Two weeks ago I returned from hosting a masterclass at the Faculty of Architecture and Urban Planning of Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok, Thailand. The topic of the masterclass was ‘The City as Service’. The attendees were 40 Master of Urban Strategy and Urban Architecture students from Thailand, Indonesia, Myanmar, Sri Lanka, Philippines, Canada, Nigeria and China. The area we studied was the Suang Luang Samyaan area, right next to the Chula campus, with its history of Chinese merchants, shop houses, famous street food and recent (not vey successful) urban transformations.
Throughout the week I’ve been sharing my experiences from the past years of applying service design, customer experience and design led innovation practices onto urban design challenges in cities across the globe.
On day 1 we’ve looked at how to understand given urban transformation strategies from a human perspective. Seeing politics and policies, development strategies and transformation agendas through a human lens. What does policy mean and look like to the men and women in the street? One group analyzed Chulalongkorn’s development vision for the area and concluded that in order for the university’s participation strategy to be effective, community ties should be strengthened first.
On day 2 we’ve looked at how insight and design research can help understand street level human motivations and barriers to change and how to deeply empathize with a multitude of stakeholders, human as well as non human. The students went to interview people in the Suang Luang Samyaan area to get a real feel for the emotions, struggles and hopes in this transformation area. They all came back with lovely street interviews and beautiful insights into the lives of the people living, working and visiting there.
We’ve then looked at the tools to bring those insights to life and make stakeholders adopt them in development processes. We looked at tools such as typologies, personas and day in the life scenarios. We practiced these tools on the afternoon of day 2. One group studied the ties between the blue collar and white collar communities and made personas that represented different ways of integration and building equity.
On day 3 we’ve looked at the crucial role of vision in urban development. I’ve urged the students to not rely on research data alone but also develop an opinion, a will, a dream about a better city. We practiced to formulate this vision in such a way that stakeholders, investors and clients could be engaged and nudged to see the human perspective and to see opportunities where first they saw only complexity, adversity and dilemmas.
Also on day 3 we’ve looked at how to create a service and experience based urban program. Also we discussed working with existing infrastructure and physical assets to make the most out of existing investment and to intervene lightly. The students practiced programming a mixed use experience portfolio that answered the strategic brief, the needs and drivers of the community and the vision of the urban designers and architects at work on the site.
We’ve then explored how to design signature experiences that exemplify this program and how to map those experiences onto the site. This is where journey maps and urban maps merge into 3d experience flows. It was a joy to see the students apply this technique on the 4th day.
Finally I challenged the students to design the back stage: what capabilities, staff roles, technology, infrastructure and governance would be required to bring their imagined program and signature experiences to life? And what transition strategy would engage and involve stakeholders to move from the current to the desired situation with the right level of commitment? One group for example wanted to turn the district into a co-creation and innovation hub, and in order to do so set up a co-creation process with existing tenants, students and entrepreneurs.
The 5th day was a joy to behold: the students presented their work in the beautiful library of the faculty of architecture and urban planning, for an audience of teachers, guest lecturers and fellow students. Their stories were filled with ambition, spiced with great ideas and supported by inspiring research.
It was an honor for me to share my approach to urban experience design with these great students and I hope to be invited back many times! If the future of cities lies in the hands of this new generation of urban planners, I have high hopes for the places where my children’s children will grow up.
A big thank you to Nattapong Punnoi, Supapim Gajaseni, Napong Rakkhaphan and Thanicha Niyomwan who made this week possible, and MQDC – Magnolia Quality Development Corporation, Marciano Birjmohun and the Creative Lab team Kath Vasinee Saeng-Uraiporn, Noppadol Weerakitti, Chaiyong Ratana-Angkura, and Wip Vinyaratn for opening up the magical world of Thai urban development to me 🙏🏼
