Culture&Territories#3

Neighbourhood & City
– How citizens perceive public spaces, how they interact with them and within,
what motivates and what prevents them from using public spaces they live in?
– How citizens’ use digital tools, what is their relationship with them, and what
are their attitudes, motivations and constraints towards using the tools?
– How people with disabilities use the public space in comparison with those
without any impairment and how understanding of differences and
similarities between their behaviours should affect the urban planning and
design practice?
Based on the experimentation we outline some insights into the issues raised,
and draft a set of preliminary conclusions, interesting enough for driving, prospecting
and directing further discussions and research.
THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK
We ground our work on two conceptual ideas: a) Vision of a Smart and Inclusive City,
and b) a four-dimensional model (Rebernik et al., 2017). The latter is considered to help
relevant stakeholders tackle the societal challenges that they face in regard to fully
inclusive city design. This model builds on three main pillars; the users, the space,
and the technology (Fig. 1). It proposes to approach societal challenges through four
dimensions: a) individual, b) environmental, c) technological, and d) relational level.
Both, the vision and the four-dimensional model are a response to the growing
complexity and diversity within urban environments, and the need to approach
this complex phenomenon from a holistic perspective. Figure 1 shows the three
dimensions as core pillars and their interrelations in a context of collaboration
between public space users and public space agents for enhanced inclusive design.
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Fig. 1: The three research perspectives (Inclusion of users – Individual level, Public spaces
– Environmental level, Digital tools – Technological level). Source: Authors