Sustainable Learning Society Applications: Stimulating Creativity in Groups Through Diversity in Learning Styles

Methodology

This chapter starts with highlighting the current urban growth rate and the paradigm shift needed to include citizens in the decision making process and empower them to be able to fulfill this role and help manage such growth. It explores the role of the creative class in each society, yet points out the major role of ordinary citizens in development. Then, it investigates the different levels of participation highlighted in the “Ladder of Participation” by Arnestein in 1969. Afterwards, it explores both obstacles facing effective citizen participation and recommendations introduced in literature. In order to understand the participation process in a deeper manner and explore creativity tools that can enhance it, the term creativity is introduced from the organizational point of view. This term can be applied in multidisciplinary issues, such as the development process, design practice, and design education. With organizational creativity as a point of focus, an analogy is drawn between citizen participation sessions and the creative environment in design studio teaching. In such analogy, it is argued that there is a tight link between design teaching/practice and dynamics inside citizen participation sessions and workshops. This link can lead to many recommendations in development projects, based on lessons learned from the literature of the design education discipline.