The relationship between democracy and design has been the topic of significant discussion in the design community. It is also at the core of participatory design that relies on the principle of genuine participation. According to this, users are not mere informants but legitimate participants in the design process. A great deal of participatory design, however, is driven by instrumental logics rather than participatory and democratic principles. In analysing these power relations, science and technology studies (STS) provides the starting point to introduce the concepts of 'engineering an atmosphere' (i.e. the process) and 'engineered atmosphere' (i.e. the outcome). These concepts problematise the principles and modes of participatory design, highlighting the tensions between economic and social agendas and top-down and bottom-up interactions. This problematic can be shown in the way that new teachnologies are targeted at older populations, necessitating an interrogation of the processes underpirnning the design and development of technological products and devices. It is important to reflect on who is included and who is excluded from technological design and innovation, which is always, and necessarily so, a fluid process.
Il est généralement reconnu que la créativité et la capacité d’innovation sont les moteurs de la compétitivité, particulièrement là où les possibilités de diminution des coûts ont considérablement faiblies. L’économie a fait importants efforts pour endogénéiser des facteurs capables de renforcer ces moteurs. L’article traite de deux problématiques reliées à cette question : tout d’abord de l’obsolescence de l’approche cognitiviste à laquelle l’économie mainstream se réfère pour expliquer les relations entre connaissance et créativité et, inversement, du pouvoir heuristique d’une approche herméneutique ; ensuite des implications spatiales de cette approche en raison de sa nature fortement localisée. L’article suggère que de grandes économies d’agglomération ainsi que des effets cumulatifs se mettent en place engendrant de fortes disparités régionales, voire des divergences. L’étude du cas italien corrobore cette hypothèse et suggère également que les activités de la connaissance donnent lieu à de nouvelles formes de disparités régionales.
Facing the main historical realizations of the city and the main theorizations about it, Scott and Storper look for identifying its invariant character. By distinguish between issues that, while occurring in the city, originate elsewhere in the social realm and issues that are intrinsic to it, they point to the ‘urban land nexus’ as the city unifying explicative principle, which stems from the trade‐off between agglomeration economies and land shortage. I argue that this outcome lies on the confusion between the city and urban agglomeration at large and, ultimately, on the unresolved quarrel between structuralism and empiricism.
Il paper esamina se, nel passaggio alla società della conoscenza, esistono le condizioni per un recupero di legittimazione sociale da parte della pianificazione urbana e territoriale: condizioni che consistono nella convergenza tra le istanze etiche proprie di ogni intervento regolatore e il gioco degli interessi inerente al modello di sviluppo in atto. L'esame indica che vi è spazio per il formarsi di tale convergenza, considerato il carattere specificatamente locale dei processi dialogici di formazione della conoscenza che stanno alla base della creatività e dell'innovazione.
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