{"id":32022,"date":"2019-07-26T09:20:45","date_gmt":"2019-07-26T13:20:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thenatureofcities.com\/?p=32022"},"modified":"2019-07-26T09:20:52","modified_gmt":"2019-07-26T13:20:52","slug":"were-not-solving-wicked-challenges-through-design-and-science-is-that-ok","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thenatureofcities.com\/TNOC\/2019\/07\/26\/were-not-solving-wicked-challenges-through-design-and-science-is-that-ok\/","title":{"rendered":"We\u2019re Not \u201cSolving\u201d Wicked Challenges through Design and Science. Is That Ok?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
When it comes to addressing wicked challenges, designers, policy makers and scientists alike should challenge themselves to work more synthetically to frame built works as a mode of hypothesis testing that feeds larger, more generalizable insights. Staging small scale, safe-to-fail interventions as \u201cexperiments\u201d is a way forward.<\/blockquote><\/figure>Many of us are drawn to the process and potential of transdisciplinary projects through a desire to deepen the scope and impact of our work. Though landscape architects and planning practitioners claim to be capable of achieving socio-ecological impact, their proposals and built projects too often lack necessary grounding in solid science. Conversely, many modes of academic research can lack immediate and relevant applications in the world. How this divide between design and science might be more effectively bridged, is a topic of frequent debate and discussion within praxis as well as here at TNOC. (Recent notable efforts from Philip Silva<\/a>, Ana Faggi<\/a>, Timon McPhearson<\/a>, and Jason King<\/a>, among others; and was the key organizing principal of the recent TNOC Summit<\/a>.) <\/p>\n\n\n\n
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Adapted by Daniel Phillips from Cedric Price\u2019s \u201cCity as an Egg\u201d diagrammatic analogy<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

A recent fiery piece by Billy Flemming in Places Journal entitled Design and the Green New Deal<\/a>, seems to have similarly struck a deep and resonant chord within the discourse of landscape architecture, arguing that the discipline\u2019s very reason for being<\/em> warrants a timely re-examination. Indeed, it serves as a call to action for all of us who hope to make meaningful change in the world through our research and practice: To think bigger, get political, and offer our skill sets and capacities to the pressing issues of the day. Polemics like these form a gathering recognition that many responses to issues like climate change, environmental justice, and urban resilience will inevitably find expression in spatial projects throughout the landscapes we occupy. Yet these challenges are all arguably \u201cwicked\u201d in nature. So how should they be approached?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The notion of \u201cwicked challenges\u201d, often attributed to the work of Rittel and Webber (1973)<\/a> forms an important heuristic device around which many contemporary transdisciplinary projects have orbited. Wicked challenges are framed in distinction to challenges that could be labeled \u201csimple\u201d and \u201ccomplex\u201d. Whereas simple challenges (e.g., filling a cavity in a tooth) are those in which both the question and answer are well understood, complex challenges (e.g., landing a man on mars) are those which the question is understood but not the answer is not yet known. Wicked problems (e.g., Brexit, climate change, addressing the urban stream syndrome) are defined by uncertainties on both sides, and therefore rely heavily on the ways in which the challenge is effectively framed<\/em>. Wicked challenges are further characterized by the fact that they have \u201cno stopping rule\u201d\u2014that is, every proximate answer leads to more questions\u2014and that every wicked problem can be said to be a \u201csymptom of another problem\u201d (Farrell and Hooker 2013, 684\u2013687)<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Addressing wicked problems therefore requires us to develop new tools and frameworks for approaching them. The Design-in-Science (DIS) framework, originally formulated by Joan Iverson Nassauer and Paul Opdam offers such a tool. Referenced in a landmark paper from 2008, this approach calls for increased transdisciplinary research between landscape ecology and landscape planning. Their goal, arguably, was to find ways to reconcile the agency<\/em> of design with the authority<\/em> of science to better address wicked challenges that occur within human dominated ecosystems. The DIS framework has since become a prominent node in a constellation of similar approaches referred to variously as \u201cparticipatory landscape planning\u201d (Hulse, Branscomb<\/a>, and Payne 2004; <\/a>Johnson and Campbell 1999<\/a>; <\/a>Johnson et al. 2002), <\/a>\u201cdesigned experiments\u201d<\/em> <\/a>(Felson and Pickett 2005)<\/a>, “research-through-designing<\/em>” <\/a>(Lenzholzer, Duchhart, and Koh 2013)<\/a>, \u201cecology with design\u201d<\/em> <\/a>(M. J. Grose 2014; M. Grose 2017)<\/a>, \u201cDesign-Related-Research\u201d (Nijhuis and Bobbink 2012)<\/a><\/em>, <\/a>and Transdisciplinary Action Research<\/em> (Thering and Chanse 2011; Stokols 2006)<\/a>. Importantly, the framework defines and employs Design<\/em> (as both a noun and a verb) as an operative \u201cboundary concept\u201d, and proposes an \u201citerative loop\u201d of evidence-based (and evidence-generating) design inquiry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Design as a link between science and landscape change. From Nassauer and Opdam (2008)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The DIS framework as a tool for addressing \u201cwicked\u201d problems<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

To understand the value of DIS as a useful tool for confronting wicked challenges, it may also be instructive to explore the reflexive modes of inquiry it implies. First, it should be recognized that Science<\/em>(in a post-positivist era), and Design<\/em>(understood as a mode of thinking and action rather than merely a professional practice) are not as far apart in their core cognitive processes as they used to be (Farrell and Hooker 2013; Innes and Booher 2016)<\/a>. Luckily, we are moving gradually away from the hubris that sustained us in the past\u2014namely that designers \u201csolve\u201d problems, and that scientists discover immutable \u201ctruths\u201d. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was Karl Popper who famously observed that the foundations of science are not anchored to a stable bedrock of proven truth, but rather, driven just deep enough into the swamp of possibility to continue one\u2019s research (Popper 1959)<\/a>. In confronting our collective fallacies as practitioners and scientists, we are increasingly finding middle ground and focusing on the processes that we might share\u2014the ability to frame and ask questions, totask the void <\/em>in pursuit of new insights, and advise (or take) action in line with the insights we discover. To do this, each are increasingly reliant on the mixing of Inductive, Deductive, and Abductive modes of reasoning to arrive at plausible assumptions about the nature of the problem at hand (Deming and Swaffield 2010)<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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A wicked problem: The \u201curban stream syndrome\u201d from Walsh et al (2005)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

This interplay is especially important when it becomes necessary, on the one hand, to tease out from a wicked problem a series of more tame ones, and on the other hand, to recognize that in every tame one, a series of those which are wicked always exist. As stated by Nassauer and Opdam (2008), \u201cUndoubtedly effective transdisciplinarity will require that new norms, not solely dependent on disciplinary conventions, evolve for credible research\u201d (634). Situating Design<\/em>in Science<\/em>, therefore isn\u2019t marked by an erosion of boundaries between these disciplines, but rather by an attempt to seek moments of permeability and alignment across boundaries that are mutually beneficial and actionable<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Strategic alignments between design, science, and policy can minimize the tradeoffs that occur regarding the credibility, saliency and legitimacy of new knowledge. To further illustrate the interplay of design and science, I will sketch out a series of brief speculative scenarios, with attempts to highlight the various epistemologies involved.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the first scenario, we might imagine an alignment of science and policy, but without design. Policy makers with a high degree of agency and influence in the regime-level decision making processes, solicit scientific research to gain deeper knowledge about a specific phenomenon that they are trying to better understand or plan for. The question at hand might be related to where the next wastewater treatment plant should be built. The scientist, or team of scientists in question, deploy(s) a rigorous purpose-built methodology resulting in new data that is not only highly credible, but highly salient (as it was driven by a specific purpose or policy implication at its outset). Yet without the critical role of design, and design thinking, the team might never attempt to divergently reframe or challenge the nature of their task itself. What if the goal shouldn\u2019t be just about defining service areas for existing technologies? What other (unexpected) opportunities might we be overlooking? What about the urban streams themselves? By excluding design from the equation, the science\/policy team never pose or ponder relevant \u201cwhat if\u201d scenarios that could be attenuated to local phenomena or needs. Further, if the process of collecting data is not attentive to normative dimensions of everyday landscapes and people within them, the resulting prescriptions might risk not being adopted, or worse\u2014actively resisted within the context they are being proposed. Here, questions of legitimacy<\/em>are paramount\u2014defined as the degree to which various public stakeholders perceive the process to be \u201cunbiased and meeting standards of political and procedural fairness\u201d (<\/a>Cash et al. 2002, 5)<\/a>. Despite being both credible<\/em>and salient<\/em>, eschewing participatory modes of design engagement may stifle this team\u2019s potential to affect broader landscape change.<\/em> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a second scenario, there exists a strategic alignment of design and policy, but without science. Designers, informed by a particular program or brief, propose a series of speculative responses, perhaps even drawing upon general ecological principles as an evidence base in science. The process is transparent, participatory, and imaginative. Policy makers place trust in the creative process and the capacity to think beyond rigid conceptual frames to imagine and propose a series of \u2018what if\u2019 scenarios that are both salient and legitimate. This could be further exemplified in urban planning and design practice when a beautifully conceived solution is installed in the \u201cright\u201d place but fails to build sufficient capacity and rigorous methodologies to monitor the quantitative and qualitative impacts of their efforts over time. The project becomes easily dismissed as \u201cgreenwashing\u201d, where designs or landscape changes appear<\/em> ecological without actually functioning ecologically. Further, they fail to generate any new knowledge that can be used or replicated elsewhere.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a third scenario, we have a strategic alignment of science and design, but without policy. This team works together within a protected niche\u2014fuelled by independent funding from public grants and private institutions and have internal capacity to control the parameters and goals of their research and inquiry. Seasoned interdisciplinary teams use lab and field-based tests to frame, test and refine research and eventually build a compelling public value proposition that is both legitimate and credible. But they fail to translate these insights into relevant and feasible retrofits<\/em> to the existing status quo. In this scenario the proposed responses may never move beyond the stage of a brilliant hypothetical that never actually comes to pass. Or alternatively, they propose localized responses that can only survive with constant inputs from the initiators themselves, and thus fail to effectively upscale in a way that is sustainable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Finally, we have a strategic alignment of design, science, and policy at a time when a relevant window of opportunity opens up in an existing regime. Regime level actors are hungry for new ideas, and front line innovators have built the transdisciplinary capacity necessary to propose viable alternative responses. Scientists consult the evidence base to form valid and plausible assumption about the basic viability of responses. Designers work in collaboration with scientists to frame built works as a mode of hypothesis testing that feeds larger, generalizable insights. These insights fuel the upscaling of more widely distributed intervention which are informed by collaborations with various local civil society organizations and stakeholders on the ground.    <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The author and collaborators Priyanka Jamwal and Shubha Ramachandran setting up a small scale wastewater demonstration project in Bangalore, India.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

A key takeaway is this: When it comes to addressing wicked challenges, designers, policy makers and scientists alike should challenge themselves to work more synthetically to frame built works as a mode of hypothesis testing that feeds larger, more generalizable insights. Staging small scale, safe-to-fail interventions creates insights for design iteration and also allows critical engagement stakeholders at early stages in the development projects. Over time, a compelling evidence base on which to base the form and function of new landscape patterns can emerge. Small interventions, once merely speculative or provisional, becomes more widely replicated and accepted. Some may dismiss as incrementalism, when huge leaps forward are sorely needed. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Urban rapid prototyping via socio-ecological interventions in Rome, Italy, The Commonstudio<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Transdisciplinarity is especially relevant to contemporary discussions surrounding the science and practice of green infrastructure in cities. Embedded within the semantics of framing \u201cproblems\u201d is an implicit suggestion that cures <\/em>to complex urban illsmight exist. Yet, one of the very conditions that defines the city as an ecosystem are the many irreversible histories it contains. The re-framing of socio-ecological challenges and their many reverberations as wicked problems allows us to collectively confront, and perhaps even accept<\/em>their ultimate insolubility.  For example, there will always be a preponderance of pavement in human dominated ecosystems. Restoring the function of these constructed ecologies to pre-urban, or pre-human states of health will always prove to be a logical impossibility. Even in a future world without us<\/em>, the biophysical constructions we call cities will continue to impact the patterns and processes of the landscapes and watersheds in which they have emerged. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

As designers, scientists, and policy makers, we cannot<\/em>hope to ever truly \u201csolve\u201d these wicked problems, but through our combined efforts, we can<\/em>try to better understand their nature. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

And that\u2019s ok! If we refuse to resign ourselves to cynicism, we can allow this realization to become the fuel that drives the process of relentless incrementalism and continued experimentation. With few exceptions that\u2019s how the process of changing the world has always occurred\u2014aggregated efforts which compound across vast scales of space and time.  My hope is that projects, methods and partnership models such as the ones to be explored more thoroughly by many of the contributors of TNOC, will continue to demonstrate the power and potential for new modes of cross-cultural, cross-disciplinary engagement which bridge the \u201cdesign-science divide\u201d and point to new horizons of action\u2014even if those actions are initially tiny in their scope.  They make these challenges we face a bit less wicked, and maybe that\u2019s enough.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Daniel Phillips<\/strong>
Detroit<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On The Nature of Cities<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

References<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cash, David, William C. Clark, Frank Alcock, Nancy M. Dickson, Noelle Eckley, and Jill J\u00e4ger. 2002. \u201cSalience, Credibility, Legitimacy and Boundaries: Linking Research, Assessment and Decision Making.\u201d https:\/\/doi.org\/10.2139\/ssrn.372280.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Deming, Elen M., and Simon Swaffield. 2010. <\/a>Landscape Architectural Research: Inquiry, Strategy, Design<\/a><\/em>. John Wiley & Sons.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Farrell, Robert, and Cliff Hooker. 2013. \u201cDesign, Science and Wicked Problems.\u201d <\/a>Design Studies<\/a><\/em> 34 (6): 681\u2013705.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Felson, Alexander J., and Steward T. A. Pickett. 2005. \u201cDesigned Experiments: New Approaches to Studying Urban Ecosystems.\u201d <\/a>Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment<\/a><\/em> 3 (10): 549\u201356.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Grose, Margaret. 2017. <\/a>Constructed Ecologies: Critical Reflections on Ecology with Design<\/a><\/em>. Routledge.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Grose, Margaret J. 2014. \u201cGaps and Futures in Working between Ecology and Design for Constructed Ecologies.\u201d <\/a>Landscape and Urban Planning<\/a><\/em> 132 (December): 69\u201378.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hulse, David W., Allan Branscomb, and Susan G. Payne. 2004. \u201cENVISIONING ALTERNATIVES: USING CITIZEN GUIDANCE TO MAP FUTURE LAND AND WATER USE.\u201d <\/a>Ecological Applications: A Publication of the Ecological Society of America<\/a><\/em> 14 (2): 325\u201341.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Innes, Judith E., and David E. Booher. 2016. \u201cCollaborative Rationality as a Strategy for Working with Wicked Problems.\u201d <\/a>Landscape and Urban Planning<\/a><\/em> 154 (October): 8\u201310.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Johnson, Bart R., and Ronald Campbell. 1999. \u201cEcology and Participation in Landscape-Based Planning Within the Pacific Northwest.\u201d <\/a>Policy Studies Journal<\/a><\/em>. https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1111\/j.1541-0072.1999.tb01983.x.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Johnson, Bart R., Janet Silbernagel, Mark Hostetler, April Mills, Forster Ndubisi, Edward Fife, and Marycarol Rossiter Hunter. 2002. \u201cThe Nature of Dialogue and the Dialogue of Nature: Designers and Ecologists in Collaboration.\u201d In <\/a>Ecology and Design: Frameworks for Learning<\/a><\/em>, edited by Kristina Hill Bart R Johnson, 305\u201356. Island Press Washington, DC.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lenzholzer, Sanda, Ingrid Duchhart, and Jusuck Koh. 2013. \u201c\u2018Research through Designing\u2019 in Landscape Architecture.\u201d <\/a>Landscape and Urban Planning<\/a><\/em>. https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1016\/j.landurbplan. 2013.02.003.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nijhuis, Steffen, and Inge Bobbink. 2012. \u201cDesign-Related Research in Landscape Architecture.\u201d <\/a>Medicinal Chemistry Research: An International Journal for Rapid Communications on Design and Mechanisms of Action of Biologically Active Agents<\/a><\/em> 10 (4): 239\u201357.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Popper, Karl R. 1959. <\/a>The Logic of Scientific Discovery<\/a><\/em>. Routledge.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rittel, Horst W. J., and Melvin M. Webber. 1973. \u201cDilemmas in a General Theory of Planning.\u201d <\/a>Policy Sciences<\/a><\/em> 4 (2): 155\u201369.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Stokols, Daniel. 2006. \u201cToward a Science of Transdisciplinary Action Research.\u201d <\/a>American Journal of Community Psychology<\/a><\/em> 38 (1-2): 63\u201377.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thering, Susan, and Victoria Chanse. 2011. \u201cThe Scholarship of Transdisciplinary Action Research: Toward a New Paradigm for the Planning and Design Professions.\u201d <\/a>Landscape Journal<\/a><\/em> 30 (1): 6\u201318.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Walsh, Christopher J., Allison H. Roy, Jack W. Feminella, Peter D. Cottingham, Peter M. Groffman, and Raymond P. Morgan. 2005. \u201cThe Urban Stream Syndrome: Current Knowledge and the Search for a Cure.\u201d <\/a>Journal of the North American Benthological Society<\/a><\/em> 24 (3): 706\u201323.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Many of us are drawn to the process and potential of transdisciplinary projects through a desire to deepen the scope and impact of our work. Though landscape architects and planning practitioners claim to be capable of achieving socio-ecological impact, their proposals and built projects too often lack necessary grounding in solid science. Conversely, many modes […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":643,"featured_media":32019,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[273,299,297],"tags":[28,843,65,1022],"coauthors":[877],"class_list":["post-32022","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-essay","category-essay-place-and-design","category-essay-science-and-tools","tag-design","tag-landscape-architecture","tag-policy","tag-wicked"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thenatureofcities.com\/TNOC\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32022","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thenatureofcities.com\/TNOC\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thenatureofcities.com\/TNOC\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thenatureofcities.com\/TNOC\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/643"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thenatureofcities.com\/TNOC\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32022"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.thenatureofcities.com\/TNOC\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32022\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thenatureofcities.com\/TNOC\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/32019"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thenatureofcities.com\/TNOC\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32022"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thenatureofcities.com\/TNOC\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32022"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thenatureofcities.com\/TNOC\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32022"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thenatureofcities.com\/TNOC\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=32022"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}