Participatory Design and Howard Roark: The Story of the Detroit Collaborative Design Center

Abstract

Planners have often been criticized for expert-driven practice. “Professional planners, with their urgent need to act, move too quickly to models and inventories” and “tend to screen out the connections between the physical environment and its social meaning” (Tuan, 1977 and Appleyard 1979 in Mehrhoff, 1999, p. 61). Yet citizens perceive their communities as natural, economic and social entities, as well as spatial environments that are sources of delight, displeasure or despair (Mehrhoff, 1999). When processes of change are driven by experts, planning focuses too much on issues of land use and public finance, often ignoring environmental and design issues because they are difficult to quantify. When citizens are given an opportunity to engage in participatory planning and design, expert-driven planners are often at a loss as to how to proceed.