design Theory and Research (DGTF) and the Bezalel Academy for Arts and Design Jerusalem. In February 2014, the first research phase concluded by an international conference, an exhibition, neighborhood walks, as well as interventions. The cooperation is funded by the German-Israeli Future Forum Foundation (DIZF); www.community-now.org ii cf. Manzini, E. and Jégou [25] or Fuad-Luke, A. [19]

Keywords: Participatory Design, Living Lab, Design Research, transformative tools

I. INTRODUCTION Recently, alternative forms of political action, self-

organization and participation have garnered much attention. Not only are they relevant to bottom-up initiatives, the general public and civic society, but also to academia, politics, governing institutions and the media. Emerging forms of active engagement, collaborative practices and knowledge sharing have high impact on societal issues (cf. Ehn 2008 [14], Fuad-Luke 2015 [20]). The emergence of a wide range of such communities can be observed in the digital realm – in the form of social networks and sharing platforms – but also in urban environments with co-working spaces, community gardens and other forms of neighborhood initiatives.

Following this development, we understand local collaborative practices as catalysts for social innovation. Here, social innovation is used based on the description by Zapf [44], who regarded it as “new paths to reach goals, especially new forms of organization, new regulations, new lifestyles, that change the direction of social change, solve problems in a better way and which are thus deserve to be copied and institutionalized” (1994:33). More generally, Rammert [31] in this context points out the values of social progress, equality and integration that form the cornerstones of collaboration and socially oriented design approaches (cf. Fuad-Luke, 2007 [18], Manzini 2006 [26]). Due to the fact that bottom-up initiatives usually engage locally, the development of new technological infrastructures and their embedding into the local context could give way to new formats and possibilities for collective action, with the main question remaining how to bridge the gap between local and digital practices.

Staring from this premise, we aim at researching ways for participatory development and implementation of hybrid transformative tools that also address those without access to digital platforms for participationiii.

iii e.g. Adhocracy, E-Democracy, Changify.org

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Challenging the digital divide in local contexts is considered in a critical way, since the situatedness of the formats and the complexity of the respective context and location is highly specific and makes generalization of an approach very difficult. Furthermore, when entering such context with the intention of generating research results and underlying factors such as unequal resources, social hierarchies or socio-dynamics in groups – for example, the researcher’s working hours might differ from the commitment timeframes of the participants, there might be persisting differences between the participants, and thus some might be less open in discussions, or the funding situation is deteriorating over the course of the long-term process. Nevertheless, taking those variables and soft factors into consideration at an early stage of planning is one crucial finding that informs our research, as we go into and bring up for discussion in the present paper.

II. THE RESEARCH QUESTIONS AND CONCEPT Having conducted a similar long-term research

project Neighborhood Labs (cf. Schubert et al. 2014 [37]) where we followed an early implementation of the Living Labiv approach, including different kinds of non-human and human actors, we developed it further towards the implementation and use within a neighborhood – as a method and as a physical space. One of the underlying goals was to refine the research concept in order to be able to scale and transfer it to other contexts such as neighborhoods in countries which are culturally different, but display structural similarities, and with regards to contents that require a different exposurev. On the basis of a Living Lab approach and following basic principles that have been derived from the CoreLab projectvi, we focused on the socio-material structure of the neighborhood and the specific urban environment while involving different stakeholders like researchers from diverse disciplines, students, local businesses, policy makers and other actors (Binder, Ehn 2011 [6]) in the collaborative design with, in and for communities.

Several foundational questions arise when going into such a project with a participatory design research perspective (Mareis 2010 [27], Sanders 2013 [36]): How can we facilitate processes in which both non-experts and professionals from different disciplinary backgrounds are able to explore opportunities for

iv A Living Lab is a real-life test and experimentation environment where users and producers co-create innovations. Living Labs have been characterized by the EC as Public-Private-People Partnerships (PPPP) for user-driven open innovation. (ENoLL, 2006, www.openlivinglabs.eu/ [last view 7/7/2015]) v One of the goals was to create sustainable structures for international cooperation projects, and stronger ties through common approaches and discourse. (cf. Herlo 2015 [21]) vi In an attempt to standardize the Living Lab approach, some principles were derived from the CoreLabs project, which reflect a rather technology-centered, business-minded perspective. CoreLabs, 2007 [9]

political and social change? How can technology-based bottom-up tools create a framework for articulating and negotiating differences within one’s living environment? What is the added value of technological artifacts for people with regards to becoming active within their living environment? How can highly contextual situated knowledge be analysed and tied to a theoretical framework, which makes the transfer to other contexts possible?

High hopes are raised (within the communities we work with and the research communities we address with our results) when intending to implement a more inclusive and emancipatory notion of design, simultaneously bringing up further important issues, especially regarding the mechanisms by which people can be triggered to become active in their neighborhood, and how a participatory process can be sensible to actors with unequal resources.

In the past two years, our research group Civic Infrastructuresvii at the DRLab set up Living Labs, made possible i.a. by the cooperation with the Yad Be Yad Center for Arab and Jewish Education in Israel, and the partnership with the local initiative “MadaMe/Globale e.V.”viii at Mehringplatz in Germany. The Living Lab at Mehringplatz, Berlin, which we focus on here, hosted a broad range of participatory workshops, design classes and discussions. The physical space, a semi-open storefront located in the heart of the pedestrian area, is modular, i.e., adaptable to different tasks – work, talks and festivities. As it is located in the middle of the neighborhood, it fosters the exploration of subjective experiences and helps capturing people’s stories related to the physical place or respective urban space. The presence in situ contributes to a better understanding of the social interactions and the relationship between the place and its potentials. It helps to uncover design requirements through direct interaction and observation. This specific location also helped us to quickly get grounded in the neighborhood and experiencing day-to-day interactions, so that a series of interventions and prototypes were possible, relining our understanding of the specificity of the place and leading us to the development of three main transformative tools we would like to present and discuss within this paper. Prior to that, we briefly introduce the cases.

III. THE CASES

A. Jerusalem: Bilingual School Yad Be Yad, Pat At the Max Rayne Yad Be Yad (Hand in Hand)

bilingual school and community Jerusalem, intercultural-inclusive living takes place on a daily basis. Within the “Community Now?” cooperation, the overarching aim is to cultivate shared practices between Jews and Arabs in Jerusalem more broadly through the collaborative use of the public space surrounding the school. The Living Lab approach shall lead to the

vii www.civic-infrastructures.org [last view 06/30/15] viii www.facebook.com/MadameHandmade?ref=br_tf [last view 03/28/15]

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implementation of a social platform, founded on the development of a park on the land neighboring the city’s newly constructed Train Track Park, which passes behind the school, connecting the Pat neighborhood and the Arab village Beit Safafa. It aims at facilitating substantial and sustainable social interaction and integration between the local communities. Ideas include play structures that require cooperation, a shared café and spaces for community activities ranging from sports to culture to dialogue. Initial sparks of social integration already take place at the Yad Be Yad’s school and within the local community; this public park would however ground, structure and expand the school’s experience of equality and inclusion, amplifying it well beyond the school walls to Jerusalem and the Israeli society. Taking up bottom-up initiatives (like the “Meeting Point”, cf. Unteidig, Herlo, Reiter 2015 [40], an initiative carried out by Jerusalem’s Muslala Artists Collective), the collaborative work focuses on co-designing a platform for encounter and discussion of different people and cultures, as a premise for underpinning or fostering peaceful and productive conviviality.

B. Berlin: Mehringplatz/Jewish Museum Berlin The area around the Jewish Museum Berlin on the

border between municipal districts Berlin-Mitte and Kreuzberg includes the Mehringplatz and is characterized by fractures and contradictions. The museum takes on the role of a beacon within Berlin’s cultural landscape. Around 1730, after its construction, the Mehringplatz, a round square, was considered to be one of the three main sites of early urban development. It leads north into Friedrichstraße, one of the Berlin’s most prestigious streets. At the turn of the 20th century, the area became a vital center of modern Berlin, but after World War Two, the plaza was in ruins. The ambitious reconstruction plan was to design a “livable landscape”, accentuating the social qualities of public spaces and removing the predominance of cars and street traffic. Unfortunately, the original plan was diminished, and, not least, the Berlin Wall deflected the city’s priorities in many ways. Today, the Mehringplatz is one of the most diverse neighborhoods, also officially considered as having special development needs.ix A high percentage of the school kids come from families who receive welfare moneyx, and several local facilities and social institutions are working to ease these issues. The initiative we partnered up with (MadaMe/Globale e.V.) focuses on working with children and youngsters from the community, mainly by conducting upcycling workshops and providing mentoring and support. In cooperation with MadaMe, we launched our Living Lab in the neighborhood and started our local research work

ix cf. the Senate Department for Urban Development: www.stadtentwicklung.berlin.de/index_en.shtml [last view 7/3/2015]. x For the latest statistics, see the publication of the neighborhood management QM Mehringplatz: www.qm-mehringplatz.de/fileadmin/user_upload/IHEK_Mehringplatz_2013_2014.pdf [last view 7/3/2015].

in order to provide tools for ameliorating the social infrastructure of the neighborhood and increasing interaction with the Academy of the Jewish Museum Berlinxi.

Despite their differences, the two cases show structural similarities: both are extremely diverse in terms of social background, ethnicity, financial status, interests and needs of their inhabitants; both are located in an in-between-area and former no-man’s-land within their cities; and both are home to an institution that tries to mediate the social heteronomy but struggle to integrate themselves and gain influence in the local environment: the Jewish Museum Berlin and the Yad be Yad Bilingual School in Jerusalem.

Fig. 1. Community Now? Neighborhood Lab at Mehringplatz

IV. A RE-NEWED PERSPECTIVE ON DESIGN – SOCIAL DESIGNxii

We position our work within a mindset of socially and politically engaged design. Recently, the design discipline focuses more and more on social aspects of design practice and research. Some authors even proclaimed a ‘social turn’ (Fuad-Luke 2009 [19], Manzini and Jégou 2003 [25], Wood 2007 [43]), with design not being understood only as design of single objects or signs (Rittel 1987 [32]), but as design of situations of usage, experiences, interactions, reflection, interventions, decision-making processes, systems in social, ecological, gender, urban planning or cultural contexts (Mareis, 2010 [27]; Erlhoff, Marshall 2008

xi The Academy of the Jewish Museum Berlin addresses a broad range of topics besides Jewish culture and history: issues of diversity, migration, urban development of divers neighborhoods and education (www.jmb.de); Therefor we looked at the interrelations between the Mehringplatz neighborhood and the Academy, and made it at the to a main subject of discussion during the Community Now Symposium in February 2015 (community-infrastructuring. org/wp-content/uploads/Community_Now_ Program.pdf). xii Although the terminology varies – ranging from Social Design (Papanek, Margolin), Design for Social Change and Innovation, Design Activism (Fuad Luke, Thorpe), Transformation (Design Council UK) and Transition Design (Tonkinwise), their common thread is the direct addressing of societal issues.


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[16]; Bergmann et al 2013 [3]). Hence, we argue for an understanding of Design as decidedly political, an understanding that centers around a designer equipped with social and political agency (Joost, Unteidig 2015 [23]): »Social design highlights design-based practices towards collective and social ends, rather than predominantly commercial or consumer-oriented objectives« (Armstrong et al. 2014 [1], p. 6).

Ever since Design became self-aware, a wide range of schools and movementsxiii demanded to think Design as a social and political actor instead of a mere supplier of forms and narratives for capitalist production. In today’s postindustrial era, these more political understandings of design’s capabilities seem to become evermore accepted and thus explorative approaches to the designer’s roles are being adapted by many actors. Armstrong et al. point out some possible reasons for this development, such as »[…] the increasing visibility of strategic design or design thinking, social innovation and entrepreneurship, austerity politics and policy shifts towards open or networked governance« (Armstrong et al. 2014, p. 7 [1]). Taking into account the shift from the design of objects to the development of systems (Pfeffer 2014: 149 [30]), the role of designers changed tremendously, since they increasingly have to address »wicked problems« (Rittel & Webber, 1973 [32]), meaning interconnected, global problems which can never be fully grasped or a solution always creates new problems. Examples for such problems are the increasing scarcity of resources, the ever-rising complexity of our cities, unknown consequences of massive agglomerations of data, global warming and the seemingly uncontrollable instances of poverty, austerity measures and exploitation that big parts of our post-growth world are confronted with. In this light, the importance of designers as mere producers of consumer goods has to be reconsidered.

Consequently, designers set out to create new ways of thinking about their practice being one that supports processes of change within social contexts, and is aware of tradeoffs regarding the solution of problems.

One example of a way to deal with the aforementioned complexities is the inclusion of stakeholders in the process of designing, which has taken hold in numerous areas of design, but originally stems from the participatory design movement of the late 1960s in Scandinavia (Bødker et al. 2000 [8]). When designing within and for a social context, participation of non-designers becomes inevitable, if the

xiii The historical development displays a continuity and tradition in reflecting the social responsibility of design. Amongst others, the Werkbund, the Bauhaus and the HfG Ulm addressed social aspects and introduced notions of the political in their programs. Victor Papanek, Lucius Burck-hardt and Buckminster Fuller were proponents of a more socially and politically aware design, while the Scandinavian participatory design movement of the late 60s promoted the involvement of non-designers for making processes more sustainable, evoking changes that still influence the way we understand design today (Mareis 2013: 10ff. [27]).

outcomes are supposed to be relevant to this respect. Bieling et al. (2013:218 [5]) and Joost & Unteidig (2015 [23]) call for the inclusion of the social dimension into the process of designing as a logical consequence and natural reaction to the interconnectedness and complexity of today’s global problems.

V. PARTICIPATOY DESIGN, CO-DESIGN AND THE ROLE OF THE DESIGNER

Many socially or politically minded approaches to Design are informed by the developments within the various Participatory Design movements, who strived for making the very acts of designing and producing more democratic and accessible for laymen and experts alike (Björgvinsson, Ehn & Hillgren 2010 [7]). Including experts of their everyday life (Sanders 2006:29 [35]) into the process of design is one core aspect of our project. In this paper, we are by no means proclaiming the omnipotence of participation, but also acknowledge the fundamental problems and difficulties it creates during the course of an open research process. As Sanders (2013 [36]) and others note, including non-experts in the decision making processes creates many challenges, especially with regards to the role of the designer and the shared ownership of process and outcome. Depending on the context, roles shift fluidly, forcing the participatory design process to be open to changes in participants, methods and the distribution of competences, to which not all stakeholders are open (cf. Sametinger et al. 2015 [33]).

Moving away from design as an activity of problem-solving, Bjorgvinsson et al. (2010 [7]) build their approach on the notion of design as infrastructure, which provides possibilities for various stakeholders to create their own solutions or frame their problems independently. Here, design moves far from the short life spans of products or services, towards a more sustainable way of dealing with the design of everyday life. It creates and maintains the underlying structure and base for new ideas, movements and approaches to emerge. Consequently, the infrastructure can consist of any kind of boundary objects, tools, physical spaces, common language or protocols.

While participatory design has to consider questions of roles within communities in order to succeed, in the beginnings of the participatory design movement, those were over-defined especially in Scandinavian approaches (black-and-white image of employer-employee relationship). In its recent development, the emphasis rather lies on the inclusion of a multitude of so-called “stakeholders” who bring in their own specific competence (cf. Sanders 2006:29 [35], Wenger 1998 [42]). This balancing of groups has been beneficial when trying to reach for a very broad common ground for decision-making.

In this phase the designer takes on the role of a mediator and a group composed of different participants is compiled. The motivation of the actors lies in the direct interest of the design process, their conception, their implementation or the resulted consequences. The integration of the participants can happen in different


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ways and intensities in the process (cf. Sanders 2013:65 [36]). For our understanding of the designer’s role within a Living Lab, we draw on Ehn’s approach, defining the role as leading the construction of frameworks, or socio-material infrastructures, which consist of already existing elements such as individuals, initiatives, rooms, a shared language.

VI. THE LIVING LAB APPROACH: CONTEXTUALIZATION

The Living Lab research concept, although not necessarily being deployed to investigate social practices, is a promising interdisciplinary approach to framing a design research project in an urban neighborhood, which was to enable transformation and change with, for and by citizens of a specific neighbor-hood. Current framings move from a locally fixed living lab towards more distributed ones, being embedded in a certain setting, e.g. a neighborhood and the various non-human and human actors surrounding it.

Even though there has been research on and within living labs from the early 70s, the research concept of »Living Laboratories« took holt in the early 1990s in the field of operations research focused on urban communities (e.g. Bajgier, et.al. 1991 [2]), but has gained considerable traction among researchers, institutions and companies after being further developed by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in its Media Lab and School of Architecture and Planning, and when it was introduced as a major research focus by the European Commission in 2006. It has also spread to other contexts, but is predominantly found in user-centered innovation.

Nowadays the approach is characterized by the basic concept of bringing stakeholders together in a research or development process, while providing them with a research setting closer to actual living environments. In this respect, including new technologies or technology concepts in real-life contexts is assumed to lead to higher acceptance and impact of the products and services, as well as early consideration of their socio-ecological effects. One of the strengths of the concept is the possibility to develop, test and evaluate a product or service within a complex real-life setting rather than a isolated environment. Some of the key principles for living labs were developed during the CORELabs project (Schumacher 2007 [38]), which attempted a standardization of the approach in order to ensure transferability to other contexts.

In the beginnings of the European Living Lab development, five core principles were derived from an

array of projects (cf. Dutilleul et al. 2010 [13]; Bergvall-Kareborn et al. 2009 [4]) using the approach: Continuity: This principle implies that for a Living Lab to succeed, there has to be a certain continuity in collaboration as well as a stable location. Interdisciplinary teams - or in this case people-public-private partnerships - take time to evolve and build up trust. Openness: Many perspectives, and an open process make »rapid progress« within the lab possible. Realism: Realistic use cases, situations and behaviors lead to more valid results for real markets. A subsequent assumption stated that this principle would also be relevant for a distinction from other co-creation environments. Empowerment of users: Users are seen as creative assets for the innovation process, who can help implement »humans’ needs and desires«, only being possible when users are motivated and empowered to actively engage. Spontaneity: In order to succeed with innovations, it is important to meet personal desires, and fit and contribute to societal and social needs.

While some organizations look at Living Labs simply as a new form of test-bed, involving users only marginally, some implement the idea of collaboration and opening of the development process fully, although this would be two extremes which are seldom found. It has to be noted that the description of various Living Labs are idealized, and looking at the actual realization, it does not always meet the high expectations of collaboration across the board. Especially embedding the lab into the social sphere is often underestimated.

VII. TRANSFORMATIVE TOOLS – BRIDGING THE DIGITAL DIVIDE AND FOSTERING NEW FORMS OF

INTERACTION The tools developed in this research project have

differing objectives, while conceptually complementing each other:

The Hybrid Letterbox was initially developed for offering new forms of access to digital discourses for mainly older inhabitants at the Fischerinsel neighborhood. Transferring the Hybrid Letterbox to the Mehringplatz neighborhood it targeted also younger residents, as an incentive for a playful manner to participate in new ways of hybrid communication, and triggering a re-examination of their local environment. The purpose was to implement the Letterbox as an inquiry tool and as an incentive for our activities in situ.


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Fig. 1. The process of gathering first informations and triggering involvement to tackling collective issues.

The De:Routing Concept and App was

developed for gathering different perspectives of the neighborhood while working with students at the Living Labxiv. It is meant to undermine pre-assumptions, mainly generated by negative press reports about the Mehringplatz. Its purpose was mainly to involve external actors into getting acquainted with the surroundings by serendipity and change of perspectives, as a starting point for co-designing interventions.

The Pinpoint series finally engaged into a long-term process of discussion and negotiation in a participatory manner, addressing emergent issues that are collectively relevant to the inhabitants.

A. The Hybrid Letterbox The Hybrid Letterbox is an interface that enables

low-threshold participation in a range of societal online-processes. People can scribble messages on a postcard, throw it into the letterbox where it is digitized and uploaded to an online blog. This digital post is shown on the touch screen integrated into the letterbox. The interaction is designed as such that the user throws an analog message into digital space and can scroll through messages that others have posted. Simultaneously, the contributions are being uploaded to Twitter, to a website or compiled as a projection in public space. As a

xiv Several interventions have been created that focused on strengthening existing initiatives as the „Kiez Kantine“, or collecting stories from the neighborhood. All interventions in Berlin and Jerusalem are well documented here: Herlo & Joost 2015 [22], p. 36-63

technological artifact it bridges the gap between digital and analog. The basic idea of the letterbox is derived from the aforementioned long-term research project “Neighborhood Labs” based in the Berlin neighborhood Fischerinsel. First prototypes were deployed for different events like annual celebration of involved initiatives or the European neighbor day. Using the status quo of the prototype from the previous project, we deployed the Hybrid Letterbox at the “Winter neighborhood festival” in the first stage of the project at Mehringplatz.

While the Hybrid Letterbox was initially developed for offering new forms of access to digital discourses for mainly older inhabitants at the Fischerinsel neighborhood, the transfer to the Mehringplatz neighborhood showed that is also suitable for younger audiences. There, it targeted the younger residents, convincing them in a playful manner to participate in new ways of hybrid communication and triggering a re-examination of their local environment.

Their playful and undirected manner of interacting with the letterbox contrasted the structured sessions and events we participated in with the senior citizens on the Fischerinsel. Rather than only seeing the letterbox as a black box, the youngsters were open to the technology inside and the way it works and was constructed and drew older inhabitants towards it. This opened up a discussion about the neighborhood and its issues. Those were e.g. the poor infrastructure, missing cleanliness in the neighborhood, missing leisure time spaces or the long lasting construction site in the center of the


neighborhood.

Fig. 1. The Hybrid letterbox and a projection deployed at the

Winterfest Mehringplatz in 2013

B. The De:Routing Appxv De:Routing was first developed as a workshop

concept while designing with students of the Berlin University of the Arts. It is an explorative tool that fosters the experience of the neighborhood and highlights randomly generated, directed walking for local surroundings. It aims at creating a change of perspective by generating unusual routes and by assigning a specific focus to the user, such as “barriers”, “thresholds” or “gatherings”. Participants are asked to answer questions, take photos, record sounds or videos or interact with passers-by, according to the task. Using different media, a map is created where all participants add their geo-tagged content on a shared web platform as a collective map of experiences. The maps serve as starting points for discussion and negotiation.

As a basis for inspiring the design of interventions, we tested and used the tool with both students and varying actors from the neighborhoods in Jerusalem and in Berlin. The superimposed, mapped perceptions helped comparing, discussing and generating concepts for interventions created by students, and researchers. Us an “urban probe”, the De:Routing App leaded also participants of the “Community Now?” conference in order to let them experience the neighborhood we worked with and discussed about in workshops and talks during the conference. The mobile application is open source and can be adapted to different places, as the radium of possible walks, the tasks and perspectives can be easily editable by the workshop leader(s) in the backend.

C. The Pinpoint App Pinpoint describes a series of tools with the goal of

getting a deeper insight in local issues. Since October 2014, three workshops were conducted with diverse participants. In the first workshop, we had a cohort of fifteen inhabitants from different age groups and backgrounds. At first, the participants went outside with the Pinpoint mobile app, which allowed them to photograph and describe positive, negative and alterable

xv De:Routing is based on an analog concept created during a Community Now? workshop by Michelle Christensen and Florian Conradi, derouting.community-infrastructuring. org

places or situations. After the exploration they talked about their experiences and discussed different connotations of and issues in the neighborhood. Concluding the first phase, all experiences and issues were projected publicly in the shop window of our Living Lab. The projection invited all neighbors to add their opinion in an analog or digital way with the goal to identify one unique local topic – meaning that, along with the projection, we offered the possibility to add comments on existing opinions, to support certain issues or to disagree with points of view. All entries were analyzed and clustered, resulting in twelve topics the neighborhood is collectively interested in. Those were e.g. drug facility hotspots, missing higher education possibilities, a missing continuation of the projects and, again, the “never-ending” construction site.

The second meeting was meant to trigger and engage new participants into the process, explain the purpose of Pinpoint to a wider range of inhabitants and find out more about the neighborhood’s handling and appropriation of the Pinpoint series. The main incentives the participants pointed out concerned the experimental, unusual way of offering a platform for discussion. Furthermore, the intuitive interface of the mobile application and working with pictures in a playful manner were perceived very positively, as many engaged actors in the neighborhood decisively avoid traditional evaluation or addressing forms like questionnaires.

Following this, and the overall process of clustering and analyzing the topics, the emerged issues were presented at an official and well advertised meet-up in our Living Lab. The participants ranged from local inhabitants like a social worker with an experience in situ of 30 years, a local artist, a former local writer and sculptor, a current activist and journalist, a member of the local writing group and other residents, but also stakeholders like the neighborhood manager, the head of the neighborhood management, one member of a freshly opened Social Impact Hub and a representative from a local Social Start-Up. After three hours of discussing the process and the twelve topics that evolved from it, no tangible results emerged – but a neutral platform for controversial discussion, where many issues were addressed beyond formal structures, as usually in this composition of differing interests. After reflecting the intense and highly charged meeting and after some one-on-one conversations we filtered out the topic, which was mentioned from the very beginning of our project and always came up in discussions: the long lasting construction site in the center of the neighborhood. Currently a public installation with sound and projection tools is placed at the outside fences of the construction site in order to collect citizen’s voices to accelerate the finalization process of the construction site.

VIII. GENERAL REFLECTION & FINDINGS Trying to build up an evaluation framework is one

big challenge, as the long-term process makes it quite difficult to find out about tangible deliverables for large-scale and open result projects, as the one we are

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neighborhood.

Fig. 1. The Hybrid letterbox and a projection deployed at the

Winterfest Mehringplatz in 2013

B. The De:Routing Appxv De:Routing was first developed as a workshop

concept while designing with students of the Berlin University of the Arts. It is an explorative tool that fosters the experience of the neighborhood and highlights randomly generated, directed walking for local surroundings. It aims at creating a change of perspective by generating unusual routes and by assigning a specific focus to the user, such as “barriers”, “thresholds” or “gatherings”. Participants are asked to answer questions, take photos, record sounds or videos or interact with passers-by, according to the task. Using different media, a map is created where all participants add their geo-tagged content on a shared web platform as a collective map of experiences. The maps serve as starting points for discussion and negotiation.

As a basis for inspiring the design of interventions, we tested and used the tool with both students and varying actors from the neighborhoods in Jerusalem and in Berlin. The superimposed, mapped perceptions helped comparing, discussing and generating concepts for interventions created by students, and researchers. Us an “urban probe”, the De:Routing App leaded also participants of the “Community Now?” conference in order to let them experience the neighborhood we worked with and discussed about in workshops and talks during the conference. The mobile application is open source and can be adapted to different places, as the radium of possible walks, the tasks and perspectives can be easily editable by the workshop leader(s) in the backend.

C. The Pinpoint App Pinpoint describes a series of tools with the goal of

getting a deeper insight in local issues. Since October 2014, three workshops were conducted with diverse participants. In the first workshop, we had a cohort of fifteen inhabitants from different age groups and backgrounds. At first, the participants went outside with the Pinpoint mobile app, which allowed them to photograph and describe positive, negative and alterable

xv De:Routing is based on an analog concept created during a Community Now? workshop by Michelle Christensen and Florian Conradi, derouting.community-infrastructuring. org

places or situations. After the exploration they talked about their experiences and discussed different connotations of and issues in the neighborhood. Concluding the first phase, all experiences and issues were projected publicly in the shop window of our Living Lab. The projection invited all neighbors to add their opinion in an analog or digital way with the goal to identify one unique local topic – meaning that, along with the projection, we offered the possibility to add comments on existing opinions, to support certain issues or to disagree with points of view. All entries were analyzed and clustered, resulting in twelve topics the neighborhood is collectively interested in. Those were e.g. drug facility hotspots, missing higher education possibilities, a missing continuation of the projects and, again, the “never-ending” construction site.

The second meeting was meant to trigger and engage new participants into the process, explain the purpose of Pinpoint to a wider range of inhabitants and find out more about the neighborhood’s handling and appropriation of the Pinpoint series. The main incentives the participants pointed out concerned the experimental, unusual way of offering a platform for discussion. Furthermore, the intuitive interface of the mobile application and working with pictures in a playful manner were perceived very positively, as many engaged actors in the neighborhood decisively avoid traditional evaluation or addressing forms like questionnaires.

Following this, and the overall process of clustering and analyzing the topics, the emerged issues were presented at an official and well advertised meet-up in our Living Lab. The participants ranged from local inhabitants like a social worker with an experience in situ of 30 years, a local artist, a former local writer and sculptor, a current activist and journalist, a member of the local writing group and other residents, but also stakeholders like the neighborhood manager, the head of the neighborhood management, one member of a freshly opened Social Impact Hub and a representative from a local Social Start-Up. After three hours of discussing the process and the twelve topics that evolved from it, no tangible results emerged – but a neutral platform for controversial discussion, where many issues were addressed beyond formal structures, as usually in this composition of differing interests. After reflecting the intense and highly charged meeting and after some one-on-one conversations we filtered out the topic, which was mentioned from the very beginning of our project and always came up in discussions: the long lasting construction site in the center of the neighborhood. Currently a public installation with sound and projection tools is placed at the outside fences of the construction site in order to collect citizen’s voices to accelerate the finalization process of the construction site.

VIII. GENERAL REFLECTION & FINDINGS Trying to build up an evaluation framework is one

big challenge, as the long-term process makes it quite difficult to find out about tangible deliverables for large-scale and open result projects, as the one we are


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describing here. In other words, how to evaluate the results, respectively how to measure the ‘social impact’,

Fig. 2. The Pinpoint Process: Neighborhood exploration

accompanied by the Pinpoint mobile application

Fig. 3. The Pinpoint Process: Workshop discussion of individual

explorations and perception of local environment, in the L

Fig. 4. De:Routing App – the interface of the android application

Fig. 5. De:Routing App – the interface of the web application; data mapping in Jerusalem

is one essential question we are still working on. It also turned out during the process that authorship and responsibility prove themselves as core dimensions when co-designing: when to transfer authorship, when and how to take it back or handle responsibility to the community? Through regular self-monitoring and self-reflection, we found a productive way of how to inform our decision-making, how to fix the status quo and, dependent to it, improve the process. So far, we can emphasize that there is no blueprint for handling authorship, but rather reflecting on it and deciding situationally. Nevertheless there are several issues to further be discussed, like communication strategies (how to make the goal and aimed process comprehensible for non-experts), roles (at what point in the process to act like mediator, facilitator, catalyst, decision maker, advocate), and action (when to be passive and observe, when to intervene). The most important factors we experienced as crucial for the process are: transparency – do not promise nothing you can not fulfill; transferability – is it possible to transfer and scale methods and approaches developed at a local level; and resources – time commitment and trust building are at risk to be underestimated, especially at the beginning of such undertakings. We should not let unmentioned that participatory processes are not per se meaningful. They sometimes even boost unequal resources and reinforce hierarchies.

Of course there are (interim) results that can be structured related to the phases of the project. They range from succeeded trust building, to implementing a platform for debate, accomplishing a certain level of inhabitants’ commitment, bundling local initiatives, and creating pleasant interventions and situations of individual encounters – by implementing the Living Lab and working in situ. Thus, all findings make it clear that it is pointless to think of global problems on an operational level, but reflect and address basic issues on an every day life dimension.

IX. PROJECT CONCLUSION Over the first two years of cooperation, both

researchers and students from Israel and Germany experienced the potential of carefully planted and


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locally based activities and interventions, of small steps towards promising results. Developing tools and methods for complex, sometimes dysfunctional or even conflicting conditions can be challenging even under regulated circumstances. But political tensions in Israel with recent peaks like the Gaza-operation in the summer of 2014 and a related anti-Arab arson attack on the Jewish-Arab Yad Be Yad School inevitably affected the social realities in the context that the group was working in. In Germany, we are currently experiencing xenophobic and Islamophobic protests, movements of unchanneled frustration that are being exploited by right wing groups. But on each side, the waves of solidarity with minorities, generated by a deeply democratic attitude towards our diverse societies, has shown us that political action doesn’t have to be formalized but expresses itself in many meaningful activities for social engagement, inclusion and co-determination. The conflicts thus reaffirm the actuality of the perspectives and intentions of the project. Our focus relies on not only providing tools for collective and transformative practices, but also emphasizing a mindset that considers inclusion, discourse and the ability to deal with each others’ differences in a respectful way. Our aim is to provide frameworks and tools that help situations of individual encounters, sharing of perspectives and productive debates to emerge.

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Participatory Design and the Hybrid City: The Living Lab Mehringplatz, Berlin, and the Project “Community Now? Conflicts, Interventions, New Publics”

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