‘Dwellers as designers’ – untangling the politics and practices of co-design ‘from below’ through a Cape Town housing occupation

Abstract

Design has emerged as a powerful framework for governing emergent and resilient urban futures, attracting sustained attention from both scholars and practitioners. However, this ‘will to design’ often defaults to top-down, expert-led processes, overlooking the agentive design practices of marginalised urban inhabitants. This article contributes to a critical conversation between design studies and urban scholarship by untangling the politics and practices of ‘co-design “from below”’. We posit the concept of ‘dwellers as designers’, using an empirical study of a prominent housing occupation in Cape Town, South Africa. Through this case, we analyse how occupiers – often framed as recipients of design – are in fact critical designers themselves. Their everyday spatial practices, infrastructural reconfigurations and political negotiations constitute a form of co-creative urbanism. This analysis reveals how ‘co-design from below’ challenges dominant, exclusionary paradigms of urban governance. By foregrounding the occupiers’ lived expertise and reparative actions, the article demonstrates how these bottom-up practices are essential for forging more just, resilient and inclusive urban futures. It calls for a re-evaluation of who is considered a ‘designer’ and what counts as ‘design’ in contemporary urbanism.

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