Participatory Design as a Tool for Sustainable Regional Development

Globalization changes our world too quick and regions cannot keep up. Copying mechanisms affect crafted products and architecture and create specific signs for each region. Understanding that, we can follow cultural concepts and transform them to fit the current era and sustain local identity within communities. Compared with evolution, community attachment as part of social sustainability has the same self-regulated mechanisms. The adaptation process can be achieved in different ways, but only few are truly sustainable.

To restore the sense of community and reconnect local people to their village at a deeper level, the participatory approach was tested. The process and tools well known from urban areas were applied in certain Slovak villages. As compared to participation in cities, in the rural environment, the process is more time-consuming. In theory, this should bring a result that lasts longer than that achieved by standard processes.

Methods proposed by us will have several outcomes like networking, open communication and, if successful, can be an inspiration for other villages and activists to adopt the approach. This time-demanding activity can help to support local people and show them how to coordinate themselves in the decision-making process. The bottom-up approach increases self-esteem and by place-making, small public intervention can help with communication with local municipalities. In this process, the designer acts as a facilitator of a multidisciplinary innovation project and must use own creativity to handle many challenges.