The Policy of Design: A Capabilities Approach

The freedom to participate in govern decision-making in relation to civic works is not necessarily being practiced, as reported by the Sydney Morning Herald in this article. The spirit of the Local Government Act is to open up local council meetings to the community (Part 1), but there has been discussion in Parliament as to whether this spirit is being violated by councils in the name of expediency.

It is commendable that Cr De Leau is interested in taking the matter of right of assembly, that is, whether the community can plan a protest on council land without the express written permission of council, to the High Court. It is worthy to note that there is no Australian constitutional guarantee for the right of assembly.

The Government of Tasmania released its Review of the Tasmanian Planning System. Like the State of NSW, Tasmania also has a Major Infrastructure Approvals Act 1999.

President Sarkozy announced in 2008 a project for Le Grand Paris to remake Paris. This news is hitting the UK and the involvement of UK architects to remake Paris, and, in particular, to unite the center of Paris with the Paris beyond the ‘peripherique’. Plans (not drawings) by the 10 architects invited to make submissions are available.

This project would make an excellent case study for citizens’ capability to design. President Sarkozy’s reputation and attitudes toward Paris’s working poor during his role as Interior Minister does not make me highly optimistic.

If you can read French, L’Express wrote about Le Grand Paris and has particularly interesting supplementary reports. The Senate Report makes for interesting reading, too.

Details of the architectural plans are slowly being released as of mid-March 2009. Lord Norman Foster revealed a plan for Hermitage Plaza. The site includes two spiraling glass towers, which “will establish a distinctive symbol for this new urban destination on the Paris skyline” and “a sustainable, high-density community” by providing “a hotel, spa, panoramic apartments, offices and serviced apartments, as well as shops at the base”. Foster claims that the plan will “the project will reinforce the regeneration of the riverfront.” If the idea of Le Grand Paris is for social and economic integration of the inner and outer parts of Paris, such a plan does not seem to consider the needs of the working poor and jobless, predominantly immigrant, communities who likely have no need for a spa and high-end boutiques.

We are writing a working paper on an instrument to measure citizens’ capability to design. To illustrate the application of the instrument, we apply it to the Sydney desalination project.

You can download a working copy of the paper.

The first journal article arising from this research project has been published in the journal Design Studies. The title of the paper is The policy of design: a capabilities approach. The citation for the paper is: Dong A (2008) The policy of design: a capabilities approach. Design Issues 24:76-87. doi:10.1162/desi.2008.24.4.76.

If you do not have a subscription to MIT Press journals, you may alternatively download the paper from this blog.

I live in Erskineville, and have noticed rather unsettling developments in the recent months.

First, the Water Delivery Alliance, part of the private consortium building the Sydney desalination plant in Kurnell, quietly opened its offices in a set of unused office space near the corner of Eve and Macdonald Streets. Residents of Erksineville have started receiving fliers such as the one notifying us about the tunneling and about a project information office.

The second has to to do with the local development plan. Erskineville is affected by the Ashmore Precinct project. I find it ironic that the development plan emphasizes “Building design and form with a focus on achieving design excellence, and retaining the character of the area;”. You see, the area right now is a lovely mix of light industry, warehouses, single family terrace homes, and multi-residential blocks. There is very little retail, for which all you need to do is walk up the street. From Figure 12 of the Ashmore Development Control Plan (DCP) there is very little light industry left! I know this is an indicative figure, and that nothing is finalized. Yet, one must wonder why the planner himself has not chosen to draw in the warehouses and light industry.

What are the expected consequences of this? First, the Sydney Water Alliance will tear up roads and buildings to bore the tunnel. This will rip out the light industry and warehouses and Sydney Water will be able to obtain these properties at very low prices. Who will come in? Developers to build relatively high density housing, since these will result in the maximum yield. No developer will come in to build new warehouse space! You simply cannot get enough financial yield.

Second, what can the citizens of Erskineville do about this? Absolutely nothing. Our right to due process is locked out because the desalination project is considered critical infrastructure. I suppose the long tentacles of the law means that all construction work related to this project is under the umbrella of critical infrastructure.

In terms of the Design Capability Set, both projects are low in Information and Participation and Authority is alarmingly absent.

Living on both sides of the Pacific with strongly differing attitudes toward citizen-driven initiatives, I am constantly reminded, however, that citizen participation does not automatically mean that the designed work will be better. An article in the San Francisco Chronicle discusses some of the failings of a citizen-driven initiative for urban planning in the Western South of Market (Western SoMA) area in San Francisco. The article makes it clear that citizen-driven urban planning is not a substitute for good governance, in-depth knowledge of urban planning theory and practice, and a clear set of public policy goals for the entire City and County of San Francisco, not just the local interests of one (voting) district.

I do find one interesting difference. Although I have not done a close analysis of these two Web sites, the aim of the content of the City of Sydney site on Urban Renewal and the City of San Francisco Western SoMA project is fairly clear. The main difference is whereas the City of Sydney site is about what the City is doing, the San Francisco site emphasizes what the people can do.

In terms of the Design Capability Set, what I see operating here (Western SoMA) is very strong Participation, Information and Authority, but weak Knowledge. My remedy: perhaps the City of San Francisco can run informal learning workshops on good urban planning practices, give people examples of urban planning solutions worldwide, etc.

While travelling in London, I had a chance to do my favorite morning routine in London, which is to read The Guardian while having a coffee at the Borough Market shop of Monmouth Coffee Company. In an article by Ian MacKinnon on August 15, 2008 titled Indonesia: Aceh villagers face homelessness again - in name of tsunami aid from US government, the journalist describes a highway reconstruction project financed by USAID which is being disputed by local villagers. The villagers claim that the project cuts through their existing villages and would like to have the highway relocated. The writer goes on to describe how USAID, having purchased the land for the highway, wants to see the highway proceed as planned. The tone of the article suggests intrangience on the part of USAID, given a quote by a liaision officer from Presbyterian Disaster Assistance in Aceh. The villagers’ position is also being supported by Yakkum Emergency Union (YEU).

It would be appropriate here for me to state my suspicion and bias against faith-based relief organizations such as Presbyterian Disaster Assistance.

I am not the first person to blog about this project. It is discussed by Jon Thompson in his blog Aid Worker Daily. Here, he brings up an interesting observation. He writes, “We observed rows and rows of houses that were totally abandoned and were told that there was so much housing available that some families had 3rd and 4th homes and they were renting out the spaces they were not living in.”

Could it be that the aid organizations overbuilt or over-promised to the local villagers? Could it be that that there is an underlying agenda to obtain compensation from USAID if USAID were unwilling to reroute the highway? Could it be that some “villagers” are just real-estate and property developers interested only in real-estate and property development and that in naming them as villagers, we then see them as “innocent” rather than as real-estate and property developers which we normally associate with, shall we say, “greed”?

I do not want to sound “anti-villagers” or to seem so cynical, but I think that if we are going to be fair about monitoring these types of situations, we should be open to acknowledging that corruption is a multi-directional process.

It should also be noted that the Web site for the Aceh Road/Bridge Reconstruction and Rehabilitation Project contains articles which are critical in the review of the project and stakeholder updates. That is rather refreshing. At least the information is available.

In the DCI instrument, there are a few questions which deal with the role of the media in the design of public infrastructure

• In practice, are there opportunities to participate in the design of civic work outside official channels such as through the media or ad-hoc citizen groups?
• Does the media actively encourage public participation in the design of civic works?

These questions may not be hard-hitting enough. In a recent article in The Guardian, there is an interview with a journalist in China who wrote about the Three Gorges project.

The journalist comments:

I came across the project in the mid-1980s when I was working for the Guangming Daily. We were told that no media in China could report on the Three Gorges Dam in a negative way because it was a political project that needed the whole nation’s support. I learnt for the first time about the potential ecological and archaeological nightmares the dam could cause when a friend and politician invited me to an internal meeting.

This is a good example of the role the media can/cannot play in supporting public participation and debate.

Somwrita, one our research assistants, recently told us about the Narmada Bachao Andolan, and their opposition to build very large dams along the Narmada River. The dams are being built by companies such as Sardar Sarovar Narmada Nigam, Ltd.

This is such a conflicting and complicated problem. Who will the dams directly benefit and who must, for lack of a better expression, “pay the price” for the benefit? The construction of the dams is intended, among other outcomes, to develop hydropower and ensure a more reliable water source for farm irrigation. Hydropower is generally considered one of the least polluting methods for the generation of electricity, and rural electrification is generally considered as an enabler of higher living standards. Given India’s rising population and changing eating habits associated with economic ascendancy, irrigation is likely to be needed to support more intensive farming. Yet, it is unfortunately the poorest and most marginalized who seem to be the victims of the improving (?) well-being of others.

Nearby, in Arugam Bay, Sri Lanka, a similar conflict is being played out. I learned about Arubam Bay from Naomi Klein’s recent book The Shock Doctrine. Arugam Bay was severely damaged by the tsunami of 2004. The fishermen who lived there not only had their boats washed away, which was the source of their livelihood, but also their homes. Unfortunately, Arugam Bay is also a beautiful and pristine beach, and a highly sought after place for ecotourists and surfers looking to escape the over traveled surfing hot spots dotting South East Asia. So, instead of helping the fishermen to rebuild, most of the effort has been on building new hotels to bring in hard currency from foreign tourists! The hoteliers, from small independent ones catering to the budget adventure tourist, one oddly named Arugam Bay Hilton to the multinational chains, don’t really seem to want the fishermen (in view of the hotels), unless it’s their colorful boats to lend authenticity to the location.

This brings me back to one of my original motivations for doing this project. I have wanted to label public infrastructure works according to the Design Capability Index (DCI), which is intended to characterize the public’s influence over initiatives and involvement in decisions on public works in a multidimensional way - that is, to go further beyond simplistic measures such as triple bottom line accounting. Actually, I wanted to go further, to label as many building projects as possible according to the DCI as you would label for energy efficiency (which is still contentious!). Is this hotel really of benefit to the people? In displacing the fishermen and giving them a job at the hotel, was this economic progress? There is an academic paper which is promoting tourism in tsunami reconstruction. In this paper, there is discussion of how the plan for the redevelopment of Arugam Bay “has been prepared under unusual circumstances to hastily meet an urgent necessity”. The fishermen were relocated inland, with a tourism belt in between the fishermen and the sea! The full report on disaster redevelopment from the World Bank is available to give more context to this specific issue. However, a more frank assessment of the quality of “relief work” is provided by The Tsunami Evaluation Coalition.

Actually, I wanted to go even further than that and watch (Design Watch) public works projects from the perspective of the citizens rather than the developers. These are listed in the Design Watch category of the blog.