Abstract
This paper shares insights from the Città-IN project, a one-year participatory research initiative in San Siro, Milan, a diverse and fragile public housing neighbourhood. The project explored how families with migratory backgrounds, especially mothers, access school-related public services. Being situated in Off Campus San Siro, a living lab of Polite cnico di Milano, we engaged with community members, informal women’s groups, service providers, and local actors. Using both formal and informal methods, we uncovered barriers such as language, digital systems, and bureaucratic complexity. We reflect on the challenges of working in over-researched areas, the emotional and ethical tensions we faced, and the importance of cultural sensitivity and trust-building. One key outcome was a co-created handbook to support access to school services, now in use by local Italian language associations. More broadly, the has been an opportunity to rethink how participatory design is practiced in vulnerable contexts. This paper contributes to the ongoing conversation about participatory research by focusing on the realities of doing inclusive work in complex settings, and by calling for more ethical, situated, and reflective approaches to design in urban communities.
Keywords
Participatory design; Ethics; Relationships; Social innovation; Research
DOI
https://doi.org/10.21606/iasdr.2025.865
Citation
Bergaoui, N.,and Galluzzo, L.(2025) Reflections on participation in fragile urban contexts: the case of città-IN research project, in Chang, C.-Y., and Hsu, Y. (eds.), IASDR 2025: Design Next, 02-05 December, Taiwan. https://doi.org/10.21606/iasdr.2025.865
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
Conference Track
Track 10 - Design Practices & Impacts
Reflections on participation in fragile urban contexts: the case of città-IN research project
This paper shares insights from the Città-IN project, a one-year participatory research initiative in San Siro, Milan, a diverse and fragile public housing neighbourhood. The project explored how families with migratory backgrounds, especially mothers, access school-related public services. Being situated in Off Campus San Siro, a living lab of Polite cnico di Milano, we engaged with community members, informal women’s groups, service providers, and local actors. Using both formal and informal methods, we uncovered barriers such as language, digital systems, and bureaucratic complexity. We reflect on the challenges of working in over-researched areas, the emotional and ethical tensions we faced, and the importance of cultural sensitivity and trust-building. One key outcome was a co-created handbook to support access to school services, now in use by local Italian language associations. More broadly, the has been an opportunity to rethink how participatory design is practiced in vulnerable contexts. This paper contributes to the ongoing conversation about participatory research by focusing on the realities of doing inclusive work in complex settings, and by calling for more ethical, situated, and reflective approaches to design in urban communities.