Participatory urban design asks a practical question: when experts and residents work together, how does the interaction produce better architecture?
Aurelio David's paper looks at what happens when pattern language is combined with physical building mockups inside a staged, multi level process of participation. The combination, he argues, draws out local knowledge at several points in the design rather than only at the start.
The artifacts matter. A mockup gives residents something concrete to respond to, while a pattern language gives the conversation a shared vocabulary. Together they allow people without professional training to sustain a dialogue with experts and to influence the result.
The paper appears in the PURPLSOC 2017 proceedings. It is one of several contributions that treat participation as a design method rather than a public relations exercise.