Collective anticipation

Project information

Collective anticipation explores how to design for alternative public engagement in infrastructure projects that span over long time scales and long distances.

Starting from a systematic overview of a long and complex development process, the main focus of collective anticipation is about engaging with the personal experiences of people. People working with public engagement, engaged local residents, as well as more transient residents who might not typically be reached by public engagement efforts.

Process

Through a process influenced by ethnographic and participatory design practices, I explore how to engage in dialogue on uncertain futures, in relation to how we are affected by the making of infrastructure and our understanding complex processes. A series of small-scale design probes and workshops acts as prototypes for how to facilitate and support the act of sharing personal stories, reflecting on how they connect to larger societal structures, and what we could do now to act and take part.

The work revolves around the particular case of the North Bothnia Line – a train line planned between the two northern Swedish cities of Umeå and Luleå, 270 km apart. On paper it has been in the making for over 20 years and could perhaps be estimated to be finished around 2040. However, the exact future of the project is still uncertain and people can only just imagine how the project might impact our lives. Currently public employees can face challenges of building understanding and trust with local residents. It is difficult to reach out in time to capture important knowledge and concerns, and there is the question of how to be present and available as a public body when the work covers and concerns a multitude of communities over a long distance.

Result

To conclude the process, the interactions carried out through the explorations are applied in the larger context of supporting public engagement and suggests a strategy for long term participation.

The concept is a proposal for an alternative public engagement platform initiative: Long Connections. Enabling a space for open anticipation, and working with different metaphors of celebration, longing, and collective planning. A digital platform to connect local, personal perspectives, and the development of a complex project.

A design that can be seen as a solution-oriented response to some of the challenges of public stakeholders in understanding and anticipating residents’ needs and perspectives. However, by speculating on how such a solution might take place in people’s everyday lives I hope that it can spur further conversations on how we on regional levels share expectations and engage in informing the making of future infrastructure together. What we can contribute with in terms of knowledge about local needs, how a sense of community is formed around endeavours of this scale, or even what some must sacrifice for public support structures to become reality.