Connecting places: towards a participatory, ordinary urbanism

2019 ◽  
pp. 205-226
Author(s):  
Geoff Vigar ◽  
Georgiana Varna
Keyword(s):  
Public Space ◽  
Urban Design ◽  
Smart City ◽  
Design Thinking ◽  
Transport Policy ◽  
Macro Level ◽  
Place Making ◽  
Transport Planning ◽  
Regulatory Systems ◽  
Micro Level

This chapter examines the opportunities and pitfalls of integrating transport planning with urban design and place-making strategies, using design thinking as a way to address many of the ‘intractables’ associated with implementing transport policy. We argue for a focus on the substance and consistency of macro level strategy alongside the significance of creative and consistent micro level interventions. We position our argument alongside smart city debates, aiming to reinsert into these a more ‘ordinary’ approach that celebrates the significance of intervention in ‘ordinary neighbourhoods’ through the deployment of ‘ordinary technologies’ (benches, quality pavements) to create more livable cities and neighbourhoods. We concur that planning is a form of knowledge in action but choices over what counts as knowledge and how it is used and deployed are highly significant. In doing so, and to better secure citizen buy-in to the transformation of public space, we argue for an approach centred on co-design to counter planning orthodoxy that subverts people’s everyday needs to the paradigms and embedded routines of regulatory systems.

scholarly journals Urban Design for Super Mature Society

2019 ◽  
pp. 137-154
Author(s):  
Davisi Boontharm
Keyword(s):  
Public Space ◽  
Urban Design ◽  
Teaching And Learning ◽  
Architectural Design ◽  
Design Research ◽  
Design Thinking ◽  
Teaching Method ◽  
Technical Problem ◽  
Specific Context ◽  
New Town

This paper aims to discuss an experience in teaching and learning urban design-research studio at The international Program in Architecture and Urban Design, Meiji University, Japan, in 2018. The studio attempted to address a specific context of the advanced aging and shrinking of the city in Japanese society through urban design thinking. By applying a research-led teaching method which requires students to search and respond to the resource approach to sustainable urban regeneration, the studio seeks creative and responsive ideas which could create an alternative to the decline of urban fringe in a specific context of an old new town suffering from the advanced aging demography. With our main interest in the research on requalification, the studio was seeking to explore this concept in urban design scale. This design-research studio tried to identify and later applied the keywords with prefix “RE-s” as statement and conceptual thinking in the production of space. The area of investigation is Tama New Town located in Tokyo’s western suburb. It is the largest new town ever developed in Japan during the period of rapid economic growth in the 1970’s. Its design, which adopted the modernist planning concept, has become problematic in today’s situation. Half a century has passed, the new town, which never achieved its goal, has aged and is facing several socio-economic challenges. The aim of this urban design-research studio is to reach beyond just technical problem solving by spatial design and instead exercise the responsive strategic thinking to address the current alarming issues of the aging and shrinking society which, we believe, important to the New Urban Agenda proposed by the UN-Habitat. Here we tried to address specific questions; how should urban design respond to the shrinking society? How can urban design thinking address the situation where there is no “growth” and oppressed with super-aging neighbourhoods? And how can we re-shape the environment that will be less and less inhabitable? Within this studio, students are encouraged to respond critically and creatively in overall strategic planning, urban and architectural design including the design of public space for a sustainable future.

scholarly journals Smartization in Gatchina

2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (4) ◽  
pp. 1-16
Author(s):  
Olga V. Vorobeva ◽  
Ekaterina A. Manzhula
Keyword(s):  
Public Space ◽  
Urban Design ◽  
Smart City ◽  
Quantitative Research ◽  
City Development ◽  
Federal Grants ◽  
Target Groups ◽  
Qualitative And Quantitative ◽  
Effective Competition ◽  
Historical Identity

In the paper, a case of a Russian town Gatchina is examined to find the reasonable balance between international Smart City practice, governmental requirements, historical identity preservation and human-oriented approach. The article focuses on the democratic urban design of a public space. The project included qualitative and quantitative research; three project sessions with local inhabitants; preparation of an architectural project based on the collected data. During the design process, organizers faced two types of challenges: economic (shortage of funding) and communication issues (difficulties with informing and recruiting the citizens for the project sessions; underrepresentativeness of some target groups; etc.), whereby the latter dominate. Nevertheless, the project was effective; it showed that such towns can afford Smart City (though by separate projects only), and that collaboration with the citizens contributes to both history and culture preservation and effective competition in federal grants for Smart City development.

scholarly journals Smartization in Gatchina

2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (4) ◽  
pp. 0-0
Keyword(s):  
Public Space ◽  
Urban Design ◽  
Smart City ◽  
Quantitative Research ◽  
City Development ◽  
Federal Grants ◽  
Target Groups ◽  
Qualitative And Quantitative ◽  
Effective Competition ◽  
Historical Identity

In the paper, a case of a Russian town Gatchina is examined to find the reasonable balance between international Smart City practice, governmental requirements, historical identity preservation and human-oriented approach. The article focuses on the democratic urban design of a public space. The project included qualitative and quantitative research; three project sessions with local inhabitants; preparation of an architectural project based on the collected data. During the design process, organizers faced two types of challenges: economic (shortage of funding) and communication issues (difficulties with informing and recruiting the citizens for the project sessions; underrepresentativeness of some target groups; etc.), whereby the latter dominate. Nevertheless, the project was effective; it showed that such towns can afford Smart City (though by separate projects only), and that collaboration with the citizens contributes to both history and culture preservation and effective competition in federal grants for Smart City development.

Varieties of non-obvious meaning in CL and CADS: from ‘hindsight post-dictability’ to sweet serendipity

Corpora ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 339-367 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alan Partington
Keyword(s):  
Case Studies ◽  
Corpus Linguistics ◽  
Macro Level ◽  
Discourse Studies ◽  
Micro Level ◽  
Special Relevance

In this paper, I want to examine the special relevance of (non)obviousness in corpus linguistics through drawing on case studies. The research discussion is divided into two parts. The first is an examination of (non)obviousness at the micro-level, that is, in lexico-grammatical analyses, whilst the second looks at the more macro-level of (non)obviousness on the plane of discourse. In the final sections, I will examine various types of non-obvious meaning one can come across in Corpus-assisted Discourse Studies (CADS), which range from: ‘I knew that all along (now)’ to ‘that's interesting’ to ‘I sensed that but didn't know why’ (intuitive impressions and corpus-assisted explanations) to ‘I never even knew I never knew that’ (serendipity or ‘non-obvious non-obviousness’, analogous to ‘unknown unknowns’).

Panpsychism versus Panprotopsychism and the Subject-Summing Problem

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philip Goff
Keyword(s):  
Macro Level ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Making Sense ◽  
Combination Problem ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Micro Level ◽  
Russellian Monism ◽  
Nature Of Matter

This is the first of two chapters discussing the most notorious problem facing Russellian monism: the combination problem. This is actually a family of difficulties, each reflecting the challenge of how to make sense of everyday human and animal experience intelligibly arising from more fundamental conscious or protoconscious features of reality. Key challenges facing panpsychist and panpsychist forms of Russellian monism are considered. With respect to panprotopsychism, there is the worry that it collapses into noumenalism: the view that human beings, by their very nature, are unable to understand the concrete, categorical nature of matter. With respect to panpsychism, there is the subject-summing problem: the difficulty making sense of how micro-level conscious subjects combine to produce macro-level conscious subjects. A solution to the subject-summing problem is proposed, and it is ultimately argued that panpsychist forms of the Russellian monism are to be preferred on grounds of simplicity and elegance.

The Help-Yourself City

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gordon C.C. Douglas
Keyword(s):  
Economic Development ◽  
Public Space ◽  
Cultural Values ◽  
Urban Design ◽  
Local Governments ◽  
Design Elements ◽  
Community Needs ◽  
Urban Political Economy ◽  
Important Trend ◽  
Do It Yourself

When cash-strapped local governments don’t provide adequate services, and planning policies prioritize economic development over community needs, what is a concerned citizen to do? In the help-yourself city, you do it yourself. The Help-Yourself City presents the results of nearly five years of in-depth research on people who take urban planning into their own hands with unauthorized yet functional and civic-minded “do-it-yourself urban design” projects. Examples include homemade traffic signs and public benches, guerrilla gardens and bike lanes, even citizen development “proposals,” all created in public space without permission but in forms analogous to official streetscape design elements. With research across 17 cities and more than 100 interviews with do-it-yourselfers, professional planners, and community members, the book explores who is creating these unauthorized improvements, where, and why. In doing so, it demonstrates the way uneven development processes are experienced and responded to in everyday life. Yet the democratic potential of this increasingly celebrated trend is brought into question by the privileged characteristics of typical do-it-yourself urban designers, the aesthetics and cultural values of the projects they create, and the relationship between DIY efforts and mainstream planning and economic development. Despite its many positive impacts, DIY urban design is a worryingly undemocratic practice, revealing the stubborn persistence of inequality in participatory citizenship and the design of public space. The book thus presents a needed critical analysis of an important trend, connecting it to research on informality, legitimacy, privilege, and urban political economy.

scholarly journals Designing Slow Cities for More Than Human Enrichment: Dog Tales—Using Narrative Methods to Understand Co-Performative Place-Making

2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 1
Author(s):  
Jane Turner ◽  
Ann Morrison
Keyword(s):  
Urban Design ◽  
Meaning Making ◽  
Companion Animals ◽  
Physical World ◽  
Urban Environments ◽  
Position Paper ◽  
Place Making ◽  
Narrative Methods ◽  
Design Activities ◽  
Future Evaluation

Designing for slow cities and the need to design for future urban environments that include the more than human is a major priority for our times. This position paper problematizes the nature–culture divide in research about place and place-making, where place is understood to be about the sense of meaning we layer on locations in the physical world. It emphasizes the importance of narrative identity and place-making in the context of designing for urban environmental futures and creation of slow cities. We present an overview of a methodology to re-emplace place-making with animals in the context of slow cities and designing for the more than human. The work discussed here explores the use of narrative inquiry with some early narrative data (in the form of stories) about dog walks and those moments where our companion animals demonstrate agentic place-based meaning-making. The problem of understanding “what animals want” and how they make might ”make sense” of an experience is approached via a focus on a rich exemplar case in order to distinguish between emplotment (narrative meaning-making as self) and emplacement (narrative meaning-making as an aspect of place). This is used to create a framework for future evaluation with a view to revealing how “more than human stories”—just like our own familiar human stories—are also about agency and meaning in place. This recognition has import for ways in which we might approach decentring the human when we frame urban design activities.

scholarly journals Young Children’s Belonging in Finnish Educational Settings: an Intersectional Analysis

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anna-Maija Puroila ◽  
Jaana Juutinen ◽  
Elina Viljamaa ◽  
Riikka Sirkko ◽  
Taina Kyrönlampi ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Educational Policy ◽  
Educational Programs ◽  
Macro Level ◽  
Educational Settings ◽  
Policy Documents ◽  
Meso Level ◽  
Continuity And Change ◽  
Positional Power ◽  
Micro Level ◽  
Similarities And Differences

AbstractThe study draws on a relational and intersectional approach to young children’s belonging in Finnish educational settings. Belonging is conceptualized as a multilevel, dynamic, and relationally constructed phenomenon. The aim of the study is to explore how children’s belonging is shaped in the intersections between macro-, meso-, and micro-levels of young children’s education in Finland. The data consist of educational policy documents and ethnographic material generated in educational programs for children aged birth to 8 years. A situational mapping framework is used to analyze and interpret the data across and within systems levels (macro-level; meso-level; and micro-level). The findings show that the landscape in which children’s belonging is shaped and the intersections across and within the levels are characterized by the tensions between similarities and differences, majority and minorities, continuity and change, authority and agency. Language used, practices enacted, and positional power emerge as the (re)sources through which children’s (un)belonging is actively produced.

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