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Summary
The infrastructures of everyday life shape how we live together, and what we're about. They might be housing or transit, wifi or civic apps, playgrounds or forests, streets or markets, libraries or health services, participation processes or parking spaces, energy grids or e-bikes. All of these things are designed, of course, though often by disparate design disciplines that have rarely collaborated coherently, and often without integrated or coherent approach to wider governance, either. And all have assumptions, beliefs or motivations embedded within them. Over the last decade, Dan has been helping shape the practice of strategic design, as an integrated, holistic approach to shared societal challenges, By sharing some of his recent work at Vinnova, the Swedish government’s innovation agency, as well as elsewhere, Dan will describe what it might mean to reorient around social progress, climate resilience and public health, rather than unequal economic growth, poor health, social injustices and environmental degradation. The work suggests various 'battles' for the infrastructures of everyday life, a genuine engagement with the technologies around us, and with new ways of thinking and acting about public and civic sensibilities and structures, participation and practices. Unpacking his concept of ‘dark matter’ in this context, and drawing from multiple projects, Dan shows how traditional lenses of design — from architecture to interaction design — might be trained on these big picture challenges. Recently appointed Director of the Melbourne School of Design, the graduate school in the Faculty of Architecture, Building and Planning at the University of Melbourne, Dan draws from his wide-ranging career in design leadership roles at the Swedish government's innovation agency in Stockholm, Arup in Sydney and London, the UK government's Future Cities Catapult, the Finnish Innovation Fund, Monocle magazine, and the BBC, roaming across interaction design, service design, architecture and urban design — and ultimately strategic design.
Key Insights
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Historical urban design catered to social life, but car dominance displaced that, as seen in Sweden’s Inquira.
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Strategic design involves asking deep questions about the purpose and future of places before choosing technologies or interventions.
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Public-private collaboration and data sharing, exemplified by Oslo’s bike-sharing scheme, enable more integrated, socially beneficial urban services.
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Design must consider systemic ripple effects rather than isolated, tactical fixes to effectively address complex challenges like traffic congestion or pandemics.
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Co-design with residents, especially children, fosters solutions more aligned with community needs and creates stronger local ownership.
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Existing infrastructure, like streets, can be leveraged using modular, flexible design elements to transform urban environments incrementally and scalably.
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Governance structures and laws, such as parking space regulations, are critical levers for scalable urban transformation.
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Biodiversity and nature integration in city design improves health and social fabric, linking human and non-human wellbeing.
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Urban design must embrace ongoing maintenance and adaptability rather than creating permanent, unchangeable structures.
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Indigenous knowledge and multi-scale systems thinking improve our ability to design interconnected and resilient urban ecosystems.
Notable Quotes
"What is this place for? What is a museum in the 21st century? What is a campus for somebody like Google?"
"The street used to be full of social life and conviviality before cars took over."
"Madeline Albright said we are taking 21st century challenges, evaluating them with 20th century ideas and responding with 19th century tools."
"Air conditioning doesn’t cool the world; it just moves heat from inside to outside and increases overall temperature."
"Strategic design is what you do when you don’t know what to do, or when there’s nothing to do."
"If we want to produce a street that supports social fabric and biodiversity, we need multiple stakeholders around the table."
"Kids are better architects of their own streets than prime ministers because it’s their street."
"Traffic planners design to reduce maintenance, but cities need increased maintenance as ongoing care."
"Designing streets is less about endings and more like gardening: beginnings, continual cultivation, and adaptation."
"Indigenous Australians have practiced interconnected multi-scale design for 60,000 years, informing resilient ecosystems."
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