ABSTRACT
Participation has become an often meaningless buzzword associated with notions of empowerment and democratic values (Blundell-Jones, Petrescu, and Till, 2005, p.xiii). It is recurrently taken for granted that people want to participate in the making of their cities and to be actively involved in shaping their environments (Beebeejaun, 2016, p.7). In this chapter, the position that participation is effectively welcomed and desired by all is explored and reflected upon through the problematics of apathy and lack of engagement found in the participatory project Outros Espaços (Other Spaces) (2014-15), in Beja, Portugal. Outros Espaços was an initiative of Atelier Urban Nomads in collaboration with local authorities, local non-governmental organisations (NGOs), local residents’ association, and a local school. It is an illustrative case study where despite purportedly being a collective, collaborative participatory process, the participants were often reluctant to get involved in the transformation of their neighbourhood’s public spaces. Outros Espaços found that passivity, lack of engagement and even a certain level of apathy can be present in projects that intend to empower the citizens. Collaboration, in this case, did not exist, nor were the neighbourhood’s public spaces socially or spatially transformed in a long-lasting way. The meaning of success in this instance is questionable and this chapter presents a critique of the project’s process to reveal some of the pitfalls of architectural practices that seek to develop social agendas and asks why this lack of interest, and in some cases apathy, prevailed.
