Urban Design International最新文献

Abstract

The term ‘co-production’ has been used in various fields, including planning, as collaborative forms of public goods and service delivery gain significance. Co-production has two sides—the ‘co’ side refers to actors and their motivations, while the ‘production’ side refers to phases and instruments. This paper examines privately owned public space/s (POPS) based on the two sides of co-production. Thereby, it addresses two research gaps. First, less has been written to date on the involvement of actors other than local authorities and developers. Second, little attention has been paid to the phase through which POPS are co-produced. The paper fills these research gaps by presenting the empirical work undertaken in HafenCity, Hamburg. It reveals a wide range of actors engaged in four different phases through various instruments. This paper also identifies challenges of co-production of POPS, and makes recommendations.

The design of urban public space is inherently problematic because the range of its possible uses and meanings is broad and unpredictable. This paper engages this problematic through the lens of Gibson’s theory of ‘affordances’—the ways the material world affords for human desires. We first explore some conceptual and methodological problems of the theory of affordances and its application in understanding and designing public space. These dimensions of affordance theory are then reconceived using the relational thinking of assemblage and actor-network theory (ANT). A key contribution of the paper is an expanded typology of affordances which includes improvised and serendipitous affordances that extend beyond the intentions of designers and users. This opens new ways of thinking about the design of urban public space as a space of possibility where outcomes are open, multiple, and unpredictable. The paper suggests how urban spaces can be shaped to better support rich cultural diversity and social inclusion.

This study investigates the reliability of microscale walkability assessment by analysing the correspondence of the evaluations obtained using three different street-auditing tools, which are similar from a methodological perspective and regarding time consumption. The comparison of the evaluation of 1314 street segments—from a wide range of urban fabrics in Toledo, Spain—shows low consensus between the three audits. This research explores the reasons behind this and offers a comparative understanding of the examined tools. The paper describes their limitations, highlights the need for further research into the relationship between the streetscape and pedestrian mobility, and calls for more context-specific auditing tools.

This study investigates the reliability of microscale walkability assessment by analysing the correspondence of the evaluations obtained using three different street-auditing tools, which are similar from a methodological perspective and regarding time consumption. The comparison of the evaluation of 1314 street segments—from a wide range of urban fabrics in Toledo, Spain—shows low consensus between the three audits. This research explores the reasons behind this and offers a comparative understanding of the examined tools. The paper describes their limitations, highlights the need for further research into the relationship between the streetscape and pedestrian mobility, and calls for more context-specific auditing tools.