Background: Informal coercion, that is, situations where caregivers use subtle coercive measures to impose their will on patients, is common in adult psychiatric inpatient care. It has been described as ‘a necessary evil’, confronting nurses with an ethical dilemma where they need to balance between a wish to do good, and the risk of violating patients’ dignity and autonomy. Aim: To describe nurses’ experiences of being involved in informal coercion in adult psychiatric inpatient care. Research design: The study has (...) a qualitative, inductive design. Participants and research context: Semi-structured interviews with 10 Swedish psychiatric nurses were analysed with qualitative content analysis. Ethical considerations: The study was performed in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki. In line with the Swedish Ethical Review Act, it was also subject to ethical procedures at the university. Findings: Four domains comprise informal coercion as a process over time. These domains contain 11 categories focusing on different experiences involved in the process: Striving to connect, involving others, adjusting to the caring culture, dealing with laws, justifying coercion, waiting for the patient, persuading the patient, negotiating with the patient, using professional power, scrutinizing one’s actions and learning together. Discussion: Informal coercion is associated with moral stress as nurses might find themselves torn between a wish to do good for the patient, general practices and ‘house rules’ in the caring culture. In addition, nurses need to be aware of the asymmetry of the caring relationship, in order to avoid compliance becoming a consequence of patients subordinating to nurse power, rather than a result of mutual understanding. Reflections are thus necessary through the process to promote mutual learning and to avoid violations of patients’ dignity and autonomy. Conclusion: If there is a need for coercion, that is, if the coercion is found to be an ‘unpleasant good’, rather than ‘necessary evil’ considering the consequences for the patient, it should be subject to reflecting and learning together with the patient. (shrink)

BackgroundIndividuals with early phase cognitive impairment are frequently affected by existential distress, social avoidance and associated health issues. The demand for efficient psychological support is crucial from both an individual and a societal perspective. We have developed a novel psychological intervention manual for providing a non-medical path to enhanced psychological health in the cognitively impaired population. The current article provides specific information on the randomized controlled trial -design and methods. The main hypothesis is that participants receiving PIPCI will increase (...) their psychological flexibility compared to participants in the active control group and the waiting list control group. The secondary hypotheses are that participants receiving PIPCI will improve psychological health compared to participants in the active control group and the waiting list control group.Materials and MethodsThis three-arm RCT will recruit participants from the cognitive centers at Karolinska University Hospital in Stockholm and randomize approximately 120 individuals in the early phase of cognitive impairment to either an experimental group, an active control group or a waiting list control group. Intervention outcome will be evaluated with self-report questionnaires on physical and psychological aspects of health, cognitive assessment, biological markers and health care costs. Assessments will be performed at pre- and post-intervention, as well as at a 6-month follow-up.DiscussionThe development of a potentially feasible and effective psychological intervention tailored for early phase cognitive impairment has the potential to advance the non-pharmacological intervention field. This is especially important given the extensive burden for many affected individuals and their families and the current lack of effective treatments. If the psychological intervention discussed here shows feasibility and efficacy, there is potential for far-reaching healthcare implications for patients with early cognitive impairment at risk of developing dementia.Clinical Trial RegistrationClinicalTrials.gov: NCT04356924. Date of registration: April 22, 2020. URL: https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT04356924. (shrink)

BackgroundNarcissism viewed as a personality process rather than a stable trait explains narcissistic functioning as a tool for maintaining a positive self-view. Studying narcissism therefore needs adequate momentary measures for collecting higher frequency longitudinal data in experience sampling method studies. In this study, a shorter version of the Pathological Narcisissm Inventory is offered to measure vulnerable and grandiose narcissistic states, applicable in momentary assessment.MethodsThe measurement tool was tested in three samples. First, we assessed the factor structure and associations with other (...) contemporary measures of narcissism in a cross-sectional design on one English speaking and one Hungarian sample. Second, we conducted a five-day long experience sampling method study with a total of 15 measurement points.ResultsBased on structural equation modelling and multilevel analyses, the results suggest that the measure has adequate psychometric properties in both the within and between subject levels as well as acceptable convergent and discriminant validity.ConclusionsThe Pathological Narcissism Inventory – State Version can be a useful tool in momentary data collection enabling the examination of personality processes behind narcissistic functioning. (shrink)

For a long time, large-scale urbanexpansion has dominated the nature of the urban environment. In our times however, planners are often dealing with maintenance, modification, and redevelopment of urban situations that alreadyexist. Which are the implications of this fundamental change for theories and strategies of urban planning and design?

Sound and listening are intrinsically linked to how we experience and engage with places and communities. This guide invites landscape architects and urban designers to become soundscape architects and offers practical advice on sound and listening applicable to each stage of a design project: from reading the environment to intervening on it. This book foregrounds listening as an affective mediator between subjects and multispecies environments, and a vehicle to think and conceptualise environmental design beyond prevailing visual and (...) human-centred modes. The guide expands landscape architects' and urban designers' tools and skills to assess existing soundscapes, predict how those soundscapes will be altered through their designs, consider sound as a creative and active part of the design process, and envisage how users might perceive and be affected by those soundscapes as they evolve in time. The volume sits in the interface of research and practice, and incorporates theoretical, methodological and creative contributions from acoustic ecology, ecoacoustics, bioacoustics and sound art. Each of the design stages is illustrated through project examples that demonstrate the many advantages of incorporating attentive listening and sound into Landscape Architecture and Urban Design Practice. The book shows how incorporating listening and sounding as part of the design process promotes slow and subtle ways of practice, adds social and ecological value through the reduction of noise pollution and by monitoring the health of habitats, and enables the design of soundscapes that complement the character and design intent of a scheme and elicit joy and wonder. The book will be of interest to landscape architects, together with other design professionals such as urban designers, architects, geographers and engineers, who play a primary role in the composition of the soundscape. (shrink)

The venerable cities of the past, such as Venice or Amsterdam, convey a feeling of wholeness, an organic unity that surfaces in every detail, large and small, in restaurants, shops, public gardens, even in balconies and ornaments. But this sense of wholeness is lacking in modern urban design, with architects absorbed in problems of individual structures, and city planners preoccupied with local ordinances, it is almost impossible to achieve. In this groundbreaking volume, architect and planner Christopher Alexander presents (...) a new theory of urban design which attempts to recapture the process by which cities develop organically. To discover the kinds of laws needed to create a growing whole in a city, Alexander proposes here a preliminary set of seven rules which embody the process at a practical level and which are consistent with the day-to-day demands of urban development. He then puts these rules to the test, setting out with a number of his graduate students to simulate the urban redesign of a high-density part of San Francisco, initiating a project that encompassed some ninety different design problems, including warehouses, hotels, fishing piers, a music hall, and a public square. This extensive experiment is documented project by project, with detailed discussion of how each project satisfied the seven rules, accompanied by floorplans, elevations, street grids, axonometric diagrams and photographs of the scaled-down model which clearly illustrate the discussion. A New Theory of Urban Design provides an entirely new theoretical framework for the discussion of urban problems, one that goes far to remedy the defects which cities have today. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Literary Method of Urban Design: Design Fictions Using FictionAlan Marshall (bio)For students of design the world over, there’s usually nowhere near enough time in the school year to build a prototype of each and every single innovative idea that pops into one’s head—let alone to test them all in the social world or the marketplace. To speedily explore as many innovations as possible, students (...) are sometimes encouraged to follow an alternative pathway, to create “design fiction.” Intended to exist only on paper or the screen, a “design fiction” is not really destined for the real world.1 As a learning technique, it allows for a significant degree of technical experimentation as well as the imagining of new social arrangements. Many design experts see this “free-for-all” method as rather annoying and untrustworthy—more art than science. Yet for the most creative students, it serves to liberate them from the various constraints of their discipline. My own peculiar process of “design fiction” is what I call the “Literary Method of Urban Design.” I will come to this method in a moment.Last year, I was invited by the Bauhaus Museum in Weimar, Germany, to contribute artworks for a special exhibition entitled “Ways to Utopia: Life Between Desire and Crisis” (running from April 1, 2023—January 29, 2024).2 [End Page 560] This exhibition is a celebration of the one-hundredth anniversary of the Bauhaus’s first architectural product: a modern suburban family home in the city of Weimar called the Haus Am Horn. Built in 1923 the Haus Am Horn ushered in the Bauhaus style, a streamlined functional elegance presented in clean, bright, hopeful hues.3 Beyond just style, though, the house was proffered up in utopian terms. Its Bauhaus creators suggested that such a home could be mass-produced on an industrial scale cheaply and efficiently to provide elegant living to every single family in Europe, be they rich or poor. In its first iteration, the Staatliches Bauhaus was a high-spirited, playful, future-oriented, and socially aware fine arts and architecture school that ran from 1919 to 1933 in Weimar, then Dessau, then Berlin. However, its liberalism and experimentation away from traditional teaching and practice invited scorn from conservatives and from the Nazi Party. The former took the Bauhaus school’s funding away; the latter shuttered it for good. Despite the closure of the building, the Bauhaus style transformed design across the world as former teachers and ex-students applied Bauhaus principles and approaches in new settings. The old Bauhaus school has since been resurrected, with the opening of Bauhaus Universität Weimar, and the Bauhaus Museum, with locations in Weimar and Dessau.A few years back, Skyhorse Publishers published a book of my own “design fictions” depicting real-world cities set far in the future, each presented in utopian terms.4 Because of this, the Bauhaus approached me to help them celebrate their centennial anniversary by displaying my utopian urban designs in their museum. However, to convey the centenary theme of the exhibition, they requested exactly 100 different artworks of 100 different urban utopias portraying 100 different real-world cities set 100 years in the future. At the time, I had only produced eighty such works over the preceding decade. However, since the exhibition was to include masterworks by Bauhaus design greats like George Muche and Alma Buscher, I did not want to fall short. To make the “century” in quick time, I pushed ahead by deploying my own peculiar “Literary Method of Urban Design.”5 This method comprises three steps:1. Select a city.2. Select a literary work.3. Design the future of the selected city, based upon the themes of the selected literary work.[End Page 561] Click for larger view View full resolutionFigure 1.Future London. By the author, inspired by More’s Utopia (1516).When I used this method for the first time with Thomas More’s Utopia (1516) as the literary base, a curator at the Museum of London was tickled enough to include it in an exhibition about the future of London.6Since then, the utopian spark has flowed through many of... (shrink)

William H. Whyte's instructional film The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces (1979), which chronicles the findings of his decade-long study of people's behavior in small urban spaces in New York City in the 1970s, offers a precise analysis of the rules of attraction that draw people into places and that keep them attached. By combining direct observation with complex technical arrangements and new forms of movement studies, Whyte's study advocates a quintessentially process -oriented understanding of 'placemaking' that (...) shaped a new bottom-up approach to urban design in the 1970s. (shrink)

William H.Whyte’s instructional film The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces (1979), which chronicles the findings of his decade-long study of people’s behavior in small urban spaces in New York City in the 1970s, offers a precise analysis of the rules of attraction that draw people into places and that keep them attached. By combining direct observation with complex technical arrangements and new forms of movement studies, Whyte’s study advocates a quintessentially process-oriented understanding of ‘placemaking’ that shaped a (...) new bottom-up approach to urban design in the 1970s. (shrink)

In eleven pointed and sometimes provocative conversations, architect and professor of architecture, Vittorio Magnago Lampugnani uses a critique of contemporary urban planning to develop principles for reestablishing the discipline. In seven projects designed with these principles in mind, he shows how his vigorous reinterpretation of the field can be implemented and what a fresh start can look like. Magnago Lampugnani envisages a calm modern city that can measure itself against the historic city, while emphasizing sustainability and providing a home (...) for a multifaceted and continually changing society. (shrink)

Evidence affirms that aesthetic engagement patterns our movements, often with us barely aware. This invites an examination of pre-reflective engagement within cities and also aesthetic experience as a form of the pre-reflective. The invitation is amplified because design has political implications. For instance, it can draw people in or exclude them by establishing implicitly recognized public-private boundaries. The Value Sensitive Design school, which holds that artifacts embody ethical and political values, stresses some of this. But while emphasizing that (...) design embodies implicit values, research in this field lacks sustained attention to largely unconscious background biases or values, rooted in cultural attitudes and personal interests, that lead theorists and planners—often too narrowly—to promote design organized around specific values such as defensibility. In examining these points, I draw on J. J. Gibson, a central figure for some writing on aesthetics and cities, and whom pragmatists and phenomenologists in turn influenced. Taking a cue from pragmatists in particular, I argue Gibson’s perceptual theory of affordances entails a theory of values, meaning our perception and therewith movements are inherently value-based. I advocate design that accounts for relatively constantly held values such as safety, while also handling the vast pluralism that exists and not crushing the aesthetic vibrancy of city life. (shrink)

In this paper, I explore connections between two disciplines not typically linked: argumentation theory and urban design. I first trace historical ties between the art of reasoned discourse and the idea of civic virtue. I next analyze discourse norms implicit in three theories of urban design: Jane Jacobs' The Death and Life of Great American Cities (1961), Christopher Alexander's A Pattern Language: Towns, Buildings, Construction (1977), and Peter Katz's The New Urbanism: Toward an Architecture of Community (...) (1994). I then propose a set of ‘settlement’ issues of potential interest to both urban designers and argumentation theorists: size, density, heterogeneity, publicity, security, and identity. I conclude by suggesting that the ‘good city’ be seen as both a spatial and a discursive entity. From such a perspective, good public discourse is dependent, at least in part, on good public space; and good public space is defined, at least in part, as a context conducive to good public discourse. (shrink)

What are we doing with utopia? The ideas I am going to share with you relate to what urban designers have done with utopia, which is based on the historical relationship that grew up between utopian thinking and the intent to organize and control the arrangement of space and thus manage society in order to ensure its development.

Who is not utopian? Only narrowly specialized prisoners working to order without the slightest critical examination of stipulated norms and constraints, only these not very interesting people escape utopianism. Utopian projects are rarely discussed in current official programs in urban design.1 The common perception about the conceptualization of utopia is that utopia is a code word synonymous with modernist urban design and architecture.2 The failure of modern urban planning and architecture, along with their attributed paternalist (...) qualities, leads some critics to be hostile toward utopia in disciplines related to architecture, and modernist architecture has been attributed with utopian impulses.3 In .. (shrink)

Many critics have pointed to the failures of modernist urban design, which include its obliteration of thriving neighborhoods, isolation of functions and production of alienating spaces hostile to the human form. Less focus has been placed on defining the source of the modernists’ errors. This essay argues that these errors were in part due to neglect of the nature of fully embodied experience, a neglect manifested in an overwhelmingly visual disposition in embodiment. The author argues that a visual (...) disposition is implicated in the occlusion of place by the modern concept of abstract space. This concept of space and the visual disposition that is implicated in it undergird the utopianism and veneration for abstract forms that characterized the project of modernist urban design. The author concludes by suggesting that the basis for a humanizing urbanism should be the solicitation of all the senses in synesthetic interaction. This phenomenological critique can help us to see precisely where modernist urban design went wrong; it can also help lead us out of the false dichotomy between alienating modernism and orthodox traditionalism by establishing a basis for successful urban environments in embodiment rather than in any rigidly determined formula for urban design. (shrink)

Offers new insights, tools, and methodologies for the design of urban environments in relationship to noise and sound.

In recent years, a growing discussion about how we should design our cities has emerged, particularly for the more controversial modes of design such as “defensive,” “hostile,” or “disciplinary” architecture (i.e., benches on which one cannot sleep, or metal studs on which one cannot skate). Although this debate is relatively mature, many studies have argued that these design notions are undertheorized and are, thus, challenging to study from an empirical and normative perspective. In this paper, I will (...) defne the most common terms used in the literature and show how they are interconnected by utilizing a set of “conditions of adequacy” from philosophy to facilitate a more transparent and well-grounded discussion of them. Terms such as “hostile” and “defensive” design are underlined by several diferent phenomena, not just one as is sometimes commonly assumed. I will also show that these phenomena and their conceptualizations require—and sometimes force us to use—diferent moral reasons when justifying the utilization of diferent designs. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to investigate the relationship between AI urbanism and sustainability by drawing upon some key concepts of Bruno Latour’s philosophy. The idea of a sustainable AI urbanism - often understood as the juxtaposition of smart and eco urbanism - is here critiqued through a reconstruction of the conceptual sources of these two urban paradigms. Some key ideas of smart and eco urbanism are indicated as incompatible and therefore the fusion of these two paradigms is (...) assessed as an unstable basis for shaping sustainable AI urbanism. The concepts in question - modernity, science and nature – are subsequently redefined following Latour’s philosophical perspective, in an attempt to define a different theoretical basis for a sustainable AI urbanism in the Anthropocene. Finally, the principles of a design philosophy shaped by Latour are used to change the design culture that informs AI urbanism towards a more sustainable practice. This paper constructs and promotes a dialogue between the disciplines of philosophy and urban theory with urban design in the conviction that the principles produced by the former and the practices carried out by the latter must start a biunivocal relationship. The paper reveals that in order to change design culture in the field of AI urbanism, it is necessary to rethink some of the key ideas that inform the Western and modern worldview through novel philosophical reflections. (shrink)

In this article, I consider a curious blind spot in constitutional scholarship concerning the resurging rural/urban divide—a readily evident phenomenon closely associated with political resentment and anti-establishment sentiments—and how we may begin to address that challenge through creative constitutional designs. Specifically, I draw upon insights from comparative constitutionalism to discuss four main areas of constitutional law and theory that appear to hold some intellectual promise in this context: formal constitutional commitment at the national level to recognizing the urban/rural (...) divide and commitment to addressing it; creative electoral system designs that take into account the spatial dimension of politics; spatial pluralization based on concepts such as “mixed constitutions,” “community standards,” and “margin of appreciation”; and rethinking elements of equalization and fiscal federalism more generally. Taken together, the four directions I discuss here offer a repertoire of constitutional design possibilities that hold promise in mitigating the resurging rural/urban gulf. More generally, they serve as an invitation to constitutional thinkers to shake up the rather stagnant constitutional thought of spatial governance, and to think creatively about the ever-expanding urban/rural divide and its consequences for the theory and practice of 21st century constitutional democracy. (shrink)

Zuidas is a new city centre, which is emerging in the outskirts of Amsterdam. The ambitious project of developing a new international city centre has been carefully planned as the Netherlands has a strong and meticulous tradition for urban planning. The planning has however not only encompassed traditional urban planning aspects such as infrastructure, environmental factors and aesthetics, but has also dealt with the design of urban experiences. Through an introduction of the framework of the structure (...) of experiences, this article examines how urban experiences can be understood and analysed, and deals with how urban experiences can be designed through careful consideration of how experiences are constituted. Taking the psychological structure of experiences into account when designing urbanity is not only interesting, but also highly relevant as Zuidas is competing with other international venues such as La Défense, the Docklands and Potsdamer Platz. (shrink)

Playtime in urban cities has become an indoor activity for children due to limited access to natural outdoor environments. This product of urbanization makes the case for the introduction of biophilic design. However, playrooms are often neglected as a possibility in designing a natural space indoors. Interior designers and other specialists lack a reliable tool to identify and incorporate biophilic features into the design of these indoor environments in urban settings. The Biophilic Interior Design Matrix (...) (BID-M) developed by McGee and Marshall-Baker quantifies 52 of Kellert’s biophilic design attributes to assess their presence and absence within interior spaces. We expanded its use by testing the matrix in a new type of space, urban playrooms, and coded images of 45 children’s playrooms within Manhattan residential buildings in New York City, including assessing a larger sample and reliability rate compared to McGee and Marshall-Baker’s research. Inter-rater reliability of the overall design matrix and individual matrix items was measured with percent agreement and free-marginal multirater kappa. Reliability testing showed overall good reliability of the overall design matrix. Several matrix items had low reliability between raters. Our findings show that the BID-M needs to be modified to better assess urban interior spaces for children. (shrink)

The increasing use of artificial intelligence (AI) by public actors has led to a push for more transparency. Previous research has conceptualized AI transparency as knowledge that empowers citizens and experts to make informed choices about the use and governance of AI. Conversely, in this paper, we critically examine if transparency-as-knowledge is an appropriate concept for a public realm where private interests intersect with democratic concerns. We conduct a practice-based design research study in which we prototype and evaluate a (...) transparent smart electric vehicle charge point, and investigate experts’ and citizens’ understanding of AI transparency. We find that citizens experience transparency as burdensome; experts hope transparency ensures acceptance, while citizens are mostly indifferent to AI; and with absent means of control, citizens question transparency’s relevance. The tensions we identify suggest transparency cannot be reduced to a product feature, but should be seen as a mediator of debate between experts and citizens. (shrink)

The idea of applying biomimicry to cities is attracting increasing attention as a way of achieving sustainability. Undoubtedly the most frequently evoked natural model in this context is the forest, though it has not yet been investigated with any great scientific rigour. To overcome this lacuna, we provide: first, a justification of the model of the forest via what we call the arguments from “fittingness”, “scale”, and “complexity”; second, an exploration of various key innovations made possible by this model in (...) the fields of urban planning, urban water systems, urban energy and transport systems, and urban food and nutrient systems. (shrink)

Theories of networked individualism and forms of urban alienation challenge the continued purpose and relevance of conventional community tools in urban neighbourhood. However, the majority of urban residents surveyed in this research still believe that there are people living in their immediate neighbourhood who may share their interests or who are at least personally compatible, but they do not know them. Web-based community networking systems have the potential to facilitate intra-neighbourhood interaction and support community-building efforts. Community networking (...) studies have shown that technical connectivity alone does not ensure community and that new and weak communities do not benefit from community networking systems as much as existing and strong communities do. This paper builds on these findings to present a methodology combining principles of participation, animation and design. This approach builds on intrinsic motivation in residents to find out about and meet one another in a private and inobtrusive way. It encourages residents to take social ownership of the community-building process and the community network. The approach recognises the network qualities in the communicative ecology of urban residents and supplements collective approaches towards community-building with personalised networking strategies. (shrink)

In the fifteenth century, the desire of the laity for more convincing religious instruction in the vernacular was not entirely satisfied by wandering preachers like Vincent Ferrer , Bernardino of Siena or Giovanni of Capistrano . Therefore, north of the Alps, particularly in free cities of the Empire, so-called municipal preaching offices were introduced.3 For the most part, cathedral chapters and their bishops exerted a great influence over these foundations. Subsequently, the newly installed preachers were obliged to discipline the (...) class='Hi'>urban population. According to the artes praedicandi, the preachers were expected to avoid any criticism of the religious hierarchy and the .. (shrink)

This article takes a speculative and design fiction approach to the critical analysis of the role of smart and autonomous vehicles (AVs) in the context of smart cities. The article explores arguments that these cars of the future will have decisive impacts on mobility, sustainability and road safety. The article examines the main parameters of smart city and smart car developments and then focuses on the visions of increasing AI-driven autonomy. The article demonstrates how these debates are linked to (...) speculative design as full autonomy does not currently exist but takes a speculative position as to what the critical issues are that face smart/autonomous city visions (enhanced surveillance and data mining) and considers the potentially hazardous ethical dilemmas that AVs may encounter once fully rolled out onto city roads. From a design fiction perspective, the article envisions the viability of AV prioritizing public rather than private transport as a means by which the ‘techno-utopic’ visions of smart city/AV integration can be realized and make positive impacts to enhance urban living in rendering future cities as more sustainable, efficiently mobile and safer urban spaces. (shrink)

Cities and towns are expanding and thriving as a result of urbanization, which also significantly changes the local climate. One of the most significant phenomena associated with urbanization is the Urban Heat Island (UHI) effect. This phenomenon is increasingly being studied worldwide. The paper aims to investigate the UHI phenomenon in the metropolitan area of Tirana, Albania. It analyses the impact of the UHI on four specific locations in Tirana, its causes and mitigation measures, as well as variations in (...) surface temperature, CO2 emissions, and relative humidity. The regions are measured and observed using a specific instrument such as the Testo 435. Considering the mean surface temperature variations between urban and rural regions ranging from 28.4°C to 33.7 °C, CO2 emissions from 302.9 ppm to 416.2 ppm, and relative humidity from 34.1% to 41.2%, it is found that the UHI impact in Tirana is significant. The lack of green spaces, high building density, urban patterns, building materials used, transport, and energy use are the main contributors to the UHI in central Tirana. Increasing green spaces, using reflective materials, and promoting sustainable urban design are some of the mitigation techniques suggested to reduce the UHI effect in Tirana. (shrink)

Within the framework of 'Temporalities and the Urban Fabric: Co-Producing Liminal Spaces in Transitional Epochs,' this rigorous examination unravels the multilayered nuances of temporality and its intimate relationship with urban spaces in times of transition. The research delineates the intricate interplay between public exhibitions, urban realms, and socio-political paradigms, particularly within the dynamic settings of the metropolitan entities of Houston and Amsterdam. These cities, as epitomes of temporal urban flux, become fertile grounds for exploring the ephemeral (...) essence of liminal spaces and their transformative manifestations. By weaving together diverse academic domains – from Design Computation and Fabrication to Urban Communities and Spatial Justice – this study underscores the symbiotic fusion of Augmented Reality (AR) and Gamification within the broader canvas of urban temporalities. Crucially, the research accentuates the transformative potential of Extended Reality (XR) in augmenting the theoretical and methodological contours of urban studies within these transitional epochs. (shrink)

The process of urban landmark-based navigation has proven to be difficult to study in a rigorous fashion, primarily due to confounding variables and the problem of obtaining reliable data in real-world contexts. The development of high-resolution, immersive virtual reality technologies has opened exciting new possibilities for gathering data on human wayfinding that could not otherwise be readily obtained. We developed a research platform using a virtual environment and electroencephalography to better understand the neural processes associated with landmark usage and (...) recognition during urban navigation tasks. By adjusting the architectural parameters of different buildings in this virtual environment, we isolated and tested specific design features to determine whether or not they served as a target for landmarking. EEG theta band event-related synchronization/desynchronization over posterior scalp areas was evaluated at the time when participants observed each target building along a predetermined self-paced route. A multi-level linear model was used to investigate the effects of salient architectural features on posterior scalp areas. Our results support the conclusion that highly salient architectural features—those that contrast sharply with the surrounding environment—are more likely to attract visual attention, remain in short-term memory, and activate brain regions associated with wayfinding compared with non-salient buildings. After establishing this main aggregate effect, we evaluated specific salient architectural features and neural correlates of navigation processing. The buildings that most strongly associated extended gaze time, location recall accuracy, and changes in theta-band neural patterns with landmarking in our study were those that incorporated rotational twist designs and natural elements such as trees and gardens. Other building features, such as unusual façade patterns or building heights, were to a lesser extent also associated with landmarking. (shrink)

Research design is fundamentally central to all scientific endeavors, at all levels and in all institutional settings. This book is a practical, short, simple, and authoritative examination of the concepts and issues in interpretive research design, looking across this approach's methods of generating and analyzing data. It is meant to set the stage for the more "how-to" volumes that will come later in the Routledge Series on Interpretive Methods, which will look at specific methods and the designs that (...) they require. It will, however, engage some very practical issues, such as ethical considerations and the structure of research proposals. Interpretive research design requires a high degree of flexibility, where the researcher is more likely to think of "hunches" to follow than formal hypotheses to test. Yanow and Schwartz-Shea address what research design is and why it is important, what interpretive research is and how it differs from quantitative and qualitative research in the positivist traditions, how to design interpretive research, and the sections of a research proposal and report. (shrink)

Robots are leaving factories and entering urban spaces. In this paper, I will explore how we can integrate robots of various types into the urban landscape. I will distinguish between two perspectives: the responsible design and use of urban robots and robots as part of responsible urban innovations. The first viewpoint considers issues arising from the use of a robot in an urban environment. To develop a substantive understanding of Responsible Urban Robotics, we (...) need to focus on normative implications of city life as the context in which in robots are being used. I will refer to the desirable qualities of city life as “cityness” and will argue that we should design for cityness. The second approach asks how robots might be used to address challenges specific to cities. From the perspective of RRI, this may require participatory approaches in which the needs of the stakeholders are addressed. But we may also find inspiration in the work undertaken in architecture on expanding the concept and field to ensure that architects not only provide services to the lucky few but also create useful and beautiful spaces for the many. A dialogue with architects, urban designers, and urban planners may also be needed to successfully address the spatial issues raised by the presence of robots in the city. (shrink)

The rural/metropolitan/wilderness hybrid central to urban shrinkage directly challenges a commonly held belief that a city consists of a dense concentration of people living in a limited geographical area, one where the primary means of production is non-agricultural. In addition, the urban condition of shrinkage tests the dominant current of growth management that has guided urban design, development, and land use. In this essay we will explore how this hybrid presents an alternative to the production and (...) realization of surplus value that predominates throughout the contemporary landscape of neoliberal planetary urbanization. It will be argued that this process of urbanization is premised upon modalities of urban commoning, or practices that bring a variety of social and environmental struggles into relationship with each other, dismantling the apparatuses of capture that bring land-use and the collective energies animating available land under the control of capital. (shrink)

This book critically examines the philosophy of the term 'transgression' and how it shapes the utopian vision of contemporary urban design scenarios. The aim of this book is to provide scholarly yet accessible graphic novel illustrations to inform narratives of urban manifestos. Through four select case studies from the UK, Cyprus and Germany, the book highlights the paradoxes and contradictions in architecture and provides detailed evaluation of the limits and contemporary forms of sustainable urban regeneration. The (...) book proposes an 'utopian urban vision' approach to social, political and cultural relations, trends and tensions both locally and globally, and seeks to inspire an awakening in architectural discourse. The book argues that the philosophical undermining of transgression is the result of a phenomenon from a different perspective -- its philosophical background, its social construction, its experimental research process and its design implications on the city. As such, the book provides a critical examination of how architectural design interventions contribute to sustainable urban regeneration, gentrification and can impact local communities. This book provides a significant contribution to both undergraduate and postgraduate students, as well as early career researchers working in architecture, planning and sustainable urban design. It offers effective guidance on adopting the state-of-the-art graphical illustrations into their own design projects, while considering contradictions between architectural discourse and the philosophy of transgression. (shrink)