PARTICIPATORY WALK & MAPPING – BOEUNG TUMPUN
Participatory design is not just a method—
it is a way of knowing, connecting, and imagining our collective future.
it is a way of knowing, connecting, and imagining our collective future.
Status: Completed
Location: Phnom Penh, Cambodia
Year: 2025
Co- creators: Leng Dei, SolarPunks
Scope of service: Community engagement coordinator
Location: Phnom Penh, Cambodia
Year: 2025
Co- creators: Leng Dei, SolarPunks
Scope of service: Community engagement coordinator
On Saturday, November 22, 2025, I co-hosted a community event in Phnom Penh’s Boeung Tumpun neighborhood: an (un)guided walk followed by a co-design and creative mapping session.
The aim was to bring people together—students, young professionals, local residents, architects, urbanists, and anyone curious—
to walk, observe, reflect, and imagine what the future of Phnom Penh could look like if it were more green, community-based, inclusive, and focused on everyday quality of life.
to walk, observe, reflect, and imagine what the future of Phnom Penh could look like if it were more green, community-based, inclusive, and focused on everyday quality of life.
We grounded the entire activity in ABCD – Asset-Based Community Development, encouraging participants to focus on what works, what feels good, and what can be strengthened.
The Setting: Leng Dei
Leng Dei, a beautiful example of a community-driven project.
It became our shared base: a place to sit on the floor, breathe, reflect, draw, and co-create.
It became our shared base: a place to sit on the floor, breathe, reflect, draw, and co-create.
''Stray plants''
Why a walk? Why Mapping?
Walking is one of the most humble and frugal forms of urban inquiry.
It slows us down, connects us to place, activates the senses, and reveals patterns we usually ignore. In Boeung Tumpun, participants were invited to:
It slows us down, connects us to place, activates the senses, and reveals patterns we usually ignore. In Boeung Tumpun, participants were invited to:
- Walk slowly
- Notice positive elements in the neighborhood
- Observe moments of comfort, safety, beauty, shade, breeze, social life
- Engage with streets, people, textures, sounds, and micro-events
- Reflect on how these experiences shape their understanding of the city
This embodied experience became the foundation for the creative mapping session.
The long human tradition of experience-based mapping:
Çatalhöyük’s 6200 BCE narrative map (city + volcanic eruption)
The large collaborative artwork Yarrkalpa (Hunting Ground) by the Martumili Artists - Indigenous communities worldwide have long created “mental maps” showing rivers, sacred places, danger zones, animal paths, representing experience and relationships, not exact geometry:
Kevin Lynch’s concept of imageability - ''imageability is “that quality in a physical object which gives it a high probability of evoking a strong image in any given observer”.
The creative workshop:
Each group received a large sheet of white paper and simple guidance:
- Draw the walk from memory
- Use any style: distorted, rotated, symbolic, playful, emotional
- Highlight positive experiences with zoom-ins
- Add post-its with ideas for improvement
- Collage printed elements if desired
- Celebrate what works—and imagine what could be
Participants imagined a Phnom Penh where:
- walking feels safe and pleasant
- public spaces support everyday health and community relations
- shade, water, and rest areas become basic rights
- small green gestures multiply into ecological impact
#SHADING # PAVEMENTS # WATER REFILL # BENCHES # NO OBSTACLES # PLACES TO REST # NO CARS # NO HOUSE FENCES # PLACES TO MEET
But how can we make a difference through our everyday life gestures:
1. Walk more
2. Interact with the world
3. Meet new people
4. Live frugal
5. Save money
6. Upcycle, Reuse, Fix what is broken
7. Connection with the soil
8. Home growing
One strong personal takeaway for me:
We, living beings, strive for community. We thrive when we are bound together by small shared duties—
caring for a plant, watering a tree, offering advice, sharing space, walking together, growing food, and imagining the future collaboratively.
caring for a plant, watering a tree, offering advice, sharing space, walking together, growing food, and imagining the future collaboratively.
I believe humans have an innate desire to offer something to the collective good.
And I left the workshop with the conviction that, as designers, we have the duty and call to offer more:
- Community parks, more spaces where our bodies—which are nature—can move, breathe, touch soil
- Places that invite us to learn from each other
- Spaces where property fences dissolve, Impossilbe? Shall we try and see what happens............