Akademik Veri Yönetim Sistemi
PLANLAMA-PLANNING, cilt.32, sa.2, ss.312-328, 2022 (ESCI)
Participatory design process includes practices that enable all segments of society to participate in decision-making about design, development, and transformation of their environment. Within such democratic environment, planning and design stages are conducted by combining the knowledge, skills and resources of professional architects, urban planners, designers, and local communities. In participatory processes, the interaction between different actors provides a multi-dimensional structure, and the universities have an important role as objective actors to ensure actual contributions in terms of effective participation. Ladder metaphor for citizen participation in design process defines the roles of the stakeholders and the situations in which the participatory approaches are experienced. Abovementioned ladder of participation includes practices in different scales and scopes in different geographies. Accordingly, it also represents and discusses wide range of experience levels in-between symbolic participation (tokenism) and actual participation. In Turkey, participatory planning and design practices undoubtedly reflect the national circumstances, and different approaches emerge in terms of participatory design. In recent years, participatory design practices, in which the universities are included as objective actors, began to gain importance in Turkey. However, these experiences do not establish a firm ground in terms of participatory practices conducted within the scope of formal education. In this context, a case study was developed to redesign Bahcelievler National Garden in cooperation with Istanbul Kultur University Department of Architecture and Bahcelievler Municipality, and the findings were evaluated within the scope of ladder of participation. This study consists of three stages and concluded with a practice in-between non-participation and symbolic participation as a consequence of the pandemic and hesitations of the local government.