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.
![Transnational Urban Outdoors](http://cdn.sheffield.ac.uk/sites/default/files/styles/mobile_single_column_1x/public/2020-06/Morning-07-544.png.jpg?itok=8z96z9uj)
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.