Designing Cities For All: RE-generation

Designing Cities for All: RE-generation is a two-year research and presentation programme (2023/2024). After exploring the concept of exclusion by design in the first two years of Designing Cities for All, now, the project focuses on the field of regenerative design: the design of products, services, systems and processes that lead to social and ecological recovery and that keep the systems healthy. How might we design for not just everyone, but for all living things? DCFA: RE-generation is a combination of theoretical and practical knowledge generation, through live public programmes, desk research and interviews, excursions, the DCFA Student Book Club and a university tour.

In the new series Designing Cities for All: RE-generation, DCFA delves into the subject of regenerative design during two years of creative, interactive, intersectional, participatory and practical programmes, and together with designers, professionals, students, storytellers, policymakers and other experts from many different disciplines.

Environment, social justice, economy – it’s become clear that our dominant systems are broken. In her 3-month DCFA Fellowship series on Regenerative Design, Singapore-based urbanist, strategist, curator and writer Sarah Ichioka dives deeper into the possibilities for systemic change. What promising alternative systems and regenerative practices are already emerging around the world? Who are taking the first steps towards these essential changes? And what is the role of design?

In this Designing Cities for All: RE-generation series In Common, DCFA Fellow Roberto Rocco (spatial planner and researcher at TU Delft) delves into the concept of ’the commons’ as a tool for re-generation from three dimensions: social, economic, and environmental. How can we learn to understand how they are intertwined and indissociable? And how do we use this knowledge to reshape our relationship with the planet, through bottom-up collective initiatives, joint responsibility, collective care, and action?

In this three-part Designing Cities for All: RE-generation series RE-imagining Borders , DCFA Fellows Joris Lechêne and Lucia Kula delve into the concept of made-up boundaries, borders and binaries, and their implications in the world. How does thinking in dualisms influence our public spaces, systems and (hi)stories? Where does the concept of the (literal or metaphorical) border originate from and who has the power to install and enforce them? And why is it so important to break away from this simplistic worldview?

Outside of our fellowship programmes, we organise evenings with speakers who have a message to share about how they understand inclusive and regenerative design.

In 2021/2022, Designing Cities for All (DCFA) explored the notion of exclusion by design – the conscious or unconscious exclusion of certain people, groups and other creatures through non-inclusive design. The role of design in the fields of Inclusion & Diversity, Architecture, Climate (Justice), (Digital) Democracy, Equity, Technology, (Health)care, Journalism, Participatory Design, Education and Decolonisation was mapped out and examined, together with an array of designers, artists, storytellers, policymakers, urban planners, scientists and other experts, including six DCFA Fellows.

One of the most important lessons gained during the 2021/2022 series is that to truly design ‘for all’, we have to widen our gaze beyond the human. Keeping systems afloat in which humankind can only thrive at the expense of other beings is just nor sustainable. Cities ‘for, by and with’ everyone are not enough – we need to aim for cities for, by and with all (living) things. Which is why in 2023/2024, DCFA is looking through the social and ecological lens of regenerative design.