Activating urban space for social engagement
Promoters: Sara Eloy, Bart Tritsmans
The research investigates how bottom-up, informal and collective organizations and practices activate urban spaces in residential neighborhoods, facilitating and fostering social engagement and community interaction. Through community-led activities such as temporary interventions, events, activation of unused/underused spaces, these practices produce spatial and social conditions that enable and facilitate engagement, participation, exchange, and cultural activity. Throughout the research, urban space is investigated and analyzed in relation to temporality and the wider context of the networks, operations, strategies, and tactics of the practices. Leading research questions are: In what ways are spaces (interior and exterior) activated? How do these practices operate as part of a wider context and network? What are the strategies and tactics deployed in the specific contexts? What objects are utilized and what are their effects? The research adopts a mix-method approach of investigation, combining qualitative and case-study methods, such as interviews and field observations, with a subsequent research-by-design phase. The research employs mapping techniques to document, visualize and analyze spatial conditions, networks, operations, processes and their using these insights to inform architectural design explorations and test alternative spatial interventions that can support social engagement in urban spaces.
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