Methods

DERG-TERA MARKET

“The cities have the capability of providing something for everybody, only because, and only when, they are created by everybody “(Jacob, 1961, p. 238) In a selected site where different types of vendors and tailors exist, it is evident that they could behave differently within the site based on their activities and nature of their work. To study the different and complex behaviour and to gain an in-depth understanding of this community’s situation, participatory methods should be exercised.

Here rough observation to see what kind of business activities there are and their relation to adjacent activities have been conducted with a young male tailor for about 10 minutes. The action area and its immediate vicinity have also been wandered.

TRANSCET WALK OBSERVATION

Based on Transect walk findings, This observation is made to intentionally find out answers to course-related questions like What kind of informality exists in the selected market? How spatial and infrastructure efficiency looks in relation to social mobility and how do people behave in this space? And data is recorded in a form of writing, sketches and pictures on different times of a day (morning and afternoon) and days of a week (market-day and other days). 27

STAKEHOLDER MAPPING

“Any person, group, or organization that can place a claim on the organization’s attention, resources or output, or is affected by that output” (Bryson, 1995 as cited in Bryson 2004). Based on this definition, stakeholders are identified and stakeholder mapping has been developed and changed over the four-quadrant interest and powerful influence of the stakeholder have been analyzed overtime during the fieldwork as indicated in the following figure 9. “And when poor people are aware that the researcher has travelled from afar specifically to speak with them, not just those of higher social status in their communities, it can add to their sense of self-esteem” (Scheyvens and Leslie, 2000 as cited in Scheyvens et al, 2003). Consequently, the same is true that the low-income women vendors in the action area were content with the attention they got from the researcher because they were deprived of the right of being heard before. Therefore, a One to one unstructured interview has been made to know what is not visible and to uncover the different perception of the users regarding the site.

INTERVIEWS

GROUP DISCUSSION

Group discussion has been made with a group of the same type of vendors separately and with a group of different types of vendors. In this case, a discussion with a group of poultry and egg vendors, tailors and cereal vendors have created a significant environment where each of them collectively expressed their common issues and the relationships they have with the site. It gives new insight that cannot be got in an interview because the interview result tends to be personal perception and individual issues while in the group it is easier to get the common issue which will be convenient to address them in the intervention It is one of the PLA methods in the need assessment stage where stakeholders are given a chance to choose the most relevant problem. Thus, in the action area’s fieldwork need assessment, a problem which is greater or critical has been selected from the problem raised by stakeholders at previous stages. This method helped in narrowing down to more overlapped problems to prioritize the solutions in short term and long term plans based on its urgency. Additionally, the sequence of what should be first and so on are sorted out to mitigate the possible challenges to be faced and accomplish the proposal within the intended time without compromising the quality.

PRIORITIZING CO-DESIGN

“Co-design quite literally means ‘collaborative design’.” (Burkett, 2012). Here the stakeholders are actively engaged in the design process and challenge to have been collectively solved. It is the stage where mutual understanding consolidated further on the overall intervention and its implementation. In the fieldwork of Co-design with stakeholders, it has been separately consulted with municipality heads and vendors at their convenient time on the possible solutions and what should be done. The co-design was made with the municipality head at his office which took about 1 hour. The same workshop has been made with stakeholders at the site spending about 3 hours in the late afternoon when they are more or less free.

For the realization of this project, a monitoring and evaluating body or organization who contributes technical support, manage the project processes are identified. Hence municipality engineers and construction and supervision offices are given this role while vendors’ representatives regularly follow up the progress.

MONITORING AND EVALUATION Challenges and limitation

As this fieldwork project is made in a world’s unique pandemic situation, there were limitations to gather a large group of people for discussion. Some people were asking for a discussion of all vendors at one place on the solution during co-design which was not possible to do under national corona regulations. I was also limited in using online methods of gathering information because the people are not developed in utilizing digital technology for this purpose. The other challenges were the scepticism of street vendors during the interview when approached at the beginning. Hence, building trust was a long but rewarding process in terms of participation by people Thus the outcome discovered in this paper is limited to what I managed to complete within this short time through the best of my ability and knowledge. However, the valuable immense knowledge I got regarding the participatory methods in research and digital participatory approach during pandemic which helps me to apply in the next research.