Emergent Participation in DIY Designed Bike Trails

Abstract

This paper details early findings from our exploratory research on bike trails and the people who build, care for, and use them. The paper contributes to understandings of participation in punk and DIY cultures by engaging with a context outside the traditional realms of PD to learn about existing forms of (non-)participation. We outline three themes from the initial field work: First, the kinds of participation involved in designing and building the trails, including non-participation of those outside the community. We engage with the problems of participation in a DIY (un)commons that is often illegal and therefore fragile. Second, we look to grassroots moves to increase participation in these spaces and the reasons for doing so. Finally, we speculate on an aim to develop a symmetry, whereby academic attention to these spaces and practices may contribute to the community rather than only extract information. CCS CONCEPTS• Human-centered computing → Interaction design; Interaction design process and methods; Participatory design; • Social and professional topics → User characteristics; Gender; Women.

Dirt Jumps are Matter Carefully Placed, Maintained, and Governed

“…This paper also builds on some previous work, where I have studied what I called the emergent forms of participation (Healy & Krogh, 2022) in these sites, in order to draw out what participatory designers, architects, and urban planners, might learn from punk, DIY approach to participation and non-participation. I have also written on the maintenance and care of mountain bike trails for a sociology of sport and leisure studies audience (Healy, in press), which I build on here to bring the ideas discussed into a design research context.…”