Theater For Change In Participatory Urban Planning- A Foucaultian Approach

Abstract

Participatory urban planning has been struggling with a fundamental issue in urban planning: power structures. Although the efforts for new participatory processes and methods in urban planning have reduced the imbalances in the power structures of this field, yet the participation itself is questioned for not being inclusive of marginalized people and minorities. This research aimed to find a new participatory method and impact on the power structures in urban planning toward being more inclusive. Therefore, I reviewed power theory of Michel Foucault to understand the power networks in the society and especially about immigrants as my target group, I looked at theatrical methods of Augusto Boal as a successful method in challenging power structures and transforming society, and I also explored the participatory urban planning methods and researches to find the obstacles which cause exclusion. Then I proposed a new method that I called “theater for change” as a new possibility to use theatrical methods in participatory urban planning with the specific objective of including more marginalized people in the process. To evaluate the proposed method, I did three experimental workshops in the Hervanta neighborhood of Tampere city with the target group of immigrants. In the end, I analysed the workshops’ outcomes and the method I used based on the power theory of Foucault. The result shows that benefiting from theater in urban planning improves participants’ imagination, activates the bodies as a tool for communication, encourages people to transform the reality of urban spaces in their surroundings and disturbs the power imbalances in urban planning. This method introduces itself as a form of resistance by challenging the disciplines and norms in traditional urban planning methods and by liberating the bodies from subjectivity and submission. However, the findings indicate that this process more than its objectives effects on the democratisation of the research and transformation of researcher and participants.

Keywords: Participatory urban planning, Theatrical methods, Marginalized people, Theatre in urban planning, Power relations, Social justice