Potential of dialectical and dialogical participatory design workshops for public spaces and their mobility

Abstract

Social participation processes for habitat construction—particularly regarding the design and use of public spaces such as parks, streets, and trails—have gained significant relevance in Mexican federal public policies. We recognize key efforts, originating mainly from academia, to strengthen interdisciplinary project practices rooted in the territory. Contributing to these efforts, this paper presents a methodology for implementing a social participation workshop that enabled a dialogue between technical expertise and popular knowledge. This approach was applied to a redesign proposal for the Miguel Hidalgo Municipal Garden in Ixtapaluca and its four adjacent mobility streets. The mixed-methods approach included a quantitative, purposive non-probability survey, alongside a qualitative workshop grounded in the theoretical and methodological traditions of Latin American popular education and critical theory. The results demonstrate that participants were highly engaged and analytical regarding the current layout of the physical space, proposing new elements aligned with their own aspirations and collective needs.