ABSTRACT
Inner-city redevelopment processes are complex. They deal with both a physical as well as a functional transformation of a conjoint part of the city. It is about the construction of new real estate, infrastructure and public space while the area as a whole remains very much in use. Development and construction of these projects takes a long time and cannot be done by one entity on its own. In short, the complexity of inner-city redevelopment processes arises from the spatial as well as from the organizational context. Ambitions to turn these areas into multifunctional hotspots within the city are high, while the transformation itself means dealing with numerous stakeholders and restrictive environmental legislation and ensuring the continuation of transfer functions. In practice, we observe two starting points for these redevelopment initiatives. Initiators either start by commissioning the design of an alternative for the location or they start with an extended stakeholder analysis. Actors in the concept phase tend to cling for too long to one or the other approach. This creates problems. On the one hand, the design approach leads to a process of reacting to sketches, never arriving at a complete overview of stakeholders’ demands and wishes. The stakeholder analysis approach, on the other hand, may well lead to a non-realizable pile of ambitions. Both approaches result in an unsteady course of action and lower the chances of enriching the design solution. The authors propose a third way (Peek, 2006) that combines both approaches of design and stakeholder analysis with a participative design tool in order to intervene in the concept phase of the redevelopment process and contribute to a smoother process and the quality of the outcome. This chapter provides an overview of the literature on which both approaches are based and the background to the dynamic approach combining both. The design of the participative design tool and testing it are then described, followed by the results of those tests.
