Research Through Design and the Politics of Scale: A Case Study in Brussels Metropolitan Centre, Belgium

Through an ex-post analysis of the successes and failures of the Brussels Studies Institute-Brussels Centre Observatory (BSI-BCO)—a multidisciplinary, multi-university research platform dedicated to transforming downtown Brussels—this article aims to contribute to the debate on the dilemmas between the risks and benefits of collaborations between urban commoners and local governments (Feinberg et al., 2021; Bianchi et al., 2024; Heidelberg, 2024; Polko, 2024). In particular, it explores how Research through Design—a methodology that emerged in recent decades at the intersection of design thinking, urban design & planning, transition management, participatory governance, and transdisciplinary research, yet has received little attention in commons literature—can serve as a valuable tool for navigating the tensions between seeking institutional support for urban commons and resisting political cooptation when addressing scales that involves multiple levels of stakeholders and governance.