Research
A core mission of the Socio-spatial Urbanism Unit (SsUU) is driven by advancing the following components of broad research, education and practice agenda, emphasising a requirement for:
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- More explicit understandings of the human-environment relationship at the heart of approaches to research, teaching and practice, underpinned especially by phenomenological perspectives which provide foundations from which to see such relationships as mutually interdependent and mutually transforming.
- Recognition of the interdependency of urban morphology and social processes, especially how these can better inform an integration of professional, top-down processes with community-led bottom-up processes in urban place making and its management and adaptation.
- The primacy of transitional edges and microenvironments as socio-spatial components of urban order within research, education and practice, especially their key significance to the social life and vitality of the urban realm, the well-being of urban inhabitants, and the nature of their socio-spatial organisation to that significance.
- Emphasis on the need for accessible and inclusive forms of communication capable of overcoming professional and community boundaries and discipline specific boundaries.
- Development of cross-disciplinary research, education and practice that can define and operationalise better integration of built environment disciplines with environmental psychology, cognitive neuroscience and sociological principles focused on the socio-spatial dimensions of transitional edges and microenvironments.
- Development of new readings of the urban realm more closely related to territorial functioning and in particular the need for a better balance between professional intervention and occupant self-organisation.
- Reorientation of practice and policy to be more localised and context specific, emphasising the importance of longitudinal, time-sensitive partnership working.
Publications
- Journal publications
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Yin Y., Thwaites K,. Simpson JC. (2022) Measuring Street Restorative Expectations in Shanghai Using Restorative Component Scale as an Explorative Approach. Urban Design International
Thwaites, K., and Simpson, J. (2020) Socially Restorative Urbanism: Principles and Practice for Socio-Spatial Urban Design. Landscape Architecture Journal, (27), 89-101. (Chinese Language Version).
- Book chapters
- Books