Exploring the Collaborative Urban Design Process based on Design Thinking

Introduction: Urban design as an evolutionary, multidimensional, and context-oriented process is the ground of multifaceted interactions of tendencies that shape the relationship between humans and the built environment in the public sphere over time. Also, this field derives the legitimacy of its theories from various intellectual roots and professional practices. Therefore, it is affected by a wide range of constraints, multiplicity of stakeholders, and complexities of making decisions in regard to the process of design. Some find dissatisfaction with the multiplicity of urban design due to its ambiguity, and some see it as a subset of a larger group such as the political economy of space, urban studies, urban planning, landscape design, sustainability, and architecture. Urban design requires a kind of interdisciplinary collaboration that the stakeholders in the position of design professionals, managers, investors, and space users can reach a common understanding of their activities. This common understanding comes about through the integration of science and methods in an integrated process. On the other hand, creativity is an integral part of the plan production process in urban design. Interpersonal creativity in this design process can be realized by creating a platform for the presence of creative people and creating shared creativity in an interactive way. This platform requires a collaborative design process; But currently, the plan production stage in urban design is often done in a partial and separate way by designers and without meaningful collaboration of other stakeholders. Meanwhile, the design production stage is a multi-dimensional, multi-level, and multi-factor stage. Urban design has been defined in the theoretical literature as a collaborative and transdisciplinary process for shaping the physical environment. In practice, however, the stage of the creation of idea and idea generation is led separately and in part only by the designer.  Therefore, no significant interaction with the other stakeholders is done. For example, in the Shahid Nawab Safavid Highway project in Tehran, the urban authority's power in preparing and implementing the plan by relying on municipal support, implementing the plan based on the pre-determined and totally inflexible plan, limited public participation, limited choice, a linear process, and lack of the intervention of the stakeholders shows the insufficient process. Thus, the design product is created with minimal interaction and with the " Elitism " and "design black box" approach. This is while the stage of creating an idea is itself a multi-dimensional, multi-level, and multi-factor stage. The purpose of this research is to provide a conceptual framework for creating a collaborative design process at the idea generation stage in the urban design process. For this purpose, in this research, an attempt is made to answer the question of what components are there in the realization of collaborative urban design in the plan production stage.   Considering the creative nature of design, how can the design production stage in the urban design process be formed with a scientific approach based on the interaction and collaboration between stakeholders? Also, in the case study, according to the nature of collaborative urban design, the question is answered, how the proposed process can be operationalized in a research case study? The purpose of this research is to provide a conceptual framework for the realization of the collaborative design process in the design production stage in urban design.
Methodology: Quantitative and qualitative analysis methods have been used in this research. First, using the qualitative analysis method and the content analysis method in the creative/rational process of urban design, indicators, and components were extracted to compile the framework. These components include: diversity of stakeholders; limiting the number of stakeholders; power networking; validating the conversation; making collaboration meaningful; mutual learning; divergence of the discovery process; convergence of the problem-solving process; interactive learning; toolbox application; test and risk.
Results: The results suggest the collaborative design process as a series of cycles of conceptualization, ideation, solution presentation, and evaluation as a result of the forces of power, which are networked in a spatial relationship with the collaboration of stakeholders. From the overlap of the design thinking process as a creative arm and collaborative rationality as a rational arm, the collaborative design process is formed in 8 steps. Each step of this process has interactive feedback that is revised by asking questions in case of a lack of informed consensus building.
Discussion: In the proposed process Power is formed from the collaboration of interaction and mutual learning (learning through interaction), which can be considered the center of the sphere, which forms the cycle of interaction of stakeholders in one spatial dimension and the production cycle of design in another dimension.  Wherever the power of interaction and learning during the process is stronger on the design production cycle, the product of the design is driven to that superior power.
Conclusion: The proposed collaborative design process is proposed in 8 steps with criteria and sub-criteria. It needs to be implemented in a networked and integrated system in a set of data and hybrid methods and the details can be studied in another study.