The topic at the centre of this thesis is the dialectical relationship between the social and the spatial in the context of urban design. Critical engagement with this relationship is probably one of the main drivers by which the urban design field is emerging and developing, both as an academic discipline in its own right and as a profession outside academia (Birch, 2011; Madanipour, 2014). From that perspective, urban designers are often considered experts in socio-spatiality. This thesis is critical towards this understanding and argues that much urban design practice is based on an overly simplified understanding of how design influences social action in space. While design in the form of built space may represent the intentions of urban designers to create good public space, users agency plays in important role in how these intentions are realised.
Urban designers constantly face competing discourses about the spatial and the social, and how these phenomena interact with and condition each other (Carmona, Tiesdell, Heath, & Oc, 2010; Madanipour, 2014). Simplified models of sociality in support of dominant discourses, constrain urban designs opportunities to experiment and introduce challenging ideas to planning. Practitioners do thus not simply plan and design cities, they have to adapt their practice to wider social, economic, geographic and environmental developments (Knox, 2003). Their nuanced understanding of socio-spatiality is constrained by simplified and normative policy understandings of this relationship. Viewed as professionals who are trained to transform policy visions about sociality into built form, they are expected to deliver design that enables these visions. Their work becomes policy driven.
In this context of daily practice, urban designers are seen less as critical thinkers, and more as professionals who know what to do (Moudon, 1992) to produce certain idealised versions of socio-spatiality. These expectations are based on the assumption that design can produce sociality, for example labelled as livability, sociability, social capital or community feeling. As a result, practitioners struggle, because they have to compromise their more nuanced understanding in favour of what is expected of them. They are “dialectically positioned between science and design” (Verma, 2011, p. 58). The societal problem is that the genuine and nuanced knowledge that urban designers have of socio-spatiality is not in line with dominant discourses in the field of practice. This leads to a distortion and simplification of their knowledge through those discourses. As a result, new urban design ideas are implemented in built space after they have been adapted to dominant thought and practice, and constrained by business-as-usual concerns rather than enabling change.
This struggle is not new to the field. Some of the most well-known work associated with the urban design discipline recognises the importance and the complexity of the relationship between the spatial and the social, and emphasises a need for research into this relationship (Alexander, 1987; Appleyard, Gerson, &
Lintell, 1981; Jacobs, 1965; Lynch, 1960). Despite continuous research and debate, however, about how urban design influences the social, and vice versa, the field plays a part in perpetuating the problematic of competing discourses. There is a strong tendency in the field to overemphasise a solution-oriented approach, and it promotes itself as a field that primarily strives to create knowledge about what to do, rather than about what is going on and why (Moudon, 1992). The problematic scientific implication of this is that this striving leads to a failure to make a clear distinction between researching a scientific phenomenon in order to understand it, and researching a societal problem in order to derive technical solutions (ibid.). In the latter case, the social and the spatial are treated as separate phenomena standing in a mere unidirectional functional relationship that can be influenced technically through design. Based
on a simplified instrumental understanding of socio-spatiality, design is presented as a technical solution to fix the sociality function of public space. Knowledge about socio-spatiality thus remains elusive, and is in need of critical examination in research. Numerous scholars have addressed this simplified view on sociality and contributed with a more nuanced understanding through theory. While I do not claim that this theory lacks empirical evidence I see, in the case that I am investigating, opportunities to strengthen this theory through empirical research in a case in which the nuances these scholars highlight surface in a very clear way.
The above societal and scientific problems are interwoven. A limited understanding of socio-spatiality (the scientific problem) makes new urban design ideas about changing this relationship prone to being adjusted to and perpetuating dominant discourses (the societal problem). This generates a two-sided research need. On the one hand, it generates a need to examine the way in which design ideas intending to alter socio-spatiality are simplified and adjusted to dominant discourses. On the other, there is a need to research the mechanisms and dynamics of socio-spatiality in built space with new approaches. I have structured the PhD project around this two-sided research need.
Accordingly, the aim of this thesis is twofold: first, to reveal how design ideas intending to produce sociality are influenced by dominant discourses about socio-spatiality; and second, to develop new knowledge about socio-spatiality in built urban space. This leads to two closely interlinked research questions. Both address the socio-spatiality phenomenon, but on two different research levels, the level of professional discourse and the level of built space. The first question is concerned with how professionals think about socio-spatiality and how they adapt innovative ideas to existing discourses:
- How are design ideas, intending to produce sociality, influenced by dominant discourses about socio-spatiality, in the process of their adoption to the professional field?
The second question is concerned with designers’ intentions to enable sociality. It focuses on how design changes socio-spatiality in built space and, thereby creates the preconditions for the envisioned sociality:
- How does socio-spatiality unfold in built space designed to produce sociality?
Research strategy
My departure point for this project was a general investigation of controversies around an urban design idea called shared space. The main technical principles of the idea are to minimise standard means of traffic regulation, such as signs, markings or signals, in central urban spaces. Supported by levelling the surface and avoiding a clear separation between sidewalk and road all different travel modes are offered to use the same area (See Chapter 5 explaining shared space in more detail). Based on my diverse disciplinary background (social anthropology, environmental sciences and civil engineering) I saw shared space from the start as a particularly clear case in which different fields of knowledges converge.
Reading and discussing the idea with planners and designers, I discovered that shared space is a case through which the above double-sided socio-spatiality problem surfaces in a particularly clear way. On
the one hand, the idea becomes the carrier of dominant discourses (discussed in my first paper) about design and sociality. On the other hand, little is known about how this design influences the socio-spatial relationship in built space (see Chapter 5 for existing related research). I therefore chose to research shared space in more depth, seen as a particular attempt to influence socio-spatiality, on the above-mentioned levels of investigation, the discursive level and the level of built space. Identifying shared space as a case to investigate the above research questions meant narrowing them down and relating them more explicitly to shared space (Figure 1).
Figure 1 illustrates how the case of shared space relates to the two different research levels and the different disciplinary perspectives I use to theoretically frame the thesis. The figure appears in different versions throughout the thesis, helping to map out different elements of the research. Even though the content of these versions of the figure differ, they are all based on this research design, of two (non-hierarchical) levels of investigation and three different disciplinary perspectives brought to the investigation of shared space as an urban design idea particularly aiming to alter socio-spatiality.
The professional discourse (Level One) is investigated from a planning perspective. This is necessary to understand how practitioners understand socio-spatiality in shared space. The first paper in this thesis is a result of this investigation. The findings from this paper encouraged me to investigate the relationship between the design intentions and its social implications in a built shared space. To do this I introduce a critical urban studies perspective from the field of urban geography, focusing on the influence of designed space on sociality (Paper Two), and a semiotic perspective (Paper Three) focusing on how users make meaning of the different socio-spatial dimensions of shared space. The theoretical framework presented
Figure 1. Research design
in the next chapter explains how these three perspectives relate and contribute to urban design, particularly regarding the above two-sided problem statement.
My choice of the different disciplinary perspectives was based on having read state of the art literature about shared space and noticing the narrow technical understanding of the socio-spatial relationship.
Most shared space literature addresses the societal issues typically dominating public debate related to street design and management, such as accessibility, functionality, perception of traffic safety and various other traffic management issues. These are legitimate concerns related to societal debates of how streets work and they are typically dealt with by transport engineering, transport geography and related disciplines.
In contrast, even though the shared space idea sits directly in the interface of multiple disciplines, there is little reference to the literature within urban studies on social life. Most surprising is the weak connection made by shared space literature to link the idea to relevant debates in urban studies and in urban design itself. The shared space debate and research about it seem to be disconnected from these fields’ contributions. In particular, one misses those contributions that are fundamentally addressing socio-spatiality, as urban anthropology, urban sociology, social geography, or environmental psychology.
This thesis cannot give an encompassing and exhaustive account of all these fields contributions to understand socio-spatiality, but tries to highlight some key work which is particularly relevant in the context of design ideas like shared space. The three perspectives I apply in this study may not be exhaustive of all relevant disciplines, but they do introduces several that are of key importance.
Contribution
The societal contribution of this thesis to the urban design field lies in creating a greater awareness of the discursive processes compromising innovative knowledge about socio-spatiality in the urban design field.
This awareness is an important precondition for being a critical practitioner, reflective and conscious of how ideas and their rationales may be changed through implementation. The first paper of this thesis illustrates this process using the example of shared space as an urban design idea.
Further, this thesis in itself, and through all three papers, offers a new understanding of shared space, because it approaches the idea alternatively to existing debates. It brings shared space to urban design as a case to learn from, but, conversely, it also brings urban design knowledge and knowledge from three other related fields to the shared space debate.
The scientific contribution of this work relates to the double-sided nature of the research, on the one hand focusing on discourses about socio-spatiality and, on the other, investigating this as a real life phenomenon. The Level One part of the thesis is thus a contribution to the scholarly debates and theorisation about how planning and design ideas are passed on and translated in the professional realm.
These debates take place largely in the planning field rather than in urban design where this thesis wishes to make a contribution. Regarding the Level Two investigation, the scientific contribution of the thesis is that it supports scholars’ theorisation about the relationship between design and sociality. It does so by applying this theorisation to a real world case in which the arguments of these scholars become particularly clear. This scientific contribution is of both a general and a particular nature. In general, for scholars focusing on socio-spatiality it offers a better understanding of this phenomenon through investigating shared space. In particular, it offers a better understanding of shared space as a special case of socio-spatiality.
Overview of the main elements of the thesis
The following table shows how the different elements of the thesis are connected
Main Topic The relationship between the social and the spatial in the context of urban design.
Societal problem Urban designers work in the face of contesting discourses about socio-spatiality and how it is influenced by design
Scientific problem The socio-spatial relationship is still not fully understood within the urban design field.
There is a lack of interdisciplinary exchange with other fields investigating the same phenomenon.
Research need Need to reveal in what way design ideas intending to alter socio-spatiality
Aims To reveal how design ideas intending to produce sociality are influenced by dominant discourses about socio-spatiality.
To develop new knowledge about socio-spatiality in built urban space.
Research strategy To investigate shared space, as a case of a design idea to alter socio-spatiality, on two levels, the level of professional discourse and the level of built space.
Research levels Level One – professional discourse Level Two – built space Research
Creating a greater awareness among practitioners of the discursive processes compromising innovative knowledge about socio-spatiality in the urban design field.
Bringing shared space to urban design as a case to learn from; and bringing new interdisciplinary perspectives about socio-spatiality to the shared space debate.
Scientific contributions of thesis
Contributing to scholars debates about the discursive processes of planning and design ideas being passed on, translated and negotiated.
Applies existing theorisation about socio-spatiality to a clear real world case, shared space design.
Better understanding of socio-spatiality through investigating shared space.
Better understanding of shared space as a special case of socio-spatiality.
Table 1. Thesis’ main elements
The structure of the thesis is as follows. At first, I shall present the theoretical frame of the thesis. The beginning of this chapter outlines the most important concepts, followed by a more detailed account of the above three different theoretical perspectives I introduce. The next chapter on research strategy and methods presents the diverse methods I used and links them to the different theoretical perspectives introduced in the chapter before. Subsequently I follow up both my theoretical and methodological approaches by reflecting on the general epistemological underpinnings of this work. The chapter after that presents an in-depth account of the shared space idea, its origins, most recent debates and research.
The following chapter presents a built shared space in detail, St Olavs plass in Oslo, where I investigates how socio-spatiality unfolds in the built environment. The second-last chapter summarises each of the papers I have written and synthetises them. Finally, I concentrate on the most important findings to conclude the thesis.