Place mending: unscripted urban practice, abstract[ed] city and co-creation of urban space.

Urban areas are facing problems of great complexity, therefore providing a better collective quality of life in contemporary cities is becoming a progressively critical issue for urban planning. This study focused on meaningfully contributing to technically-minded planning practices by measuring the urban context according to the human experience and scale, rather than statistical and econometric reports. The elements of digital capture technology, walking as a design method and parallelism of virtual and real contexts were explored. This exploration established a future-focused Place Mending toolkit: a key outcome of the study. It emphasised the possibility of integrating digital capture technology, urban sensitivity and empathy to shape and co-create inclusive and resilient urban public spaces. Walking, in this study, was utilised as a mending tool – that allows first learning about, interpreting, interrogating and understanding the context before applying spatial solutions. Multiple place narratives generated by study participants served as catalysts of urban change. This pluralistic approach to understanding urban complexity through iterative space simulations and embedding infra-reflexive stories of the context to initiate city co-creation was prompted by digital capture technology. This study therefore explored, through a practice-based approach, the crossover of digital technologies, specifically 'digitisation with care', and placemaking opportunity through 'walkshops' (city walkabouts) by encouraging lived urban neighbourhood smartness and participation. Considering the contemporary era of digital abundance, this thesis called for meaningful digitisation with localised approaches and a shift to small urban scales as a means of critically analysing urban complexity through democratisation of [mobile] laser scanning aimed at meaningful, fair and just use of technology and data. The study results provided insights into perceptions of what an attractive urban space is and how those perceptions may be improved on the spot by participants' ideas generated while walking, often prompted by the urban visuals. The incidence of the real context and a juxtaposition of digital technology to reappreciate and capture the unique experience of urban spaces, rather than utilising the technology to only produce accurate geometrical records of the environment, revealed an innovative framework to view the surroundings. It emphasised a profound impact of collective intelligence and imagination in urban patching of the built and social fabric. The proposed Place Mending toolkit has potential to augment traditional planning frameworks and conventional ways of conveying information that often fail to effectively communicate the intricate dynamics of context and diverse stakeholders. By meaningfully harnessing the digital capture tools for ephemeral, often small-scale, interventions the study established the significance of technical innovation and community involvement in space planning and restorative design practices on a granular urban scale.

Author dc:creator

• Belkouri, Daria

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• M. Martinez-Sanchez, J. Issacs and T. Dounas

• Urban walking
• Digital capture
• Participatory methods
• Place mending
• Visual parallelism

Language dc:language

en

Identifier

oai:rgu-repository.worktribe.com:3463757
https://doi.org/10.48526/rgu-wt-3463757

Author Identifier

0000-0003-0712-2062

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:rgu-repository.worktribe.com:3463757