Digital public space: A comparative study of urban co-design interfaces

Abstract

Discussions about the participatory design for public space began to consolidate as a discipline in the 1960s, at the same time as civil rights debates and social justice were in focus. However, nowadays the reality of participation is permeated by a growing demand for online digital tools, which enable the citizen's interaction in the city design in a playful way. The aim of this article is to analyze a corpus of participatory digital interfaces aimed at the co-design of public spaces. The methodology is based on a comparative study of these platform's characteristics. The comparative analysis showed different design strategies and application characteristics of each one, and how they adapt to different participatory realities we can find.