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Title Prototyping public friction: Exploring the political effects of design testing in urban space
ID_Doc 44394
Authors Tironi, M
Title Prototyping public friction: Exploring the political effects of design testing in urban space
Year 2020
Published British Journal Of Sociology, 71, 3
DOI 10.1111/1468-4446.12718
Abstract The use of prototypes as testing instruments has become a common strategy in the innovation of services and products and increasingly in the implementation of "smart" urban policies through living labs or pilots. As a technique for validating hypotheses about the future performance of products or policies, prototyping is based on the idea of generating original knowledge through the failures produced during the testing process. Through the study of an experimentation and prototyping project developed in Santiago de Chile called "Shared Streets for a Low-Carbon District," I analyse the technique of prototyping as a political device that can make visible (or invisible) certain entities and issues, determining what the experimental entities can do and say. I will show how the technique of prototyping defines modes of participation, what is visible and thinkable, what can be spoken and what is unspeakable. In this sense, I examine two ambivalent capacities of prototyping: as a mechanism of management and enrolment that seeks to prescribe normativities (problem-validating prototype) and as an event that can make frictions tangible, articulating matters of concern and ways to open up alternative scenarios (problem-making prototype).
Author Keywords curatorial interventions; public frictions; smart city; urban laboratory; urban prototyping
Index Keywords Index Keywords
Document Type Other
Open Access Open Access
Source Social Science Citation Index (SSCI)
EID WOS:000503014100001
WoS Category Sociology
Research Area Sociology
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