A design-driven participatory action research on a boropasi in Latour

This master's thesis examines the potential of a boropasi as a seed for spatial development in Latour, a working-class neighbourhood in Paramaribo, Suriname. The term boropasi is Sranantongo for ‘inner path’, taking a faster route to a destination. More specifically, the study focuses on the boropasi next to the neighbourhood foundation StiBuLa, a transit route that is part of a larger network of boropasi for slow road users in the same neighbourhood. Today, the tension between its functionality as an important inner path on the one hand, and its informal character on the other, creates safety issues. This work analyses how spatial interventions can contribute to safety and social control, while ensuring that the boropasi, in addition to its primary utilitarian function as a fast transit route, also invites other meaningful infills for neighbourhood residents.

Design-driven participatory action research was used to arrive at design proposals, resulting in a possible future scenario for the place. Youth participation proved to play a valuable role in this. The research shows that the boropasi has the potential to become a multifunctional public space. Spatial interventions that create openness and invite alternative uses, affordances, can contribute to safety. This approach contrasts with other conceptions of security, which in the past have led to the construction of closed and opaque stone enclosures in this place. As a result, the boropasi today finds itself in a situation that paradoxically gives rise to crime and vandalism.