Cities and regions all over the world are reinventing their positions; either driven by changes in national policies decentralizing governance or reacting to the reality of competition and collaboration on subjects such as economy, services or the changing number of inhabitants. This often originates from a desire or perceived necessity to respond to the changing ambitions of industries and citizens, as well as to global influences. 

Due to the complex and intricate nature of upcoming challenges, there’s a need to improve decision-making and policy processes just as much as there’s a need to service and renew spatial structures as demands are changing. One can state that changes in urban developments are driven by changes in population and their needs. Energy and sustainability issues have become a common consciousness deserving appropriate response in terms of policy and spatial planning. One can easily add to these examples.

DESIGN THINKING

These current challenges are becoming more complex and interwoven. Fed by a large number of sometimes contradictory and various ambitions they need to be addressed in a manner that justifies all involved. Changes are good. And by nature, changes are complex and difficult to implement. They are disruptive and evoke resistance. Change needs community, involvement, and commitment. The more complex a challenge is, the more actors or stakeholders need to be involved, and the more inadequate traditional means to development becomes.

One needs to build robust solutions, or better, robust environments and contexts. Solutions tend to address current situations incapable of adjusting to changing realities. It is exactly those rapidly changing realities – economical, political and social – that have led to the realization that innovation in governance and policymaking processes is crucial for a city to keep operating successfully. Intelligent ways to address and implement developments are needed. Intelligent in terms of creating efficient and economically viable solutions for both processes and implementations; intelligent as in being informed by relevant parties. And the design practice, in general, is by nature the discipline to tackle complex challenges.

STUDIO

Dutch Scenarios – RESILIENCE is a case study based research & design program. Students from the University of Kentucky took on the challenge to research global and national trend and ambitions related to creating resilient conditions. The city of Delft was taken as the object of projection and testing through developing potential interventions for the municipality of Delft. Current ambitions and trends involve the position of the city of Delft in the upcoming Region Metropole Rotterdam The Hague, the relation between the Delft University of Technology and the city itself and generic European and global challenges.

We did research the current condition of Delft concerning the region and in comparison to similar cities in Europe and the US. The main focus for the development of various scenarios was to enhance opportunities and ambitions and with a special interest to the built environment.

Although the subject of research is realistic and based on actual ambitions and challenges the Dutch Scenarios studio produced ‘academic’ results. It is not our aim to provide ‘ready-to-use’ solutions for either the municipality of Delft or other stakeholders. Our results need to be based on an open and suggestive approach and can be as extreme in terms of content and implementation conditions (financially / political / etc.) as the research and development of scenarios dictate. As much as the developed scenarios and proposed (spatial) implementations are grounded in actual conditions and political, economic or cultural ambitions they are meant to question and unveil exactly those premises.

The studio has been run as a design office. We worked as a team, producing results both individually and as a group. Our studio is located within a collective office with professional interior designers, architects, and artists. In principal worked five days a week for an eight week period during which we also visited sites, exhibitions, and lectures in the Netherlands and abroad.

Participants gained skills in managing complex and wide-ranging design related needs and ambitions, through developing inventories, (comparative) analyses and finally extreme scenarios that unveil otherwise hidden potential. As these processes depend heavily on communication, the development of information design (of infographic design) was an integral part of this studio.