Using Digital Technologies to Reimagine Underused Urban Spaces
Lead Research Organisation:
Newcastle University
Department Name: Sch of Computing
Abstract
The topic of this PhD is centred around using digital technologies to engage citizens in the reimagination of underused spaces in declining urban centres. Digital technologies can play a crucial role in transforming how we understand, use and perceive the future of our public realm, offering opportunities for increasing engagement in placemaking practises, enhancing cultural experiences in place as well as provoking responses around such themes as social cohesion and place identity.
The digital economy has opened up new prospects for declining urban centres to be reimagined, however much of this work is measured on the economic impact regeneration can have in underused spaces. A recent shift in focus, moving away from urban centres as purely commercial spaces offers the potential to explore how technology can play a role in increasing the social and cultural impact of regeneration.
I hope to concentrate on how digital technologies can support the regeneration of underused spaces in places such as; lanes, back alleys, underpasses, yards and passage ways in urban centres, with the aim of creating spaces for creative expression, that encourage community use and enhance lived experiences in place. This will be achieved by studying the methods adopted by local authorities, community organisations and artists to transform empty spaces into usable public spaces.
Methods
I will be working with a series of partners that are using digital tools in their work to reimagine these spaces. By following the process of an artist-led digital art installation in an empty store unit that engages local residents in rethinking their relationship to their urban centre, I will explore to what extent art, and the creative industries more widely can have on reimagining overlooked spaces. This will be supplemented with a further series of engagements with an institution sanctioned regeneration project of a series of yards in the centre of a historic market town as well as working with a grass roots community organisation who are in the process of transforming residential alleyways in the centre of a deprived urban neighbourhood. Exploring these different cases will help to gain an insight into the creation of social innovation projects and understand how digital tools can help create urban commons, i.e. spaces that place citizens at the heart of reimagining what, and for whom public space is for. All of these projects plan to use innovative, technology supported approaches to the regeneration of public space as well as exploring new ways of increasing residents' engagement in these processes.
Research Questions
The following research questions will be answered through the series of engagements set out above:
1. How do residents manifest their understandings and relationship with the urban environment?
2. How can we design digital technology to encourage participation in placemaking processes?
3. To what extent can interactive experiences in the public realm encourage the use of, and attachment to a place and its infrastructure?
4. How can a deeper understanding and usage of the public realm foster a collective understanding of community identity?
By exploring the role the digital economy can play in the regeneration of underused, derelict or transition spaces in the wake of austerity and declining urban centres we can gain an insight into how innovative approaches, using digital technologies, can increase social cohesion, support creative expression and increase engagement in the remaking of place.
The digital economy has opened up new prospects for declining urban centres to be reimagined, however much of this work is measured on the economic impact regeneration can have in underused spaces. A recent shift in focus, moving away from urban centres as purely commercial spaces offers the potential to explore how technology can play a role in increasing the social and cultural impact of regeneration.
I hope to concentrate on how digital technologies can support the regeneration of underused spaces in places such as; lanes, back alleys, underpasses, yards and passage ways in urban centres, with the aim of creating spaces for creative expression, that encourage community use and enhance lived experiences in place. This will be achieved by studying the methods adopted by local authorities, community organisations and artists to transform empty spaces into usable public spaces.
Methods
I will be working with a series of partners that are using digital tools in their work to reimagine these spaces. By following the process of an artist-led digital art installation in an empty store unit that engages local residents in rethinking their relationship to their urban centre, I will explore to what extent art, and the creative industries more widely can have on reimagining overlooked spaces. This will be supplemented with a further series of engagements with an institution sanctioned regeneration project of a series of yards in the centre of a historic market town as well as working with a grass roots community organisation who are in the process of transforming residential alleyways in the centre of a deprived urban neighbourhood. Exploring these different cases will help to gain an insight into the creation of social innovation projects and understand how digital tools can help create urban commons, i.e. spaces that place citizens at the heart of reimagining what, and for whom public space is for. All of these projects plan to use innovative, technology supported approaches to the regeneration of public space as well as exploring new ways of increasing residents' engagement in these processes.
Research Questions
The following research questions will be answered through the series of engagements set out above:
1. How do residents manifest their understandings and relationship with the urban environment?
2. How can we design digital technology to encourage participation in placemaking processes?
3. To what extent can interactive experiences in the public realm encourage the use of, and attachment to a place and its infrastructure?
4. How can a deeper understanding and usage of the public realm foster a collective understanding of community identity?
By exploring the role the digital economy can play in the regeneration of underused, derelict or transition spaces in the wake of austerity and declining urban centres we can gain an insight into how innovative approaches, using digital technologies, can increase social cohesion, support creative expression and increase engagement in the remaking of place.
Planned Impact
The proposed CDT for Digital Civics aims to develop a cohort of 60+ students engaged in theorising, designing, developing, and evaluating personal & community-based digital technologies to explore and create forms of civic engagement that support local communities, local service provision, and local democracy. The CDT will work directly with several local authorities (in the Northeast of England), a variety of SMEs and NGOs and some larger international corporations. As such there are various potential beneficiaries of the CDT.
Firstly, there are the students themselves who will graduate as highly skilled academic and applied researchers - well-versed in interdisciplinary collaboration and trained to transfer, leverage and exploit the insight generated from their research and who are able to contribute to the economic and social development of the UK.
The research they will conduct will be focused on supporting local communities, and given the aim to enhance public service provision and support engagement in local issues. It is likely that their research will enhance quality of life, health and wellbeing in these areas, improve social welfare and social cohesion in the participating communities and generally increase public awareness of social and economic issues that are likely to be affecting these research participants, and this will be done at various levels from older adults through to school-aged communities.
The research is also intended to have impact at a Government level, and through our direct collaboration with our participating local authority partners student research projects will directly influence policy making at local, regional and national levels. Case-based research will transform evidence-based policy, and provide evidence to support changing organisational cultures and practices (for example enhancing the role of public participation in local governance) and through shaping and enhancing the effectiveness of public services, by directly designing and developing digital augmentations. As such the research projects directly intend to enhance the efficiency, performance and sustainability of public services through the user-centred development of new digital technologies and the promotion of local activism and civic engagement.
Another significant impact of the CDT will be the development and training of skilled people in non-academic professions through the development and open-sourcing of learning materials, which aim to transfer research insight (including skills and processes as much as research 'findings') to non-academic organisations, such as SMEs, NGOs and larger corporations (sourced through our broad partner network). These SMEs, NGOs and corporations (alongside the doctoral students themselves) are also likely to be commercial beneficiaries of the research. Active processes of knowledge transfer will directly contribute towards wealth creation and economic prosperity by supporting the enhancement of research capacity, knowledge and skills in businesses and organisations and through the commercialisation of research in the formation of spin-out companies to serve the private, public and third sectors.
Firstly, there are the students themselves who will graduate as highly skilled academic and applied researchers - well-versed in interdisciplinary collaboration and trained to transfer, leverage and exploit the insight generated from their research and who are able to contribute to the economic and social development of the UK.
The research they will conduct will be focused on supporting local communities, and given the aim to enhance public service provision and support engagement in local issues. It is likely that their research will enhance quality of life, health and wellbeing in these areas, improve social welfare and social cohesion in the participating communities and generally increase public awareness of social and economic issues that are likely to be affecting these research participants, and this will be done at various levels from older adults through to school-aged communities.
The research is also intended to have impact at a Government level, and through our direct collaboration with our participating local authority partners student research projects will directly influence policy making at local, regional and national levels. Case-based research will transform evidence-based policy, and provide evidence to support changing organisational cultures and practices (for example enhancing the role of public participation in local governance) and through shaping and enhancing the effectiveness of public services, by directly designing and developing digital augmentations. As such the research projects directly intend to enhance the efficiency, performance and sustainability of public services through the user-centred development of new digital technologies and the promotion of local activism and civic engagement.
Another significant impact of the CDT will be the development and training of skilled people in non-academic professions through the development and open-sourcing of learning materials, which aim to transfer research insight (including skills and processes as much as research 'findings') to non-academic organisations, such as SMEs, NGOs and larger corporations (sourced through our broad partner network). These SMEs, NGOs and corporations (alongside the doctoral students themselves) are also likely to be commercial beneficiaries of the research. Active processes of knowledge transfer will directly contribute towards wealth creation and economic prosperity by supporting the enhancement of research capacity, knowledge and skills in businesses and organisations and through the commercialisation of research in the formation of spin-out companies to serve the private, public and third sectors.
Organisations
People |
ORCID iD |
| Patrick Olivier (Primary Supervisor) | |
| Robert Bailey (Student) |