My PhD research uses the case of Volkspark, the oldest public park in the Netherlands, to investigate three interconnected questions. First, it explores which temporalities, knowledge types, and scales are considered in the current redesign of Volkspark, and in what way. Second, it uses participatory action research to explore how we can co-create more equitable spatial futures, starting from intersectional and more-than-human perspectives. Third, it explores how practices that enable the co-creation of equitable spatial futures can be integrated into existing spatial planning systems.
Building on the understanding that pasts, presents, and futures are never singular but plural, co-creating more equitable spatial futures also means working with the friction that comes from a plurality of needs and voices involved. This means that we need to find ways to co-create infrastructures of care (Gabauer et al., 2021; Sánchez, 2023; Sheringham, 2025; Strüver & Franz, 2025; Stadtlander et al., 2026) that afford different actors to meet their differing and shifting needs through socio-spatial processes of care, without taking away from another. By investigating the methodologies, methods and tools that can co-create those infrastructures of care, this research aims to contribute to finding democratic and transdisciplinary ways to co-create futures rooted in care and plurality. This is rooted in the aim of co-creating transdisciplinary knowledge by drawing on multiple methods, scales and temporalities from my diverse professional background, which encompasses urbanism (MSc, TU Delft), architecture and urban planning (BSc, University of Stuttgart), and practical training in carpentry.
Keywords: Futuring Otherwise; Infrastructures of Care; Research by Spatial Design (RbSD); Transdisciplinary Co-Creation; Situated Methods