Participatory
Design, the Spirit of Place, and the Pitfalls of Professionalism:
Evaluation of the Town Center Design Process in Caspar, California |
| This case study evaluates the citizen participation process used in the design of a town center for Caspar, California, a five-hundred person community on California’s Mendocino County coast. This essay considers participatory design as a method for bridging the difference between the local and the global, between the worldview of residents – who often have a rooted, particular perspective that stems from and contributes to the local sense of place – and landscape designers – who often live elsewhere and tend to have a more detached, abstract perspective. Participatory techniques that widened, and that narrowed, this divide are identified. |