Favorite Design vs. Good Design

A shift in the public affairs from old public management to the new public management by 1980's and rise of "governance" reasoned the emergence of pluralism, horizontal public & private and NGOs collaborations, and open discussion platforms into the public tradition, which has also triggered a new paradox: The challenge of pluralism. Although pluralism is an essential ingredient of participation, it accommodates difficulties. In this book, the struggle between the searches for good design vs. popular phenomena is being questioned out of Istanbul and New York City's (NYC) taxi design competitions' methodologies and results. In addition to being a review of the taxi cultures in New York City and Istanbul, the book also develops a comparative scrutiny about the participatory methods of both cities regarding the processes that both municipalities have programmed and the commonalities & contrasts, and how they affected the design of the taxicabs as design objects. It is an interesting debate considering the current struggles that different local governments with different capacities and understandings around the world approach to the design process and participatory methods.