Oswald Devisch
Biographic Data
| ID | 4469867 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Oswald Devisch |
| GIVEN NAMES | Oswald |
| FAMILY NAME | Devisch |
| SIGNATURE | DEVISCH O |
| AFFILIATIONS | Hasselt University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-3029-3057 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 17 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 2 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 17 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2009 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 1 |
Mapping spontaneous conflicts
Participatory Retrofitting Through Extended Planners in Tanzanian Urban Areas
The global endeavour to develop inclusive, safe, resilient, and sustainable cities and human settlements is paramount. Land use conflicts in urban areas persist as a critical issue among stakeholders in contemporary urban development discourse. This article examines the effectiveness of local mediation strategies in resolving land use conflicts within East African cities’ rapidly expanding metropolitan areas. It focuses explicitly on community-ba…
Self-Organized Social and Physical Livelihood Assets in State-Driven Urban Developments
In Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, local actors through self-organized practices that contribute to livelihoods generate the lived space amidst top-down processes in commercial streets. We employed a design anthropological approach in studying how inhabitants create, use and thrive in these spaces. We analyze and discuss the social and physical assets of commercial streets in the context of planned neighborhoods that are governed by regulations. We reve…
Adapting to Urban planning contradictions in community-led initiatives in growing African Cities
Experiential Evaluation to Create Risky Situations and Address Tensions in a Participatory Planning Process
Planning processes often cause tensions between institutions and citizens because the local knowledge and values of the citizens are not included in the decision-making process, which can cause mistrust. This article builds on an ongoing PhD research that explores the potential of experiential evaluation as an alternative and experimental approach to “hybrid forums”: an approach to open the participatory planning process for diverse actors and va…
Places For continuous learning on spatial planning issues – reflections on an experiment
Ever since the eighties, spatial planners have been approaching planning processes as learning processes. In this article we argue that such learning processes not only require a trajectory that helps groups to reflect in and on their actions, but also a trajectory that helps these groups to learn how to participate in such reflections. We refer to such a trajectory as a Place for Continuous Learning. The aim of the article is to explore how to d…
Learning to reflect collectively
Spatial planning as a field in continuous transition needs a way of working that allows for questioning its professional practice. In this paper, we focus on the design of 4-days long ‘studios’ for planning professionals that aim to reflect on new notions of democratic practice and participatory planning. During these studios, different methods to enhance a collective reflective attitude among participants were tested. The paper describes how the…
Participation, for Whom? The Potential of Gamified Participatory Artefacts in Uncovering Power Relations within Urban Renewal Projects
When defining participation in urban renewal projects in a political sense, this concept implies the challenging of power relations in each of its dimensions while addressing the need for knowledge, action and consciousness. Knowledge is defined as a resource which affects observable decision making. Action looks at who is involved in the production of such knowledge in order to challenge and shape the political agenda. Consciousness is how the p…
Dialectical Design Dialogues
This article explores ‘dialectical design dialogues’ as an approach to engage with ethics in everyday urban planning contexts. It starts from Paulo Freire’s pedagogical view (1970/2017), in which dialogues imply the establishment of a horizontal relation between professionals and amateurs, in order to understand, question and imagine things in everyday reality, in this case, urban transformations, applied to participatory planning and enriched th…
Conceptualizing demographic shrinkage in a growing region – Creating opportunities for spatial practice
The making of Hoepertingen’
Architecture in Southern African informal settlements
Architectural professionals can contribute to efforts at achieving sustainable urbanism. However, the realm of professional discourse is extremely limited. Grounded architectural practice (GAP) is developed as a conceptual framework to explore an emergent form of contextually appropriate architectural practice in the context of a resident-driven in situ informal settlement upgrading project. The exploration takes the form of a descriptive narrati…
Flood‐resilient urban parks
Coastal cities are increasingly suffering from flooding events. At the same time, these cities are experiencing a process of rapid urbanisation. This paper introduces “flood‐resilient urban parks” as a strategy to address both challenges. It presents a working definition and proposes a conceptual framework to start developing such parks
Portraits of work
Today’s patterns of work are very much defined by the ‘lean enterprise’ practice, taking form in organizations that are more competitive, customer-driven and agile on the one hand (Womack, J. P., & Jones, D. T. (2007). Lean Solutions. New York: Simon & Schuster), and the separation of work from time and space on the other (Hochschild, A. (1997). The time bind. New York, NY: Metropolitan Books). Concepts like work and workspace are subject to an e…
The Gamification of Civic Participation
For civic participation to lead to sustainable civic engagement, participants need to go through a process of collective reflection. Games have been put forward as tools to support this process. The commercialization of the Internet, mobile communication devices, and sensing technologies precipitated a substantial increase in the development and use of games, gamified environments, and playful experiences, to the extent that scholars speak of the…
From Sharing to Experimenting
Citizen science is a term used to describe the engagement of ordinary citizens in scientific tasks like observation, measurement, and computation. A series of technological innovations, such as the Internet, the upgrade of mobile phones from communication devices to networked mobile personal measurement devices, and the introduction of self-assessment applications to use with them, redefined the activity of citizen science, providing amateur scie…
An Agent-Based Model of Residential Choice Dynamics in Nonstationary Housing Markets
This paper presents an agent-based model developed to simulate residential choice behaviour in a nonstationary housing market. The model is built around the assumption that agents have incomplete and imperfect knowledge, and thus have to base their decisions on beliefs. The aim is to illustrate how the agents deal with the uncertainty inherent in these beliefs, both at the level of a single agent, deciding among a set of successive actions, and a…
The making of Hoepertingen’
An Agent-Based Model of Residential Choice Dynamics in Nonstationary Housing Markets
This paper presents an agent-based model developed to simulate residential choice behaviour in a nonstationary housing market. The model is built around the assumption that agents have incomplete and imperfect knowledge, and thus have to base their decisions on beliefs. The aim is to illustrate how the agents deal with the uncertainty inherent in these beliefs, both at the level of a single agent, deciding among a set of successive actions, and a…
An Agent-Based Model of Residential Choice Dynamics in Nonstationary Housing Markets
This paper presents an agent-based model developed to simulate residential choice behaviour in a nonstationary housing market. The model is built around the assumption that agents have incomplete and imperfect knowledge, and thus have to base their decisions on beliefs. The aim is to illustrate how the agents deal with the uncertainty inherent in these beliefs, both at the level of a single agent, deciding among a set of successive actions, and a…
From Sharing to Experimenting
Citizen science is a term used to describe the engagement of ordinary citizens in scientific tasks like observation, measurement, and computation. A series of technological innovations, such as the Internet, the upgrade of mobile phones from communication devices to networked mobile personal measurement devices, and the introduction of self-assessment applications to use with them, redefined the activity of citizen science, providing amateur scie…
The Gamification of Civic Participation
For civic participation to lead to sustainable civic engagement, participants need to go through a process of collective reflection. Games have been put forward as tools to support this process. The commercialization of the Internet, mobile communication devices, and sensing technologies precipitated a substantial increase in the development and use of games, gamified environments, and playful experiences, to the extent that scholars speak of the…
Portraits of work
Today’s patterns of work are very much defined by the ‘lean enterprise’ practice, taking form in organizations that are more competitive, customer-driven and agile on the one hand (Womack, J. P., & Jones, D. T. (2007). Lean Solutions. New York: Simon & Schuster), and the separation of work from time and space on the other (Hochschild, A. (1997). The time bind. New York, NY: Metropolitan Books). Concepts like work and workspace are subject to an e…
Architecture in Southern African informal settlements
Architectural professionals can contribute to efforts at achieving sustainable urbanism. However, the realm of professional discourse is extremely limited. Grounded architectural practice (GAP) is developed as a conceptual framework to explore an emergent form of contextually appropriate architectural practice in the context of a resident-driven in situ informal settlement upgrading project. The exploration takes the form of a descriptive narrati…
Flood‐resilient urban parks
Coastal cities are increasingly suffering from flooding events. At the same time, these cities are experiencing a process of rapid urbanisation. This paper introduces “flood‐resilient urban parks” as a strategy to address both challenges. It presents a working definition and proposes a conceptual framework to start developing such parks
Participation, for Whom? The Potential of Gamified Participatory Artefacts in Uncovering Power Relations within Urban Renewal Projects
When defining participation in urban renewal projects in a political sense, this concept implies the challenging of power relations in each of its dimensions while addressing the need for knowledge, action and consciousness. Knowledge is defined as a resource which affects observable decision making. Action looks at who is involved in the production of such knowledge in order to challenge and shape the political agenda. Consciousness is how the p…
Dialectical Design Dialogues
This article explores ‘dialectical design dialogues’ as an approach to engage with ethics in everyday urban planning contexts. It starts from Paulo Freire’s pedagogical view (1970/2017), in which dialogues imply the establishment of a horizontal relation between professionals and amateurs, in order to understand, question and imagine things in everyday reality, in this case, urban transformations, applied to participatory planning and enriched th…
Conceptualizing demographic shrinkage in a growing region – Creating opportunities for spatial practice
The making of Hoepertingen’
Places For continuous learning on spatial planning issues – reflections on an experiment
Ever since the eighties, spatial planners have been approaching planning processes as learning processes. In this article we argue that such learning processes not only require a trajectory that helps groups to reflect in and on their actions, but also a trajectory that helps these groups to learn how to participate in such reflections. We refer to such a trajectory as a Place for Continuous Learning. The aim of the article is to explore how to d…
Learning to reflect collectively
Spatial planning as a field in continuous transition needs a way of working that allows for questioning its professional practice. In this paper, we focus on the design of 4-days long ‘studios’ for planning professionals that aim to reflect on new notions of democratic practice and participatory planning. During these studios, different methods to enhance a collective reflective attitude among participants were tested. The paper describes how the…
Experiential Evaluation to Create Risky Situations and Address Tensions in a Participatory Planning Process
Planning processes often cause tensions between institutions and citizens because the local knowledge and values of the citizens are not included in the decision-making process, which can cause mistrust. This article builds on an ongoing PhD research that explores the potential of experiential evaluation as an alternative and experimental approach to “hybrid forums”: an approach to open the participatory planning process for diverse actors and va…
Participatory Retrofitting Through Extended Planners in Tanzanian Urban Areas
The global endeavour to develop inclusive, safe, resilient, and sustainable cities and human settlements is paramount. Land use conflicts in urban areas persist as a critical issue among stakeholders in contemporary urban development discourse. This article examines the effectiveness of local mediation strategies in resolving land use conflicts within East African cities’ rapidly expanding metropolitan areas. It focuses explicitly on community-ba…
Self-Organized Social and Physical Livelihood Assets in State-Driven Urban Developments
In Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, local actors through self-organized practices that contribute to livelihoods generate the lived space amidst top-down processes in commercial streets. We employed a design anthropological approach in studying how inhabitants create, use and thrive in these spaces. We analyze and discuss the social and physical assets of commercial streets in the context of planned neighborhoods that are governed by regulations. We reve…
Adapting to Urban planning contradictions in community-led initiatives in growing African Cities
Mapping spontaneous conflicts
Computer Science (13 works) · Sociology (10 works) · Citizen journalism (9 works) · Political science (7 works) · Engineering (6 works) · Geography (6 works) · Business (4 works) · Epistemology (4 works) · Urban and Rural Development Challenges (4 works) · Urban Planning and Governance (4 works)