Experimental Co-Design with a Ludic Urban Community. The Safeguard of the Identity of Vale Do Anhangabaù as a Skateboarding Spot

The paper proposes a reflection on the role of experimental co-design methodologies in mediating between top-down and bottom-up forces that shape current urban public landscapes, and their ability to listen and ‘translate’ the voices of resident communities, allowing them to intervene and influence decision-making processes in the urban regeneration of emblematic places in the city. Specifically, we intend to reflect upon the dynamics of appropriation of public space as a result of certain ‘urban play’ practices, in particular skateboarding, as well as on the role of designers and administrations in involving stakeholders in a co-design process to include these practices in urban transformations. To this end, the recent and emblematic regeneration of Vale do Anhangabaù in Sao Paulo, Brasil, a symbolic place for the local skateboarding community, is analyzed as a paradigmatic case to highlight the complex and stratified field of interests, disputes, and struggles underlying and determining the transformations of contemporary metropolitan public spaces, as well as the role played by the discipline and practice of urban design in mediating and recomposing these often opposing drives. Moving from this particular case, the paper intends to highlight the relevance of the occurrence of unexpected events during an urban transformation process and to reflect on the construction phase as a crucial moment of negotiation and mediation between the stakeholding parts. The analyzed case is a very relevant and, at least partially, virtuous example of the application of a co-design methodology at the urban design scale, intended as a practice that promotes social sustainability of urban transformation by favoring greater social cohesion and granting participation of the public in the processes that give shape to the urban space. Lastly, the paper reflects on the differences between the ‘classic’ methods of participatory design in comparison to more recent and direct co-design strategies that take place during the construction phase, suggesting the possibility of including this kind of process in the general planning of this kind of urban interventions.