WeDesign: Generative AI-Facilitated Community Consultations for Urban Public Space Design

Fuente: arXiv
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Hauptverfasser: Mushkani, Rashid, Berard, Hugo, Koseki, Shin
Format: Preprint
Veröffentlicht: 2025
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author Mushkani, Rashid
Berard, Hugo
Koseki, Shin
author_facet Mushkani, Rashid
Berard, Hugo
Koseki, Shin
contents Community consultations are integral to urban planning processes intended to incorporate diverse stakeholder perspectives. However, limited resources, visual and spoken language barriers, and uneven power dynamics frequently constrain inclusive decision-making. This paper examines how generative text-to-image methods, specifically Stable Diffusion XL integrated into a custom platform (WeDesign), may support equitable consultations. A half-day workshop in Montreal involved five focus groups, each consisting of architects, urban designers, AI specialists, and residents from varied demographic groups. Additional data was gathered through semi-structured interviews with six urban planning professionals. Participants indicated that immediate visual outputs facilitated creativity and dialogue, yet noted issues in visualizing specific needs of marginalized groups, such as participants with reduced mobility, accurately depicting local architectural elements, and accommodating bilingual prompts. Participants recommended the development of an open-source platform incorporating in-painting tools, multilingual support, image voting functionalities, and preference indicators. The results indicate that generative AI can broaden participation and enable iterative interactions but requires structured facilitation approaches. The findings contribute to discussions on generative AI's role and limitations in participatory urban design.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2508_19256
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle WeDesign: Generative AI-Facilitated Community Consultations for Urban Public Space Design
Mushkani, Rashid
Berard, Hugo
Koseki, Shin
Human-Computer Interaction
Computers and Society
Community consultations are integral to urban planning processes intended to incorporate diverse stakeholder perspectives. However, limited resources, visual and spoken language barriers, and uneven power dynamics frequently constrain inclusive decision-making. This paper examines how generative text-to-image methods, specifically Stable Diffusion XL integrated into a custom platform (WeDesign), may support equitable consultations. A half-day workshop in Montreal involved five focus groups, each consisting of architects, urban designers, AI specialists, and residents from varied demographic groups. Additional data was gathered through semi-structured interviews with six urban planning professionals. Participants indicated that immediate visual outputs facilitated creativity and dialogue, yet noted issues in visualizing specific needs of marginalized groups, such as participants with reduced mobility, accurately depicting local architectural elements, and accommodating bilingual prompts. Participants recommended the development of an open-source platform incorporating in-painting tools, multilingual support, image voting functionalities, and preference indicators. The results indicate that generative AI can broaden participation and enable iterative interactions but requires structured facilitation approaches. The findings contribute to discussions on generative AI's role and limitations in participatory urban design.
title WeDesign: Generative AI-Facilitated Community Consultations for Urban Public Space Design
topic Human-Computer Interaction
Computers and Society
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.19256