Burning Man: A Guiding Light for Participatory Community Design

Black Rock City, an ephemeral community emerging in the Nevada desert for nine days a year, achieves better place attachment and interactions for its 70,000 participants than permanent landscapes in urban areasdesigned to serve far larger communities. When people more readily call Burning Man 'home' before they do their home, it becomes the ethical and moral responsibility of designers to understand and learn fromthis disconnect. The Burning Man event will be given context and used as a precedent informed through: (1) autoethnography of the 2017 burn explored through Randolph Hester's 12 Steps to Community Development, the 10 Principles of Burning Man, and an adapted photovoice journal, and (2) transcribed interviews with two prominent public consultants in Toronto, and a philosopher at the Burning Man Organization. Perceptions surrounding the practice of community design will be challenged, valuing the capabilities of users, citing Burning Man as catalyst.