What place for Design(ers)?

John Kaliski writes in the Harvard Design Magazine, "the planning discourses of everyday life and professional plans for the form of the metropolis gradually become one. “Everyday” people are asked to consume and form opinions about everything from large-scale infrastructural decisions to tot lot beautification. Information is posted online and citizens—particularly those that are obsessed—know that armed with this data they too can be experts. Even with the consequent focus on the local and the self-interested, this process nevertheless sets up the planner to play a key facilitation and brokering role. This is not easy given the microscopic viewpoint of much of the citizenry, but it is possible, even as it demands new planning practices and frameworks, in essence the construction of a “New Planning” for consensus building and decision-making."

Kaliski is patronizing about the viewpoints of the "citizenry" but nonetheless, he's right that designers do have a new role, as does design.

Landscape Magazine pulled together PPS and representatives from the landscape architecture community in Seattle to discuss the relevance of design in the revitalization of a derelict Seattle Park. Probably one of the first times the two sides went face to face.