Sustainable Streetscapes: Design Approaches and Examples of Viennese Practice

Streets are ubiquitous and cater to various functions in a city. However, today most streets are unilaterally used and designed likewise. Car-centred spatial distribution is currently being questioned in the course of urban densification and in light of climate and ecological challenges. The presented work focuses on a multi-layered transformation of streetscapes towards a multi-purpose social and ecological space, which goes beyond a mere redistribution of space and functions. This paper draws from the results of an interdisciplinary research project headed by the Institute of Landscape Architecture (University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, Vienna). The Viennese situation is aligned with international trends. The research includes comparative analysis of streetscapes in Vienna and comparable cities, literature reviews, collaborative workshops and qualitative interviews. As a result, progressive layout specifications and quality aspects for future streets are proposed and presented in extracts. Furthermore, the goal of green space social equity is linked. The paper concludes by arguing for comprehensive consideration and redesign of streetscapes as one promising puzzle to counteract the evident challenges of climate change in urban settings. Its range reaches from small scale microclimatic improvements up to citywide provision of accessible, useable, ecologically sound and sustainable public space with new standards for streets as potential backbone.

Opportunities for interdisciplinary studies of the economic behavior fundamentals

The purpose of the study is to identify trends in the economic behavior of the population in the field of consumer, saving, investment, and credit activity. The analysis of human economic actions only for solving scientific problems is divided into the listed types, but in practice, an individual makes a particular decision (chooses a certain strategy) under the impact of simultaneously influencing groups of factors that depend on gender and age, place and living conditions, social affiliation-income group, level of education, psychological and value attitudes, level of development of the financial infrastructure in a certain territory, stage of economic development of a country and / or region. And now another significant factor has been added — the coronavirus pandemic and its consequences. The article presents the results of the first stage of the interdisciplinary research project "Socio-psychological factors of economic behavior of the population: risks and opportunities (cross-country comparisons)" carried out by the authors. On the basis of the data obtained with the help of the sociological tools developed by the authors, the types of economic behavior are investigated in terms of four psychosocial aspects closely related to the features of mentality: trust, risk, stress, responsibility. An interdisciplinary approach to the study of the motives and strategies of economic behavior provides identification of the most realistic picture of all current risks and opportunities for population in the financial and consumer services market. At the second stage, the data obtained by the authors from the results of the survey of the Russian population, will be compared on the basis of a comparative analysis with the outcomes of the forthcoming surveys of respondents from Poland, Belarus, Lithuania and Slovakia.

Engaging MSM Communities in HIV Self-Testing Research and Programming in Kenya: Collaborations, Tacit Knowledge, and a Community-Based Programme Science Approach

Background: Understanding the basic principles for achieving research outcomes that are relevant to local communities is invaluable. The process allows for building of collaborative spaces and redistribution of power in knowledge production practices. This is because members of marginalized and vulnerable communities have long been critical of a research culture that has historically failed to advance meaningful collaboration and overlooks local forms of knowledge at various phases of the research processes. There has however not been a clear framework that outlines how communities should be meaningfully engaged. Rather, substantial variations in the nature of community engagements exist across research projects, thus requiring a more nuanced approach of working with communities. Methods: In this methodological paper, we describe how a community-based program science approach guided an interdisciplinary research project to inform the rollout of HIV self-testing (HIVST) among men who have sex with men (MSM) in three urban counties in Kenya. Community members and their research and programmatic partners collaborated through all phases of the research process including research design, data collection, and translation of research. Importantly, community researchers and policy makers also played an integral role in data analysis, going well beyond the conventional role of “community engagement” in global health research. Results: The study created a platform that enabled meaningful collaborations across the diverse stakeholders and allowed the MSM communities to contribute to the decisions and solutions impacting on their community. Our community-based program science approach recognizes that community researchers possess tacit knowledge, a form of expertise that formally trained researchers do not have. Conclusion: We argue that in order to fully engage with such expertise, marginalized communities must be meaningfully involved in all levels of evidence building and decision making around programs impacting their communities. We equally emphasize the importance of setting up operating norms and clear definitions of partnership roles at the initial stages of establishing collaborations. Such a move gives the community a chance to trust their capabilities and contribute more meaningfully throughout the research processes.

Engaging MSM Communities in HIV Self-Testing Research and Programming in Kenya: Collaborations, Tacit Knowledge, and a Community-Based Programme Science Approach

Background: Understanding the basic principles for achieving research outcomes that are relevant to local communities is invaluable. The process allows for building of collaborative spaces and redistribution of power in knowledge production practices. This is because members of marginalized and vulnerable communities have long been critical of a research culture that has historically failed to advance meaningful collaboration and overlooks local forms of knowledge at various phases of the research processes. There has however not been a clear framework that outlines how communities should be meaningfully engaged. Rather, substantial variations in the nature of community engagements exist across research projects, thus requiring a more nuanced approach of working with communities. Methods: In this methodological paper, we describe how a community-based program science approach guided an interdisciplinary research project to inform the rollout of HIV self-testing (HIVST) among men who have sex with men (MSM) in three urban counties in Kenya. Community members and their research and programmatic partners collaborated through all phases of the research process including research design, data collection, and translation of research. Importantly, community researchers and policy makers also played an integral role in data analysis, going well beyond the conventional role of “community engagement” in global health research. Results: The study created a platform that enabled meaningful collaborations across the diverse stakeholders and allowed the MSM communities to contribute to the decisions and solutions impacting on their community. Our community-based program science approach recognizes that community researchers possess tacit knowledge, a form of expertise that formally trained researchers do not have. Conclusion: We argue that in order to fully engage with such expertise, marginalized communities must be meaningfully involved in all levels of evidence building and decision making around programs impacting their communities. We equally emphasize the importance of setting up operating norms and clear definitions of partnership roles at the initial stages of establishing collaborations. Such a move gives the community a chance to trust their capabilities and contribute more meaningfully throughout the research processes.

Legal Aspects on Cultural Values and Energy Efficiency in the Built Environment – A Sustainable Balance of Public Interests

Improved energy efficiency and increased use of renewables within the building stock is crucial to ensure the reach of international and national climate goals, such as the CO2 neutral society. Exciting buildings needs to be retrofitted and heated by renewable energy sources. This may however lead to conflicts with other sustainability goals such as the preservation of cultural heritage values within the built environment. If conflicts can be avoided and attention paid both to improved use and production of energy and the preservation of built cultural heritage will to a large extent depend on the design of the legislation. In Sweden there are many parallel laws regulating environmental issues, building and planning and preservation of cultural heritage. Thus, the legal system as a whole must be coherent and without deficits, loop-holes and conflicts contradicting goal fulfilment. Moreover, the norms must be effectively applied and complied with. RECO is an interdisciplinary research project assessing the effectiveness of the Swedish legal system in reaching energy goals while preserving heritage values. This assessment has been carried out through study of legal works, case law, case studies and a national survey. This article presents and elaborates on some results from the project.

Provocative landscapes: a study of everyday cultural landscapes at the outskirts of agglomerations

The paper describes research principles and preliminary results of collaborative interdisciplinary research project aimed at the study of everyday cultural landscapes on the periphery of the Yekaterinburg and Tyumen urban agglomerations. The research design of the project implies a paradigm shift from expert reading of the landscapes to communicative learning of the environment, from the perception of the territories in question as resource reservoirs to their exploration as a domain of affordances providing opportunities for endogenous eco-nomic development. In 2020, an expedition worked in the villages of Tobolsk Zabolotye, in the cities of Irbit and Polevskoy of Sverdlovsk Oblast, and in the village of Belozerskoye of Kurgan Oblast. The cases and places deemed perspective in view of the application of the research method were characterized. This paper mainly pro-vides an overview of the methodological principles that underpin our ongoing study, which should be considered only as an outline of the preliminary results of the first year of field work. The main source of the theoretical inspi-ration for the project design was the idea of affordances, coined by the American psychologist James J. Gibson, who studied the problems of perception. The main methodological objective of the project is to apply the theory of affordances to the field study of strategies for everyday landscape choice. In the 2020 field season, the design of the project, envisaging comparative perspective and increased mobility of researchers, was significantly influ-enced by the method of traveling interview. While working in Tobolsk Zabolotye, we followed everyday patterns of mobility, conducting interviews along the way, discussing with the respondents the hierarchy of places and territo-ries, criteria for identifying vernacular regions, capacity of communication channels, modes of the mobility and its limitations. Concurrently, we were gaining the experience of non-discursive, embodied in materiality and corpore-ality, movement and recording local narratives of identity.

The making of a professional digital caregiver: personalisation and friendliness as practices of humanisation

The aim of this paper is to explore how a digital caregiver, developed within a Swedish interdisciplinary research project, is humanised through health-enhancing practices of personalisation and friendliness. The digital caregiver is developed for being used in older patients’ homes to enhance their health. The paper explores how the participants (researchers and user study participants) of the research project navigate through the humanisation of technology in relation to practices of personalisation and friendliness. The participants were involved in a balancing act between making the digital caregiver person-like and friend-like enough to ensure the health of the patient. Simultaneously, trying to make the patients feel like as if they were interacting with someone rather than something—while at the same time not making the digital caregiver seem like a real person or a real friend. This illustrates the participants’ discursive negotiations of the degree of humanisation the digital caregiver needs in order to promote the health of the patient. A discursive conflict was identified between a patient discourse of self-determination versus a healthcare professional discourse of authority and medical responsibility: whether the digital caregiver should follow the patient’s health-related preferences or follow the healthcare professionals’ health rules. Hence, a possible conflict between the patient and the digital caregiver might arise due to different understandings of friendliness and health; between friendliness (humanisation) as a health-enhancing practice governed by the patient or by the healthcare professionals (healthcare professionalism).

Simulating Digital Classics in Classical Teaching

In the 21st century, Classical Archaeology is making more and more use of digital tools and methods. This tendency towards a future field of “Digital Classics” requires participation not only as users, but also as developers. For this reason, the required qualification profile for a student of Classical Archaeology is changing and academic teaching at universities is confronted with new challenges. Our presentation tackles this issue by suggesting a new teaching concept that focuses especially on the pivotal skills that are needed to use and develop digital methods within an interdisciplinary team. It is based on the didactic model of a simulation game. This simulation is attached to a (real) interdisciplinary research project. In this way it offers the possibility of a structured process model and challenges the participants’ skills of interaction and complex decision-making. The result is a realistic environment whose demands, means and conditions of action support the assessment and evaluation of academic expectations in multidisciplinary professional situations

The digital resurrection of Margaret Thatcher: Creative, technological and legal dilemmas in the use of deepfakes in screen drama

This article develops from the findings of an interdisciplinary research project that has linked film practice research with computer science and law, in an exercise that seeks to digitally resurrect Margaret Thatcher to play herself in a contemporary film drama. The article highlights the imminent spread of machine learning techniques for digital face replacement across fiction content production, with central research questions concerning the ethical and legal issues that arise from the appropriation of the facial image of a deceased person for use in drama.