Transnational Urban Outdoors research group
We are a group of academic researchers who have trained and practiced in landscape architecture and urban design, and also currently teach on professionally accredited courses.
Off
Objectives
Our research addresses issues of ethnic and cultural diversity in urban places.
Within this broad context our research objectives are:
- To understand the qualities of landscape experience, especially how values and preferences might be shaped by personal and community histories of migration.
- To analyse how people from diverse backgrounds use public open spaces and streets and how these places may support positive intercultural encounters.
- To discuss how a context of growing super-diversity in urban populations needs to be reflected in practice in landscape architecture and urban planning and policy, design and management.
Current projects
Our current research projects include:
- The Un-Sociable Bench: how outdoor seating can provide places for positive or problematic intercultural encounters, research and filmmaking in Greenwich and Sutton, London.
- A study of residential and city centre locations in Bradford, exploring the relationship between urban design and social functions.
- Co-produced research on intercultural social dynamics of streets and public spaces in Page Hall, Sheffield.
Previous research has focused on topics such as the use of parks by first-generation migrants (including young refugees and asylum seekers), wellbeing and the urban outdoors, place attachment and migration, flexibility in place and meanings of place in ethnically diverse neighbourhoods.
