History
From the 1960s onwards there was a growing demand for greater consideration of community opinions in major decision-making. In Australia many people believed that they were not being planned ‘for’ but planned ‘at’. (Nichols 2009). A lack of consultation made the planning system seem paternalistic and without proper consideration of how changes to the built environment effected its primary users. In Britain ‘the idea that the public should participate was first raised in 1965’ (Taylor, 1998, p. 86). However the level of participation is an important issue. At a minimum public workshops and hearings have now been included in almost every planning endeavour. (Wheeler, 2004, p. 46) Yet this level of consultation can simply mean information about change without detailed participation. Involvement that ‘recognises an active part in plan making’ (Taylor, 1998, p. 86) has not always been straightforward to achieve. Participatory design has attempted to create a platform for active participation in the design process, for end users.
Read more about this topic: Participatory Design
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“Throughout the history of commercial life nobody has ever quite liked the commission man. His function is too vague, his presence always seems one too many, his profit looks too easy, and even when you admit that he has a necessary function, you feel that this function is, as it were, a personification of something that in an ethical society would not need to exist. If people could deal with one another honestly, they would not need agents.”
—Raymond Chandler (1888–1959)
“There is one great fact, characteristic of this our nineteenth century, a fact which no party dares deny. On the one hand, there have started into life industrial and scientific forces which no epoch of former human history had ever suspected. On the other hand, there exist symptoms of decay, far surpassing the horrors recorded of the latter times of the Roman empire. In our days everything seems pregnant with its contrary.”
—Karl Marx (1818–1883)