Projects

SHIFTING THE BALANCE: DESIGN FOR EQUITABLE CITIES

Team
Anab Jain, Vytautas Jankauskas, Jon Ardern
Year
2016
Published in
The Pursuit of Legible Policy
Partners
Laboratorio para la Ciudad, Mexico City, Future Cities Catapult, Royal College of Art

dsc04141

 

Legible Policy is a collaboration between superflux, Laboratorio para la Ciudad at the Mayor’s Office Mexico City, John Lynch and Gyorgyi Galik from Future Cities Catapult, and Dan Lockton and Laura Ferrarello from the Royal College of Art, London. The project was supported by the Newton Fund.
The ambition of the project was twofold: a) To highlight the need for new political languages and urban solutions that could bring more transparency to the complex systems, and b) To research tactics and strategies that can induce citizen voice into policy making processes, and create a more equal footing between those in power and those who are meant to trust that power.

 

FIELD TRIP TO MEXICO CITY

After a period of research in London, identifying the similarities and the differences between the two cities’ approaches to policy making and urban innovation, we headed to Mexico City for a field trip. There we engaged in a series of dialogues, debates and workshops with resident artists, policy planners, technologists and political scientists in order to understand the complexities of the city’s governance structures and the areas in which local policy legibility could be improved.

Alongside the locked-room discussions, we embraced the intensely palpable energy of the city and its people: From the monumental architecture of the Distrito Federal and the palatial national post office to the wide roads bustling with colectivos, combos, micros and peseros. From the hustling sidewalks full of enterprising street vendors, taquerias and haggling customers to the scrumptious smells of sizzling tacos, tamales and quesadillas, fresh piles of deep fried grasshoppers and shrines to the Holy Dead.

 

From elaborately hand painted political graffiti of mutant creatures, to the symbolic pictorial system of the official bus and metro signs and freshly painted bright pink ‘Hello Kitty’ taxis. All of this, interspersed with rows and rows of policemen and women waiting around every city corner with shields in one hand, scrolling a smartphone in the other, within walking distance from handfuls of protestors voicing their anger over various issues.

 

This study led to group sessions on developing rapid sets of probes and hacks, designed to explore key issues such as government spending and accountability, citizen involvement in decision making, broader future visions of the city, and more. Some of the probes that teams proposed included a proposal for placing anonymous survey stations within government offices and civil service buildings to measure how much government staff actually knows about expenditures and responsibilities, and using traffic jams for polling citizens on various government decisions and new policies.

 

dsc04078

 

And some of the hacks included: modifying the current ecobici bikes to better suit a variety of users needs by adding accessories such as seats for children and baskets or small trailers to transport heavy objects, use parking meters to display information about ways money collected from parking fees is used, allowing users to understand clearly where the resources end up.

Based on our research, field trip and workshops, the entire team put together a book titled ‘The Pursuit of Legible Policy: Encouraging Agency and Participation in the Complex Systems, where each partner presented their insights and recommendations for making policy making more legible. Our essay “Shifting the Balance: Design for Equitable Cities”, focused on understanding the systemic rifts in governmental processes across both cities and proposed a set of design experiments to aid more agile and transparent policy making.

 

SYSTEMIC RIFTS IN POLICY-MAKING

In our essay, we argued that whilst policymaking generally has good intent, in reality citizens often feel alienated from the complex infrastructural processes and lack the appropriate knowledge and tools to engage with them. Specifically, we highlighted three key systemic rifts in policy making common to both metropolis:

  1. Lack of capacity and opportunity from local governments to adapt policies to local or changing circumstances.
  2. Discontent in the tokenism around ‘active’ citizen participation in governance processes.
  3. A deeply-rooted misalignment of future visions between the state and its citizens.

 

WHAT IS LEGIBILITY IN POLICY MAKING

Based on our research, we proposed our understanding of the word ‘legible’ as a term that is more than just making invisible or complex policy layers legible. “Legible policy making” should include:

 

  1. The creation of a shared, mutual trust-based understanding of governance and political processes, for all stakeholders, above all citizens.
  2. Making it easier to understand what influence and agency citizens have within the system.
  3. Creating tools and capacities that can help act on that agency
  4. Ensuring that citizen input becomes actionable through sustained dialogue and transparent feedback loops.

 

A LIBRARY OF DESIGN EXPERIMENTS

We then drew on our own research and design practice to suggest an exploratory set of experiments that are more profoundly grounded in actual practice, so that all stakeholders may gain greater trust in generating and implementing policies.

 

1. Political Ethnography Using Object-Oriented Design Research: The first experiment would focus on embodying political ethnography within policymaking. This form of ethnography, where unbiased third party actors study the direct inner workings of state actors, political institutions, and the ‘grey zones’ of clandestine political activity, could provide a deeper understanding of policy making processes, the evidence and intent behind decision-making, and potential implications of those decisions.

game2Superflux. Synbio Tarot Cards (2012)

 

mangala8Superflux. Mangala for All (2012)

 

2. Dissemination Tactics with Hacks and Probes: We propose the tactical dissemination of toolkits that could include analog low tech templates for flyers, posters, stickers and notices which could be filled in with key findings and placed on public noticeboards, cafes, libraries, town halls and pubs as well as digital tools and apps.  

i-wish-this-was-repairedCandy Chang. I Wish This Was (2012)

 

isea4Anab Jain. Yellow Chair Stories (2005)

 

3. Speculative Policymaking: We strongly believe that the practice of envisioning futures via speculative design can become a powerful vehicle for creating an open and editable policy for the future. It can pave the way for an iterative approach to participatory governance, where policies can be publicly versioned through collaborative visioning.

diy-cloud-hacking-webSuperflux. Power of 8 (2009)

 

img_8631Mexico City’s transportation bikes.

 

4. Context-sensitive Sense-making: Thoughtfully designed filtering and visualising methods can work effectively alongside traditional sense-making techniques to help policy makers pick weak signals around citizens aspirations and concerns and work towards a sensitive, ethical strategy for decision making.

 

5. Transparent Feedback Loops: When citizens who choose to volunteer their time achieve a sense of agency and ownership toward the activity, it is imperative that they be kept abreast of the translation of that activity into a policy, and know how their involvement aids in the final decision making processes.

 

CONCLUSION

This research project and resulting book became an opportunity for us to better define the direct relationship between speculative design and policy making, and we have since continued to follow up with numerous other partnerships and collaborations. We believe that by adopting the use of our proposed tools, policy makers would acknowledge the need for a policy making infrastructure that is more evenly distributed between the state, non-state actors and citizens.

The full book, including our essay, is available here.

 

Acknowledgments

Gabriella Gómez-Mont, Begoña Irazabal, Roberto Ascencio from Laboratorio Para la Ciudad, Dan Lockton and Laura Ferrarello from the Royal College of Art, John Lynch, Gyorgyi Galik, and Claire Mookerjee from the Future Cities Catapult.

SUPERFLUX

Somerset House Studios, London UK
hello@superflux.in
All rights reserved © 2017. No. 6601242

Web Design > SONIA DOMINGUEZ
Development > TOUTENPIXEL

We'd love to hear from you

New projects
Internships
General enquiries

Studio M48,
Somerset House Studios,
New Wing, Somerset House,
Strand, London, WC2R 1LA

Title By Date
From Active Hope to Tangible Realities: Interview with Anab Jain Superflux 04.12.2023
The Quiet Enchanting launches on the Strand Superflux 19.10.2023
Action Speaks Summit Now Open at New York Climate Week 2023 Superflux 21.09.2023
Radical Design For A World In Crisis in Noema Magazine Superflux 27.04.2023
Superflux featured in Design Week Superflux 17.03.2023
Announcing Superflux’s ambitious new initiative: CASCADE INQUIRY Superflux 10.01.2023
ANAB & JON RECEIVE THE ROYAL DESIGNER FOR INDUSTRY (RDI) AWARD 2022 Superflux 10.01.2023
SAFE: A Collection of Works Exploring Safer Futures Superflux 05.10.2022
Superflux Featured on BBC Radio 4 Anab 10.08.2022
SUBJECT TO CHANGE: Announcing Superflux’s first-ever solo exhibition at The DROOG Gallery Superflux 04.02.2022
Superflux’s new immersive installation opens at Museum of the Future, Dubai Superflux 23.02.2022
Design Studio of the Year Award 2021 Superflux 17.12.2021
A More Than Human Manifesto Superflux 17.12.2021
Superflux Interview in ICON Magazine Superflux 12.12.2021
“Dreamed-up Designs”: a Financial Times feature on Superflux Superflux 18.06.2021
Calling Creative Producers! Superflux 08.02.2021
‘Our Friends Electric’ acquired by the European Patent Office Anab 15.03.2021
Emerging Futures Grant from National Lottery Community Fund Superflux 16.11.2020
‘Standing on the Shoulders’ Podcast: On Plural Futures and Multi-Species Companionship Superflux 01.10.2020
Superflux Invited to La Biennale Di Venezia 2021 Superflux 03.07.2020
EU Horizon 2020 Grant for Superflux and Partners Superflux 19.06.2020
Experiments in Indoor Farming Superflux 08.06.2020
Calling for a More-Than-Human Politics Superflux 23.03.2020
Superflux Feature in ‘Feeling the Future’ Conference Superflux 24.06.2020
Spring in Flux Superflux 14.04.2020
Calling Creative Producers! Superflux 29.01.2020
Inviting Internship Applications Superflux 16.01.2020
Come Work With Us Superflux 01.10.2019
Stop Shouting Future, Start Doing It Anab 24.01.2019
2018 Highlights Superflux 21.12.2018
Instant Archetypes: A toolkit to imagine plural futures Superflux 01.11.2018
TED Talk: Why We Need To Imagine Different Futures Anab 19.06.2017
Cartographies of Imagination Anab 30.09.2018
Tackling the Ethical Challenges of Slippery Technology Anab 11.06.2018
AI, HUMANITARIAN FUTURES, AND MORE-THAN-HUMAN CENTRED DESIGN Superflux 08.06.2018
The Future Starts Here Superflux 29.05.2018
Studio News: Power, AI and Air Pollution Superflux 09.10.2017
Future(s) of Power Launch Event Anab 09.10.2017
BUGGY AIR AT DESIGN FRONTIERS Superflux 15.09.2017
Calling all comrades & collaborators! Superflux 14.09.2017
CAN SPECULATIVE EVIDENCE INFORM DECISION MAKING? Anab 31.05.2017
STUDIO NEWS: TED, MAPPING, FOOD COMPUTERS, AND THE FUTURE OF WORK. Superflux 21.04.2017
BACK TO THE FUTURE: WHAT WE DID IN 2016 Superflux 31.01.2017
REALITY CHECK: PRESENTING AT UNDP SUMMIT Jon 06.12.2016
MITIGATION OF SHOCK JOURNAL Jon 12.07.2016
STUDIO HAPPENINGS Anab 04.07.2016
PROFESSORSHIP AT THE UNIVERSITY OF APPLIED ARTS VIENNA Anab 28.06.2016
HIGHLIGHTS FROM 2015 Anab 30.12.2015
SUPERFLUX MAGAZINE, ISSUE 1. Anab 21.04.2015
THE DRONE AVIARY JOURNAL Anab 09.04.2015
IOT, DRONES AND SPACE PROBES: ALTERNATE NARRATIVES Anab 01.03.2015
AUTUMN NEWS Jon 08.11.2014
ASSISTIVE TECHNOLOGIES AND DESIGN: AN INTERVIEW WITH SARA HENDREN Anab 07.11.2014
A QUARTERLY UPDATE FROM THE STUDIO Anab 11.05.2014
IN THE LOOP: DESIGNING CONVERSATION WITH ALGORITHMS Superflux 04.04.2014
IOTA WINS NOMINET TRUST FUNDING Jon 25.10.2013
SAILING THE SEAS OF SUPERDENSITY: GUEST POST BY SCOTT SMITH Superflux 19.10.2013
DNA STORIES: GUEST POST BY CHRISTINA AGAPAKIS Superflux 30.09.2013
PRESS RELEASE: DYNAMIC GENETICS VS. MANN Jon 01.08.2013
AN INTRODUCTION TO INFRASTRUCTURE FICTION: GUEST POST BY PAUL GRAHAM RAVEN Superflux 24.06.2013
SUPERNEWS, VOL 1. Jon 08.04.2013