Learning through cities: crafting frames for city design work

City development work often tackles invisible elements. The outcomes of development work might be centred on a physical place, a new service or program, but the elements of crafting frames for city design work is centred on people. Creating something for somebody. A discourse around developing problem situations with invisible elements that have the power to create tangible results.

The type of elements that revolve around people, beautifully centred around a quote from the book entitled The 99% Invisible city:

“So much of the conversation about design centres on beauty, but the more fascinating stories of the built world are about problem-solving, historical constraints, and human drama.” (Roman Mars & Kurt Kohlstedt in The 99% Invisible City)

There’s a focus within the work on weaving a deep understanding of the diverse needs of a community. It involves exploring themes within environments that cater to the variety of lifestyles, demographics, and cultural nuances of a city’s citizens. Invisible threads that can be part of creating something for somebody in the city.

When working on complex city problems, we need to craft frames to approach those problems in new ways. Within a complex city problem we might have a general idea of a desired outcome, and an outline of a problem to be solved. We often don’t know what are the elements to work with, how we’re going to do it, and the ideal outcome might be different than we initially thought in the beginning.

We can learn through cities by creating frames to craft the invisible elements of value.

Common language: when faced with complex problems, we need to build a common language.

Language goes beyond translating common terminologies, and is purely about building a common vocabulary focused on the local city culture. The culture within the city, lived by the staff as citizens of the city itself and linked with an understanding of the needs of city citizens.

Creating a glossary is one way of looking at this. What might be the common language of city development work, outlining the meanings and context of commonly used terms and making it easily accessible to all.

Using visual tools is another method. Maps and diagrams to help convey the meaning behind the language in a more accessible manner. Things that stand out visually and are memorable.

And updates. Regular updates to the common language based on how relevant it is within the dynamic nature of city development.

Common language as a building element that expresses city culture, tied to local communities, and helps foster development.

Across teams: city challenges are often complex, and need to be viewed from a systems point of view across teams. Cross-team engagement is the commonly used term, but we’re talking about crafting a frame of dialogue across teams.

City employees will know that it’s not enough to offer programs and services if people don’t know they exist or don’t know how to access them. At the same time, there’s often a feeling that there’s a lack of time to discuss across teams to make this happen. There’s several ways of doing this, such as interdisciplinary workshops, cross-functional task forces, and digital collaboration platforms. But dialogue across teams doesn’t necessarily happen unless there’s a bigger drive behind it.

One compact method of creating dialogue across teams are design charrettes. A design charrette is an intense period of design or planning activity often with a visual output. Involving the public in the creation and decision making makes it feel real. Dialogue and interaction are the crafting elements, and something is made.

Fostering a discourse across teams helps to build a common language and becomes a way of engaging with people in the organisation in a new way.

Investigations: how to take enough time to investigate a challenge before taking action?

Within city work there are challenges around feelings of not being innovative or agile enough to react with the speed of change and the evolving needs of citizens.

When using innovation methods with city work, the focus needs to be on coevolution. A constant iteration, analysis, synthesis and evaluation that’s aimed at developing, making things better, and continuous improvement. This can be broken down into smaller, manageable tasks and built as a program.

For example, there can be specific periods of the year where resources are reallocated to focus on in-depth investigations of complex issues. During these periods, teams can conduct comprehensive research, engage in collaboration across teams, and develop long-term solutions to address complex city problems.

Investigations as a frame helps build continuous improvement. It’s focused on taking the time to investigate a challenge, and save time later on by reducing the risk of time spent on the wrong scope.

Citizen-centric: citizen participation plays an essential role in the design of city development work.

Being citizen-centric means framing ways of engaging with communities, and empowering city staff with better tools and ways of working. Prototyping an iterative approach on a smaller scale, collecting feedback, and refining plans based on real-world experiences before full-scale implementation.

A key lens of being citizen-centric means connecting citizens with resources, and neighbourhoods in need of support. The materials of craft in these invisible elements are prioritising the needs, preferences and well-being of citizens within design development.

These are a few exploratory frames for crafting city design work. The word craft is used intentionally as a term to reference the work being focused on making life in the city better. There’s an outcome. It might be tangible in the form of urban planning, or it might be social in the form of new services and programs. The craft is in understanding the invisible elements of life within a city to design with.

There’s often a murkiness in clarity on how to create the best outcomes for the variety of communities and citizens within cities. The unknowns lead to a process of creative exploration. Signalling an issue in society and seeking interest from a group of people to partner with in an open process. A quest, to shape questions that should be asked.

Learning through cities is an urge to consider a situation, imagine a better scenario, and create an improved situation. Creating something for somebody. With results which might not be immediately providing solutions to a specific problem, but shows the possibilities and provides a map of the possibilities to get there. Crafting one city design frame at a time.