This seminar is intended for both design researchers/practitioners as well as civil servants and public administrators who are working with designers to stimulate participatory active citizenship in urban contexts. We will discuss if and how our projects – in which we aim to enable and strengthen active citizenship – could help to enrich the democratic discourse.

The conversation on design-based democracy started in Kolding during the Cumulus conference, continues in Rotterdam during the TRANSIT Conference “Learning for Change: a Journey through the Theory & Practice of Transformative Social Innovation”. I

In the face of a democracy in crisis, in all its forms, and convinced that democracy’s core principles are more valid today than ever, we propose a discussion around the following question: Can the experiences of participatory design in general, and the ones of design for social innovation in particular, help to update and upgrade the ideas and practices of democracy (and, specifically, those of participative democracy)? In order to start this discussion a scenario is proposed, i.e. a scenario of a collaborative, design-based democracy.