Browsing by Author "Abrassart, Christophe"

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    Building urban futures through an exploratory project: how can innovative design approaches be used to regenerate urban planning routines?
    (AESOP, 2023) Lavoie, Nicolas; Abrassart, Christophe; Scherrer, Franck
    Technological change and emerging social concerns signal the advent of new economic innovations and social inclusion challenges for cities, in addition to the transition to an ecological and smart society. These changes raise questions about urban planners’ routines, which may need to be reviewed. They clearly call for a review of planning processes, especially in urban projects, in order to explore the potential of new paradigms. Some private and public companies have responded to this challenge, with convincing results, by developing tools based on innovative design theories. One of these methodological tools, Definition-Knowledge-Concept-Proposition (DKCP), was used to regenerate the range of planning options of an urban district in Montreal, Canada. Elected officials wanted to adopt a planning vision for the next 20 years. Some observations emerge from the use of the DKCP method: 1) the introduction of a necessary “deterritorialization” at the beginning of the process (failing this, spatial constraints act as cognitive fixations, limiting expansive thinking); 2) disciplinary decompartmentalization, in order to integrate a diverse range of knowledge and disciplines (engineering, health sciences, arts, agribusiness, etc.), to rethink the identity of projects and develop new routines among planners.
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    ItemOpen Access
    Imagining the City of Tomorrow Through Foresight and Innovative Design: Towards the Regeneration of Urban Planning Routines?
    (AESOP, 2021) Lavoie, Nicolas; Abrassart, Christophe; Scherrer, Franck
    Ecological and digital transitions alongside concerns over social inequalities have signalled the advent of complex new challenges for contemporary cities. These challenges raise issues pertaining to the dynamic capability of urban planners: more specifically, their ability to revise their tools and planning routines in urban projects. New paradigms of collective action for the transition towards innovative cities have been developed in large organisations. European companies, especially in public transportation, have developed such tools based on innovative design theories. One of these methodological tools, the Definition-Knowledge-Concept-Proposition (DKCP) process, was used to generate a new range of planning options for an urban district in Montreal, Canada. For many municipal organisations, the formulation of innovative ideas only concerns one stage of the process, represented by the ‘P’ phase. However, innovative routines should rather include the earlier phases of identifying the scope of possible innovations, the search for intriguing knowledge and disruptive design activities. The desire to tackle the complex challenges of 21st century cities has led to a new professional identity: the ‘innovative urban planner’.