Co-designing public spaces

In recent years grassroots initiatives related to public spaces increased defining a process of urban regeneration. It is led by communities of users, starting from their needs and mainly related to a combination of spaces and services. The transformation of the city is sometimes temporary, related to occasional events or to figure out some solutions (i.e urban furnishing, tactical urbanism) to prototype and test some scenarios and collect data and feedback to transform them into permanent deign outputs. Designers have usually the role of activators and facilitators, guiding the set of stakeholders in the process of definition of the solutions. This chapter analyzes and discusses co-design processes about the transformation of public spaces in the context of applied research activities driven by the authors. In particular, the focus is on the change of some key areas in the Nolo district in Milan and some spaces in primary and secondary schools in Milan, Turin and Padua led by the Polimi Desis Lab, a research team based at the Design department of the Politecnico di Milano.