Empowering Through Design: Regional Development Strategy of Los Lagos as an Intersectional Case

Abstract

The territory is configured as a space that is limited, occupied, and used by different actors. From these, diverse relationships of complementation and reciprocity but also conflict and confrontation are generated in the form of complex systems, making the territory a “system of systems” (Lurås, 2016; Jackson & Keys, 2019). It evokes the concept of intersectionality, as it is used to designate the perception of power relations, putting in doubt the existence of empowerment of certain less favored actors. Systemic design is a practical-methodological-theoretical field where systems and design thinking and practice converge to address the complexity of citizen participation as the relationships of various elements, having multiple foci, considering these elements as human or non-human from a territorial point of view. Service design proposes that the actors of the ecosystem are considered “users” and “co-producers” of the service since all of them interact with the DRA at some level. Through co-production and co-creation techniques, around 30 community citizen online workshops and 16 participatory webinars were carried out. The objective of these workshops, in addition to contributing to the elaboration and adjustment of the diagnosis and Design of the Regional Development Strategy (ERD) of Los Lagos, Chile, seeks to generate social innovation. The use of databases and various media made it possible to design workshops in remote mode, which achieved effective participation of more than 2,000 people.