ENABLING PARTICIPATORY ACTIONS IN COMMUNITY DESIGN AND MANAGEMENT: A COLLECTIVE INTELLIGENT DIGITAL PLATFORM IN ANG SILA, THAILAND

Abstract

Advancements in data collection, computing, and visualization methods have given rise to a new form of urban concept over the last decade: the smart sustainable city which tackles various urban challenges with digital technologies. However, earlier approaches omit the importance of citizens' involvement in decision-making processes, which leads to an imbalanced information asymmetry between individuals and authorities and an increasingly reduced agency for the vulnerable. In this article, a toot and process was proposed which integrates the voices of evolving self-organizing entities to solve collective action challenges: Named as CoDAS [Co-Design Ang Sila], it is a digital platform which facilitates continuous communication between citizens and authorities during different development phases of a given project. By including a large number of stakeholders to participate in the co-design process as co-creators, CoDAS aims to improve communication efficiency while achieving equitable outcomes in design and development, along with post-occupancy common resource management. To test this hypothesis, a site design experiment was conducted on a site near a historical fishing village of Ang Sila, Thailand.