IRP - She is in Urban Village

Understanding marginality (the margin is the site of both oppression and resistance) as position and place of resistance is crucial for oppressed, exploited, colonized people

——Jane Rendell

Research Introduction

The industrial revolution of the 1860s saw the beginning of the modernization of world history. As a country with late-developing modernization, China, in the over 30 years after implemented the policy of the "Reform and Opening Up" in 1978. Since the rural reconstruction speed has mismatched the urban expansion, it had stretched out a booming low-income housing market - urban villages especially in some economically developed areas, such as the pearl river delta, Yangtze river delta and the Bohai Bay, municipalities directly under the central government, and the provincial capital city). This is not only the breaking of the boundary of urban space but also the breaking of the boundary of people's thoughts and interactions.The formation of urban village is not only a static social phenomenon, but also a result of the common operation of various complex paradigms, which represents that the development of Chinese society and urban space is still in a stage of both tradition and modernity. Urban village is a complex, changeable and even contradictory system. On the one hand, it is actively integrating into the process of urbanization, but on the other hand, it is resisting the further homogenization caused by urbanization due to the ownership of rural collective land. Therefore, urban village is in an 'exceptional state' (Agamben, XXXX) that is both included and excluded by the city, the long-term development of which has formed a self-organizing social structure and economic system to meet the daily needs of the internal residents (mainly are migrants), so the urban village can be equivalent to a miniature city - city within city. The female residents in this kind of miniature city, belonging to the urban fringe population which is easy to be ignored, play a significant role in the study of the urban space reform under the dual urban-rural structure. As Marx (1868) said: "the great social changes are impossible without the feminine ferment. " As a group that accounts for approximately half of social actors, women, in a sense, influence the development of space. Since the birth of feminism in the late 18th century, society has explored the two focuses of equality and difference, which is essentially a gradual switch from solving national inequality to solving gender differences. Being similar to the urban villages dislocated in the process of urbanization, the respect and attention paid to women in social practice also lag far behind the feminist cultural trend. Not only in the study of space, and even

when it comes to the economy, health care, transportation, and other fields of the social public, due to long-term patriarchal stereotypes, women are easily ignored or even are excluded out of account (Caroline Criado Perez, 2019). Furthermore, female space also was established from the dominant public space (cities) in the split out, then be narrowly and the private space of the subordinate (family). However, women living in urban villages are a minority group hatched from urban villages who has similar contradictory attributes with urban villages -- integrating tradition and modernity. First, the female group in urban villages is relatively complex in its origin and can be roughly divided into long-term and short-term residents. Although these two groups of women have achieved symbiosis in the limited space of urban villages, they are fundamentally different from each other. XXXX Short-term of rural-to-urban female tenants, relying on factors such as work, family and policy, moved from the countryside to the city, thus achieved a rapid switch in identity and lifestyle, and experiencing a sense of liberation over their parents, spouses and other forms of authority (Tamara Jacka, 2006).

Secondly, women in urban villages have a conflicting identity and socio-spatial needs. Their identity is somewhere between rural and urban. On the one hand, the women in the urban villages are craving for self-independence and social respect and are struggling to get involved in more public spaces symbolizing the centrality and dominance of men (Chang and Fu, 2016). Cultivated from childhood, on the other hand, the traditional concept of "family" and the growth of the rural environment education caused by the lack of restrictions on their cognitive and vision, also result in the huge gap between their living environment in the urban village and the average living level of the city. The ideal pursuit and realistic environment, make the relation of urban village women and space difference, the difference in general, the relationship between women and space is subject to the double marginality of gender and class. These margins have been both sites of repression and sites of resistance (Suzanne M. Hall, 2017). Therefore, it is a critical and comprehensive topic to discuss the spatial narrative, produced and perceived space as well as spatial practices from the perspective of women in urban villages, which is actually the spatial concern of the social lower-level migrant females.

Research Aim & Objectives

· Research Aim

The research aim is to articulate the interior spatial narrative, practice, assemblage and spatial cognition and demand of female rural-to-urban immigrants in urban villages. Specifically, combining with the site-based sociological and anthropological research methodologies with

architectural and spatial mapping methods, the research will set up universal socio-space models of assemblages to explore how to build and optimise immigrant women's new social interaction patterns, and how to fight for and defend more for them in the urban space.

· Research Aim

1) The research will review the related theories and cases of female spatial practices and cognition in urban contexts, especially these migrant female groups located in urban marginal places and urban villages. Besides, the research will first demonstrate the currently existing and living status of women and specifically Chinese female immigrant groups. The review will proceed from the migrant women’s social status, everyday life socio-spatial practices, spatial narratives, social networks, power structure, assemblages and desires of social rights, which therefore will indicate the social tolerance and attention to this group, as well as their spatial cognition and demands.2) The research will pick up 1-3 urban villages (in Tianhe District, Guangzhou) for further fieldwork research. The research will select several active females or groups as samples. In order to determine the influence of

urban villages on women’s daily behavior patterns, practices, self-cognition, material and emotional needs. Their social networks f neighborhood relationships and family relations, practices, cultural forms, consumption level, infrastructure, spatial arrangements, etc. will be explored. Afterwards, the spatial network genealogy of women in urban villages will be constructed.

3) The observation, semi-structured interview, participation (co-drawing, co-mapping, co-making as film and photo,), GPS tracing, etc. these mixed research methods will be utilized to demonstrate female migrants’ practices, narratives, cognition and assemblages in urban villages.

4) Finally, the research will analyze these drawings and collected materials, using mapping to illustrate them. These mappings can facilitate the further research on the environmental and spatial rights of immigrant women.

Methodology & Method

· Research Aim

The whole research methodology is divided into a literature review, a case study selection, fieldwork, GPS tracking, participation, narrative recording, materials and data representation, collage, illustrative mapping, engagement of design and spatial experiment. These research methods will be carried out in three research stages respectively.

The Literature Review section will focus on the in-depth understanding of the development of urban villages in China and Chinese domestic immigration situation; the evolution process and development trend of gender space research; the living conditions of the migrant women from villages (underdeveloped areas) to cities (developed areas); the spatial studies based on sociology and anthropology; production of space, spatial practice and interactive design in space, architecture and urban context. Firstly, this research aims to understand how to explain many spatial or architectural phenomena from the perspective of gender, the interpenetration relationship between gender and space, and the roles played by patriarchy and feminism in women's struggle for spatial and urban rights. Therefore, the understanding of these problems can provide theoretical guidance for researching the marginalization (oppression and resistance) of rural-to-urban migrant women. Secondly, this research will specifically review the studies of migrant women from different perspectives and positions conducted by experts, scholars, institutions or non-profit social groups in various fields, which involve the social attributes, behavioural patterns, self-identities, social networks and power structure of migrant women. Finally, the research aims to explore the role of interactive behaviour and social networks in shaping and producing space from an anthropological and sociological perspective. Under the influence of micro-spheres such as culture, institutional and political power, the subject of space——people exert their subjective initiative in everyday life and space production through daily practices. The literature review of these two parts will conduct me to base my research on space and architecture under the social context, which will broaden my perspective of gender space research. Besides, it urges me to explore further how to optimize the social network, interaction mode and development potential of migrant women in the complicated urban village circumstance. Furthermore, it promotes to realize the special needs of migrant women for space and win corresponding space rights for them based on reasonable respect for gender differences, which reflects gender justice spatially.

In the second part, I will choose several villages (preliminary will select 3 urban villages with different development degree and then choose 1 case for deep involvement) as case studies for more in-depth fieldwork research. The research sites will first be selected from Guangzhou where has many typical urban villages and a large amount of rural-to-urban migrants, later if necessary will expand to overseas countries (mainly Asian countries) with much migration. After the research sites are determined, I will divide migrant female into 3-5 representative groups, and no more than 10 different migrant women in urban villages will be screened out for follow-up investigation. There are 4 factors need to be considered: age, occupation, family

structure, and social network (preferred to diverse social groups). After carefully selecting case studies, the in-depth field research will be carried out by participatory method, observational method (natural observation / controlled observation), interview (structured interview / semi-structured interview), questionnaire (open questionnaire / closed questionnaire), aiming to investigate the basic situation of the researched urban villages as well as the factors influencing migrant women's interaction and psychology. Emphasis will be placed on the elements of architectural morphology, public / private space, infrastructure, psychology, cultural ethics, social networks and capital. The purpose of the interview is to gain a deep understanding of their cognition and demand for space, as well as the oppression and resistance they are facing in the urban village, through acquiring the daily practice and activity tracking of the investigated women. So far, I have made a preliminary field trip in Kemulang Village, Meiyuan New Village and Xian Village in Tianhe District, Guangzhou, and surveyed 3 migrant women: a migrant worker, a shop owner, and a woman who is the second generation of rural-to-urban migrants. The information about these urban villages and interviewees obtained in the fieldwork will be narratively recorded by collage, photography, audio and film. The follow-up research on the 3 investigated women will also be continued in the future academic research, and the research objects will be gradually increased with the deepening of the research. These information and data will help me establish my design methodology, explore how to help migrant women obtain more benign interaction patterns and social networks, and develop the potential gender space in urban villages.

The access to information and data of the investigated women in fieldwork will avoid the ethical and privacy issues through alternative approaches. For example, the movement trajectory of the investigated women will not be obtained by directly tracking their GPS position or crawling mobile phone data, but positioning the researcher during following or simulating the investigated women. Besides, such data can also be collected through interview, co-mapping and other participatory investigation strategies. The outcomes of the research will include photograph, film and research blog, which will show the participants’ name, age, occupation, address (not in detail), living spaces, family structure and life patterns. But all information, data and images about the women under research will be collected, processed and made public with their authorisation.

The third part is mainly about participation and spatial agency by way of engaging with the investigated women and other invited academic researchers through the methods of narrative, drawing and mapping. The data collected in the field survey, such as voice, route, and subjects' daily schedule, will be visualized and compared. The materials gotten from participation (including co-drawing and co-mapping) is the representation of participants' needs, requirements and desires, which can also stimulate their cognition and imagination of new interaction and space. In the future, the small-scope spatial experiments can be conducted in the urban villages under research, so as to verify the effectiveness and feasibility of the spatial design and proposal. And, the data collected according to the interaction can indirectly provide migrant women easier access to the spatial experiment.

Research Timetable

• Part 1 (2020.4—2020.5): literature review and document-data collection, case study, research framework and preparing for the Fieldwork. (The literature and archive review are about the current situation and historical roots of urban village and domestic migration in China; deep understanding of gender spatial study and anthropological spatial study).

• Part 2 (2020.6—2020.7): fieldwork (tracking, observation, questionnaire, semi-structured interview, interview, participation, photography, film, narrative recording, collage, illustrative mapping); spatial experiment.

• Part 3 (2020.9—2020.12): paper writing, research supplement; The third phrase which is also the last one is to conclude the collected data and analyzing results of the previous parts. In the process of writing, the necessary data and diagrams will be supplied to enhance the persuasiveness of research and support arguments. The paper will be written in this period and final conclusions will be obtained.

Research Significance

(1) This research distinctively focuses on a minor but conflicted group: rural-to-urban migrant women, which will reform the traditional spatial and architectural researches of Chinese urban village and innovatively from the field of space to research migrant women rather than sociology and anthropology.

(2) This research attempts to make breakthroughs in spatial research at the level of research methods and expression mediation. This might contribute to open-ended approaches for migrant women’s involvement of needs, design, narrative, future vision and imagination, ranging from spatial rights protection to political renewal. Specifically, combining with the site-based sociological and anthropological research methodologies with architectural and spatial mapping methods, the research hopefully set up socio-spatial models of assemblages to explore how to build and optimize immigrant women's new social interaction patterns, and how to fight for and defend more for them in the urban space.

(3)This research will try various media, especially film and photography to narratively reflect the field research. With the prosperity of the multimedia industry, combining architectural research with visual media matches the social-wide trend and it is a very new research field. Film and photographs provide new access to architectural research. Meanwhile, the participatory research mode (participated by architects and non-architects) will be applied in the spatial experiments. This is an experiment of spatial agency, the process of which implements what Askland, Awad, Chambers and Chapman (2016) mentioned in Anthropological Quests In Architecture: "Explore conditions of human, form conditions for human".

Literature Review

· Gender Architecture and Spatial Research

Certain spaces are classified as "sex" according to the inhabitants’ biological gender, or "sexed" according to the sex associated with the different activities embedded in these spaces (Jayne Caudwell, 2011). Furthermore, previously, affected by patriarchal, the most common manifestation of gender space, is "separation spheres", an oppositional and hierarchical system consisting of the dominant public male sphere of production (the city) and the subordinate private female sphere of reproduction (the family) (Jane Rendell, 2002). The concept of the feminine sphere emerged in the 19th century tied women solely to the family, and they were accompanied with traits such as parenting, cooperation, subjectivity, emotionalism, and fantasy (Leslie Kanes Weisman, 1981) related to two other concepts: domesticity and the division between public and private. However, the relationship between gender and space is more complex than the dichotomy between public and private, male and female, urban and suburban, which reinforces the idea of separate spheres. By contrast, the boundaries of everyday life are more porous than those idealized by separate spheres and Spaces (Merrett, Andrea J, 2010).The separate spheres ideology (SSI) , maintains that: 1) gender differences in society are innate, instead of culturally or situationally created; 2) these innate differences result in men and women freely participating in different areas of society; 3) gender differences in public and private participation are natural, inevitable and desirable (Andrea L. Millerand Eugene Borgida, 2016). This corresponds to the idea that in feminist politics: women's ambition for liberation is

defined by differences (Rendell, 2002). Gender representation not only shows the operation mode of pure gender difference but also reflects the role of class and race difference in gender (Abdullah Öcalan, 2013). As the subject of gender, class and racial oppression, women are located in the margins being both a site of repression and a site of resistance. As oppressed, exploited and colonized peoples, it is essential for them to understand the marginalization and the location of resistance (Suzanne M. Hall, 2017). “As a material culture, space is not innate and inert, measured geometrically, but an integral and changing part of daily life, intimately bound up in social and personal rituals and activities”, proposed by Rendell (2000, 102) as the extension of Lefebvre's spatial theory. However, the 'real' social relations reside in the economic relations producing the built environment (Clark, 1997). In fact, spatial and consumer activity suggest that the "woman's place" exists in both private and public Spaces, beyond the traditional women's space (Beebeejaun, 2016).

The significance of feminism in the study of space and architecture is to arouse the attention to space and gender by considering the re-occupation of space by women. In those Spaces where women have been relocated or expelled, women should have the courage to assert their rights to that space (Grosz, 2000), and to reoccupy it and redefine it from their own perspective (Abdullah Öcalan, 2013). Therefore, it is necessary to recover from the body's distinctly different point of view, beyond the dualism of gender, rationality and irrationality, and reassess the potential of how space emerges (Moore Milroy, 2000).

· Rural-to-urban Female Migrants' Study of Spatial Practices and Spaces in Urban Villages

essential for them to understand the marginalization and the location of resistance (Suzanne M. Hall, 2017). “As a material culture, space is not innate and inert, measured geometrically, but an integral and changing part of daily life, intimately bound up in social and personal rituals and activities”, proposed by Rendell (2000, 102) as the extension of Lefebvre's spatial theory. However, the 'real' social relations reside in the economic relations producing the built environment (Clark, 1997). In fact, spatial and consumer activity suggest that the "woman's place" exists in both private and public Spaces, beyond the traditional women's space (Beebeejaun, 2016).

The concept of “separation spheres” firstly provide a credible access to the gender spatial research of urban village. Indeed, “patriarchy” and “feminism” indirectly indicate the fact that women are locating on the double margin (both oppression and resistance), which are socio-wilde existing but are rarely mentioned in China. Afterward, the above theories, to certain content, have reference significance for the spatial research of women in urban villages. However, compared with the literal theories, the dual social attributes of "women" and "migrants" will bring a spatial interaction model to rural-urban female migrants and arouse their struggle for spatial rights more specifically.

· Production of Space, Spatial Practice and Interactive Design in Space, Architecture and Urban Context

The production of architecture and the production of space and practices is asynchronous and mutual infiltration. As an objective context and life carrier necessary for every individual, space holds a potential incubator for of inhabitants’ everyday life, networks and subjectivity becoming. Meanwhile, inhabitants, as creative/critical actors, play a subjective role in space to a certain extent, whose critical and radical space practices react on the spatial order and remodeling of the context they are occupying (Hill). Till critically defined the typological research as a determinism method that ignored social contingency and users’ initiative and desire. His disapproval of it, in turn, motivated many researchers, such as David Harvey, Edward Soja, Neil Brenner, and Jonathan Hill, to explore a new breakthrough from Lefebvre's Production of Space states that (social) space is a (social) production. Lefebvre believed that the fluid energy contained in space was the product of a series of networks. And in order to investigate the socio-spatial practices of inhabitants, he explored how space is shaped by the user's practices according to the representation of space, spatial practice, and representational space, which emphasized the phenomenon that spatial practice challenged the spatial order. Therefore, he argued in the Production of Space that (social) Space is (social) production. Certeau points out that daily

life implies potential human agents who are challenging the (structured) stereotypes of daily life through daily practice, which embedded in the micro-spheres of cultural, institutional, and political power. This is a subtle but transformative process. Besides, concerning the life of occupants and daily practice, Wigglesworth and Till Conceived the concept of everyday architecture from the perspective of daily life, so as to derive how the occupants actually use and pursue the space and architecture. In addition, a practitioner (Doina) apply the everyday life intervened by agents to play a role in fundamentally alter their fixed socio-spatial practices to unfold new possibilities and narratives. Furthermore, Till indicated that reflective actors personally change both representation of space and representational space through everyday life.

The case study that Albena used the actor network theory (ANT) methodology through an architecture or urban project in Mapping Controversies in Architecture arouses the attention to the initiative of socio-network in spatial research, which characterizes the steady relation or unity as the tools by which to structure and hierarchize the world. So space is not only be built in network but also is folded by the formalized network (Murdoch, 1998). Various stakeholders are involved to explore various needs, requirements and actions regarding other emerging agencies and their movement.

· Anthropological Spatial Study

Anthropology, as a tool to help rediscover humanity in marginal disciplines (Westbrook, 2008), has significance for urbanism and architecture in that it guides these disciplines to question, criticize, and overthrow the stereotypes and assumptions that have chronically plagued and restricted them (Hyde, 2012), and bridge the gap between observation and intervention (Halse, 2008).

For urban research, anthropology helps urbanism analyze the cultural system of cities, and the connection between cities, populations and large or small regions. Indeed, it aims to explore how the form and process of urban development are shaped by different political, economic and cultural forces (Angelini, 2009). The development tendency of urban anthropology is influenced by worldwide rural-to-urban migration and it has gone through several stages: In the period between1960s and 1970s, from the initial anthropological exploration of "primitive culture”, it started to focus on transitional small groups in the process of city evolution, like immigration and the poor. And then further expended the exploration field to any aspects of the city in 1980 s (Bhandari, 2019). Moreover, the scope of the exploration of urban anthropology is not limited to isolated individuals, groups, communities and cities, but to study the cross-cultural comparison of communities at regional, national and international levels (Ansari and Nas 1983:2). This largely bears a resemblance to the concept of Translocal Assemblage: Translocal Assemblage witnesses the process of reassembling and disassembling, dispersion and transformation, which contains both sum and unique parts. It requires an open analysis of how different actors and activists construct and interact in different Spaces, which indeed focuses on the distributive and composite nature of agency (Jane, 2005).

For architecture, anthropology inspired architectural research to analyze the ability of people and communities from within (Bourdieu, 1977). By regarding people as actors, participants, and observers in space to observe their architectural practices, some potential urban public realms and architectural disputes may be activated (Ewing, 2011). For example, Aaron Betsky (2008), David Chipperfield (2012), Paolo Baratta (2012) boldly proposed to question and reflect on architecture from other fields, and appealed to observe space and the behaviors under spatial, historical and cultural context through Ethnographic methodology. Anthropology has more than guiding and enlightening significance for architecture. These two disciplines partly share similar interests (Askland, Awad, Chambers and Chapman, 2014). Anthropologists are generally interested in how people act, feel, explain the world, and understand social behavior in physical space (Hochschild, 2010; Milligan, 2003), and architects often research space, architecture, and land, which is naturally linked to anthropological concepts such as culture and social practices (eg, Owen, 2008; Shakur etc., 2012).

On the one hand, anthropology provides humanistic clues and insights into urban and architectural research by generating various descriptions of spatial practices, which helps to discover and understand problems and cruxes (Askland, Awad, Chambers and Chapman, 2014). On the other hand, whether closely, indirectly or collaboratively, anthropology contributes and connects to the form of spatial production (Ewing, 2011). This implements what Askland, Awad, Chambers and Chapman mentioned in Anthropological Quests In Architecture: "Explore conditions of human, form conditions for human".

· The Development and Evolution of Subjectivity

The definition of subjectivity has been explored in different fields, such as philosophy. The most relevant discussion about subjectivity might be the renowned French philosopher Michel Foucault. In Michel Foucault’s Discipline and Punish, subjectivity is interacted within micro powers, which is produced by powers and subjects hold the micro power can resist power structure to be differences. According to Michel Foucault, ‘Humans do not have a unique identity that belongs to ‘theirs’. They are subjects, created by institutions and networks of power that they usually do not realize’(Foucault, 1977). Michel Foucault focused on subjectivity in the perspective of power relations, while Gilles Deleuze and Pierre-Félix Guattari proposed the concept of transformation of subjectivity. Gilles Deleuze and Pierre-Félix Guattari wrote, human subjectivity is not a pre-established identity, but it is always generated in the process of personalization (Deleuze and Guattari, 1980). They do not think of subjectivity as being, but as flux of processing in different sets of networks. Subjectivation is the becoming of subjectivity, including the positive processes of ‘becoming-woman’, ‘becoming-animal’, and ‘becoming-minoritarian’. Rosi Braidotti's concept of ‘nomadic subjectivity’, referenced from the nomadic theory of Gilles Deleuze and Pierre-Félix Guattari, points out that the body is a place where the body, the symbol, the social overlap. Rosi Braidotti's description of ‘nomadic subjects’ is about the transfer from identity politics to multiple, horizontal and collective subjects. In The Location of Culture, Homi Bhabha suggests that we can gain by what we can gain by scrutinizing ‘the technologies of colonial and imperialist governance’ (Bhabha, 1994). Homi Bhabha suggests, is the space for those ‘others’—women, natives, the colonized, immigrants—who have been either conveniently expelled from or homogenized into cultural productions of power (Bhabha, 1994). This new way of cultural thinking requires post-colonial scholars to think dialectically. While to solve cultural differences, they do not homogenize or absorb the ‘others’ of the First World or the Third World but to recognize that our cultural and political identity constantly come to be through the influential processes that emerge out of these geopolitical divisions.

The study of subjectivity in the field of philosophy helps to analyze the transformation of the subjectivity of current urban migrant women. It is embodied in the transformation of rural migrant workers into urban ones due to socio-economic reforms. After entering the city, urban migrant women have not only diversified their occupations, but also are no longer farming and settled down with various sets of networks with others. Their careers include setting up factories or family workshops, sanitation, hairdressing and even sex industry. From the social relations of the cultural dimension, the single geography and kinship social structure have been broken growly with the invasion of the new social group-migrants (Hao, 2012). In terms of residence, residential buildings are mixed dormitory. Due to the different incomes of those migrants, there are different places of living space in each rental building. According to Peng’s previous field interviews with migrant workers, the migrants said that the public kitchen and bathroom are shared (Peng, 2016). In terms of family structure in urban villages, most of urban and rural migrants live in urban villages as a unit of the family (Ma, 2006). Based on the above, it not only shows the difficult living conditions of most urban immigrants after entering cities, but also illustrates the demolition of urban villages may further aggravate the displacement of urban residents. Urban villages are extremely gender-insensitive in terms of policies, management patterns and space (Yao, Zhang and Zou, 2014). This further affects migrant women living in urban villages. From the perspective of their dress, habits and daily practices, it is found that migrant women are gradually losing their femininity during the long-term living experiences in urban villages (Yao, Zhang and Zou, 2014). As a larger group in urban villages, migrant women is on the edge of society, oppressed by gender, race, class and other aspects (Du, 2011), and has been studied indiscriminately with migrant men. The weakening of female characteristics of migrant women may also be one of the reasons why the gender space in urban villages is not obvious. The weakening of migrant women's female subjectivity may also be a reference factor for researching the gender space in urban villages.

· Architectural Practice, Participatory Design and Practice-based Research

In participatory design (PD) projects, the distinction between research, teaching and architectural practice is blurred. The links between architectural practice, PD and practice-based research are deepening. (Luck, 2018). Moreover, the process of participatory collaboration is unstable and sometimes brings some troubles (Dodgson et al., 2015, p.462). Therefore, in the research based on practice, it is difficult to distinguish the novelty or innovative form of research in practice, that is, the breakthrough contribution to academic research. This requires researchers to define research as not only the process of creating knowledge, but also the education and development of consciousness, as well as the mobilization of action (Sanoff, 2008).

Henry Sanoff, as the pioneer of PD, defined PD as "an attitude, a power to promote the creation and management of environment for people." Its strength is that it is an action that transcends traditional subjects and cultures. Its roots lie in the ideal of participatory democracy "(Sanoff, 2010, p.1). In the field of architecture, this understanding of design is a constantly changing process, embodied in local, neighborhood and community, where residents reconfigure spaces through using before and after the architecture is built. This view echoes the PD's early concepts of "improvisation" and "impermanence". In Sanoff’s article published in the Design Studies, he describes a new professional role of architects in PD, in which their profession is not superfluous but less

dominant (Habraken, 1986). The cores and values of PD are not only reflected in the overall level of innovation and participatory culture in contemporary society, but also reflected in the critical, secular and context-based strategies of meaning- and decision-making in controversial private and public contexts (Andersen, Danholt, Halskov, Hansen, & Lauritsen, 2015; Iversen, Halskov, & Leong, 2012). It provides a new access to doing architecture, which breaks the stereotype that architects are the individual heroes of spatial production (Tatjana Schneider and Till, 2013).

Smith and Iversen (2018) suggest to develop the overall method of PD from 3 dimensions of participation (scoping, developing and scaling) to adapt to the contemporary context of increasing digitization and social complexity. The emphasis is not only on the core values of participation, but also on expanding their connection to cultural practices and the vision of the future in which the participants become a part of the space by participating in certain collaborative activities (Smith, Iversen, & Veerasawmy, 2016; Smith, Vangkilde, et al., 2016). Smith and Iversen (2018) suggest that the scope of participatory practice should be transformed from focusing on inviting predefined stakeholders to participate in the preset activities to making the participants become the protagonists of participatory practice. Moreover, the scale of PD should not be limited to specific research outcomes, but should extend the application scale of the conclusions to more general cases.