Designing for Social Justice. Unravelling potentials and limitations of research by design in transformative policy and co-creation processes to tackle the 21st century urban crises

Various 21st century global challenges manifest themselves as complex socio-spatial issues. Climate change, access to qualitative and affordable housing, renewable energy, sustainable mobility, and inclusive care are amongst the great challenges that affect and are impacted by the way the urban environment is planned and built. In the face of these challenges and to tackle the 21st urban crises, there is a growing interest in research by design. The future-oriented and prospective character, imaginative power and coalition making potential make research by design an important tool for placing complex and urgent issues on the political agenda and enabling societal change. A wide variety of actors taking part in government-led spatial planning processes, as well as in cultural, educational, professional, and organized civil society contexts have rediscovered research by design as a tool to invoke societal change. However, in the slipstream of urban crises a lot of interconnected social justice issues appear on the surface, often in an intensified form. The negative impacts of climate change, energy shortages, rising housing and rental prices, changing transportation options, and health care cuts are generally unevenly distributed. It remains a big challenge to incorporate the social justice perspective as an essential component of research by design. The general aim of the PhD research is to critically reflect on and test the way (various forms of) research by design can be used as a leverage for transformative policy and co-creation processes to tackle spatial and societal challenges related to the persistent housing problem, with particular attention to social justice. The critical reflection on the potential of research by design will be based on the review of (inter)national inspiring practices and cases, and the insights that will be developed during participatory action-research.