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

TL;DR

This study explores how generative AI, specifically text-to-image models, can support more inclusive and interactive community consultations in urban planning, highlighting benefits and current limitations.

Contribution

It introduces WeDesign, a platform integrating Stable Diffusion XL for urban space design consultations, and evaluates its potential and challenges in real-world workshops.

Findings

AI-generated visuals enhance creativity and dialogue.

Participants see potential but note limitations for marginalized groups.

Recommendations include open-source tools with multilingual and in-painting features.

Abstract

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.