Socially innovative frameworks for socioeconomic resilience in urban design

The paper concentrates on tools and technologies used for participatory processes in the context of sustainable urban planning and design. The paper aim is to explore and present how some recent tools and technologies are used to inform policies, strategies or overarching concepts for engaging stakeholders to work toward a common vision for change in their community. The capabilities of Scotland’s Place Standard tool, BREEAM-Communities assessment tool and the Smart City technologies that enable co-production in urban planning and design are analysed through literature review. The Akitivniy Grazhdanin, a citizen engagement portal was established to devolve decision-making on aspects of Moscow’s smart city programme to citizens, provides a case study on the potential use of Smart City technologies to solicit citizens’ views on the city management and transformation. The paper discusses the impact of those tools and technologies in terms of supporting place-based collaboration, citizen engagement and participation, and their value to providing for an open and iterative design process. The research highlights the strengths and weaknesses of the analysed tools and technologies. In conclusion the paper makes recommendations as to how frameworks can best be shaped by such tools in order to achieve local ownership, and provide structure to a more inclusive development and sustainable urban design. Finally, the paper gives a high-level indication as to the next stage of planned research.