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A master's thesis from Aalborg University
Book cover


Citizen inclusion in urban development projects

Term

4. term

Publication year

2020

Submitted on

Pages

148

Abstract

This thesis explores what constitutes the current citizen involvement in the urban development process of the center for Technology and Environment (TMC) in the municipality of Høje Taastrup (HTK). It also attempts to answer how an improved inclusion of the citizen perspective can be included in this process. The thesis is structured around IDEO’s design thinking (IDEO, 2012), and utalizen Research through design (Lenzholzer & Brown, 2016), the approach of Research caps (Tortzen, 2020) and a consideration of the principles of Service design thinking (Stickdorn & Schneider, 2011) to answer the research question. The thesis concludes that citizen involvement in TMC is currently defined by a risk-averse nature and outdated practices of urban design. This is accompanied by a mentality that involves TMC believing that their current process is without flaws. This thesis suggests that improvements to the current process can be made by introducing a new urban design, introducing democratic innovation practices by facilitating the method of staging in the form of a guide. This staging guide involves altering the line of visibility, moving the arena of urban design into the urban space where the end user is present, and engaging the citizens by not just allowing, but actively facilitating that they have a role on the stage through which their perspectives can influence urban development.