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The challenge of time in community-based participatory design

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Abstract

Citizen participation is a valuable resource in redefining and democratizing urban space. In urban regeneration projects, it fosters engagement by the community and integration among different forms of city urbanization, such as formal and informal areas, i.e. slums. Despite the potentialities of participatory processes, usually the plurality of actors involved challenges in the development of projects. From this perspective, one of the most critical issues is the articulation of their actions in terms of time. Actually, the difference in background, role and motivation between the participating actors can result in temporal misfits that hinder the implementation of actions. Thus, this paper explores the temporal dimension of community-based participatory design projects. Through action research, undertaken in a Brazilian context, we found out three different types of temporal misfits that can occur in this kind of project. Reflecting on them using concepts from project management and participatory design theory, we identified four contextual time factors that have to be considered to deal with timing challenges and to strengthen this practice.

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Acknowledgments

The author Chiara Del Gaudio would like to thank CAPES, the funding research agency of the Brazilian Ministry of Education, for the PNPD/CAPES scholarship, a scholarship that is part of the CAPES Postdoctoral National Program.

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Correspondence to Chiara Del Gaudio.

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Del Gaudio, C., Franzato, C. & de Oliveira, A.J. The challenge of time in community-based participatory design. Urban Des Int 22, 113–126 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41289-016-0017-5

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