Why the way we design public services needs to change — and why culture, trust, and history matter more than any workshop. So much of “participatory design,” as it’s taught in Western institutions, feels like it was built on an entirely different socio-political soil — one shaped by low trust in authority, a cultural expectation of adversarial civic engagement, and an insistence that every voice must be micro-consulted before anything moves an inch.

Urban problems are rarely what they appear to be on the surface. We’re taught to think of traffic, flooding, slums, crime, pollution, and congestion as technical or spatial issues — things for architects, planners, or engineers to solve with better roads, new zoning, or more infrastructure. That belief is comforting because it offers simple villains and simple fixes.

Maybe the problem isn’t you. Maybe it’s what we choose to measure. You’ve probably heard some version of this line lately: “The economy is strong. Growth is up. Unemployment is low.” And yet, in the same week, you might also say: “Rent just went up again” or “Groceries cost more than last month”. You’re not alone in feeling that disconnect.

Over the past year at UCL’s Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose, I’ve gone through something I didn’t expect — not just learning, but unlearning; not just absorbing information, but rewiring how I see the world.