Since about a century ago, various means and methods are being discussed and experienced, in design disciplines, in favour of a greater autonomy of individuals and collectivities in the construction of the environment in which they live. A cartography of diverse authors and professional practices, organized in a timeline, allows observing the development of participatory processes in architecture and urbanism in four great moments: 1) under the influence of authors like William Morris, in the beginning of the 20th century, in survey practices informing design, as in Patrick Geddes and Hannes Meyer, who establish a modernist tradition with social commitment, during a period of mass housing construction; 2) from the 1960s, under a critical point of view to modernism, in several works that promoted participation and self-construction, such as Giancarlo de Carlo, John Turner and Walter Segal; 3) associative and communitarian practices flowered during the 1970s, such as the Community Technical Aid Centers, Planners Network, Architecture Sans Frontiere; 4) in the turn of the 21st century, the profusion of collaborative and activist practices, supported by new digital technologies, experimenting with new ways of doing together, inclusion and sharing, as the example of Santiago Cirugeda, Nick Wates, atelier d’architecture autogérée; in addition to the inclusion of some of these practices and tools in official planning and governance instruments. From this initial view, it is proposed to relate the timeline of participatory methods with factors that, as believed, have influenced the paths covered, such as: 1) ethical guidelines, such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Stockholm Declaration and the recent idea of urban age; 2) political struggles, from the welfare state’s building, to discontent with neoliberal policies, the crisis of representativeness and the inclusion of participation as a right and a tool in the processes of planning and management of cities; 3) challenges to the boundaries of the disciplinary field, from unidisciplinarity to transdisciplinarity, resulting in a dilution of authorship; 4) technological development, from the 2nd industrial revolution to a 4th, when technopolitics flourished. Such a panorama allows a better contextualization of current practices. This study is part of the theoretical revision of a doctoral thesis that discusses methods and means of participatory processes and intends to create a hybrid interface (physical and digital) to mediate the interaction between citizens, government and local initiatives, within the scope of the local development program BIP/ZIPNeighbourhoods and Zones of Priority Intervention, from Lisbon City Hall.

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participatory processes,cartography,collaborative processes,BIP/ZIP.