Normviz: Normkritisk visualisering i arkitektur och stadsuvteckling

Book, 2019

Visualisations are important tools in urban development processes and are frequently used by public and private actors to present, communicate or sell an area or a development process. Our previous studies show that these visualisations often reproduce stereotypes and reinforce limiting ideas related to age, gender, functional diversity, ethnicity and class. However, there is also a potential to use visualisations as tools to highlight critical issues in urban development processes. Building on this knowledge, the aim has been to develop visually based methods for urban development based on norm-critique, where norm-critique means the questioning of societal norms, power relationships and power structures linked to different forms of discrimination, and the revealing of what or who the norms include or exclude.

Based on the concept of norm-critical visualisations, this guide presents 8 tactics of norm-critical visualisation that can be used as a tool to highlight norm-critical perspectives in urban development processes and presents how such processes can be carried out in practice.  Like critical design, norm-critical visualisation has the potential to be used as a tool to challenge predominant worldviews. The approach has been developed and tested by a transdisciplinary group of researchers, clients and visualisers. Critical visualisations were developed and tested in ongoing urban development processes through participatory methods.