Abstract
As local shops are increasingly reimagined as commons in urban contexts, new stakeholder dynamics emerge that require careful coordination and conflict prevention. Unlike traditional customer participation models, ‘local shop commons’ involves shared ownership and governance among proprietors, commoners, and customers. The involvement of stakeholders with very different needs often lead to conflicts arising from mismatched expectations, overlapping roles, and competing goals. This study explores the potential of roleplaying as an effective method for identifying and resolving context-specific conflicts in the co-creation of a local shop commons.. Participants developed fictional personas, enacted conflict scenarios in a simulated shop, and iteratively created solutions. Analysis of workshop data revealed three preventive roles of role-play: (1) uncovering stakeholders’ non- negotiables through emotional improvisation, (2) discovering spatial or behavioral conflict triggers through embodied rehearsal, and (3) calibrating thresholds for resource co-management by scripting detailed agreements. These roles allowed participants to identify latent tensions and co-develop solutions grounded in actual interactions. However, role-playing can be burdensome or impractical in real-world settings. To address this, the study proposes facilitation strategies that emulate the benefits of role-play—such as visualizing emotional cues, prototyping spatial conditions, and generating simulated conflict scenes using AI. By turning conflict into a productive design challenge, role-playing and its alternatives offer valuable methods for facilitating inclusive and sustainable commons governance in local shops.
Keywords
Local Shop Commons; Role-playing; Social Conflicts; Co-design
DOI
https://doi.org/10.21606/iasdr.2025.1083
Citation
Ryu, Y., Woo, E., Yoon, S.,and Nam, K.(2025) Look Who's Quarrelling: How Role-Playing Can Address Social Conflicts in Local Shop Commons, in Chang, C.-Y., and Hsu, Y. (eds.), IASDR 2025: Design Next, 02-05 December, Taiwan. https://doi.org/10.21606/iasdr.2025.1083
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
Conference Track
Track 10 - Design Practices & Impacts
Look Who's Quarrelling: How Role-Playing Can Address Social Conflicts in Local Shop Commons
As local shops are increasingly reimagined as commons in urban contexts, new stakeholder dynamics emerge that require careful coordination and conflict prevention. Unlike traditional customer participation models, ‘local shop commons’ involves shared ownership and governance among proprietors, commoners, and customers. The involvement of stakeholders with very different needs often lead to conflicts arising from mismatched expectations, overlapping roles, and competing goals. This study explores the potential of roleplaying as an effective method for identifying and resolving context-specific conflicts in the co-creation of a local shop commons.. Participants developed fictional personas, enacted conflict scenarios in a simulated shop, and iteratively created solutions. Analysis of workshop data revealed three preventive roles of role-play: (1) uncovering stakeholders’ non- negotiables through emotional improvisation, (2) discovering spatial or behavioral conflict triggers through embodied rehearsal, and (3) calibrating thresholds for resource co-management by scripting detailed agreements. These roles allowed participants to identify latent tensions and co-develop solutions grounded in actual interactions. However, role-playing can be burdensome or impractical in real-world settings. To address this, the study proposes facilitation strategies that emulate the benefits of role-play—such as visualizing emotional cues, prototyping spatial conditions, and generating simulated conflict scenes using AI. By turning conflict into a productive design challenge, role-playing and its alternatives offer valuable methods for facilitating inclusive and sustainable commons governance in local shops.