Search Results (9)

Studio-based pedagogy has been central to urban design programmes as it can enable future urban designers to more effectively acquire an understanding of how cities work and critically engage with the role of design intervention. This paper aims to explore the capacities and challenges of learning and teaching urban design through studio pedagogy by drawing on empirical research from a blended urban design studio experiment during the COVID-19 pandemic in the UK. This is part of a broader exploratory project using a case study research design and mixed methods approach. This paper explains the process of designing and delivering two constructively aligned postgraduate urban design studios as part of the MA Urban Design programme at Cardiff University in the 2021–2022 academic year. It further discusses the findings of an online survey on the perceptions and experiences of students regarding blended design studio pedagogy. Designing two consecutive and constructively aligned design studios is argued to work better in comparison with designing two entirely separate stand-alone design studios engaging with different topics and sites. The paper highlights the importance of learning from cities as real urban design laboratories rather than merely analysing abstract secondary datasets. The value of policy review, small group reading discussions, and formative feedback opportunities is also highlighted as integral parts of the urban design studio pedagogy. The paper concludes by discussing a range of key issues concerning field site visit, policy review, community engagement, precedent review, student diversity, design studio topic, reading discussion, group size, formative feedback, engagement, educational background, and English language skills. The outcomes of this paper can inform future practices of developing pedagogical frameworks for blended urban design studios. Full article

Within the past decade, there has been a surge of interest in investigating the dynamics of informal street vending, motivated by the need to address economic, social, and political inequalities. We take stock of this literature, bringing together the various streams of research in which informal street vending is integral to how cities work, particularly in the context of what is considered as the global South. The review of the related literature in this paper is structured into eight key themes, including (1) gender, (2) typology/types, (3) spatiality of street vending and public space design, (4) health and well-being, (5) individual/collective agency, (6) policy environment, (7) use of technology, and (8) links to other forms of informality. The paper concludes by outlining certain research themes that are in the process of development, identifying some understudied areas, reflecting on existing gaps, and pointing to future research directions to enable further engagement with those aspects of informal street vending research that have remained underexplored. Full article

The imperative to address the challenge of transforming car-dependent cities and promoting sustainable mobilities requires that we engage with the relationships between urban morphology and forms of urbanity in public spaces surrounding transit nodes. While there has been a surge of interest in investigating the agency of urban planning and design in mitigating urban sprawl and its environmental impacts by creating mixed-use, dense, and walkable places, the extent to which the public space can enable streetlife intensity in proximity to transit remains underexplored. Through extensive urban mapping and comparison of two transit nodes in Tehran, this paper articulates the key morphological elements of building density, functional mix, and access networks, how they work in relation to forms of urbanity and informality in public space around stations, and what inferences can be made on how public space within station areas work in the context of rapidly urbanising cities compared to those in Western contexts. The nexus between functional mix, retail edges, and forms of urbanity has been found critical to the spatial configuration, performance, and transformation of transit station areas. Forms of informality have also been found integral to how public space works in the context of transit urban design. This paper contributes to the newfound accent on urban design dimensions concerning TODs in the context of less formal and more congested cities of the global South. Full article

Urban design studio education aims to prepare future urban designers to more effectively understand how cities work and critically engage with the role of design intervention in the built environment. A design studio is an appropriate setting where this can take place. This paper details the design and delivery of a postgraduate urban design studio subject in the MA Urban Design programme at Cardiff University during the COVID-19 pandemic in the UK. We particularly investigate the capacities and challenges of blended learning and teaching, with a primary focus on the experience and perception of students in the context of design studio pedagogy. To this end, we discuss the findings from an online survey of postgraduate urban design students and reflect on their experience and perception of the related learning and teaching activities, assessment, feedback, field study visits, workshops, and digital platforms during the subject delivery period in the 2021–2022 academic year. The outcomes of this paper can inform future practices of blended learning and teaching incorporating a mix of face-to-face and online modes of delivery in relation to design studio education, particularly in the context of unprecedented global health challenges such as the COVID-19 pandemic. Full article

Students’ learning experiences and perceptions are markedly influenced by the use of digital technology during the COVID-19 pandemic. Exploring students’ perception of blended online learning, amid the adaptations of the higher education sector in the wake of uncertainty, has become more critical than ever. This paper reflects on the experience of learning and teaching the Research Methods and Techniques subject in the postgraduate programme of MA Urban Design at Cardiff University during COVID-19 in the UK. To do so, we designed and carried out an online survey to explore students’ perception of online teaching and learning activities, feedback and assessment, and digital platforms based on their experience during the subject delivery period in the 2020–2021 academic year. One of the significant findings of this paper was that students agreed with the impact of eye contact on their virtual learning experience but as long as this was aligned with their rights to see others, including their peers and instructors, rather than reciprocal rights to be seen. In addition, students felt that facilitating synchronous communication through effective interaction among diverse peers has been quite challenging in small-group online reading seminars. The majority of respondents also reported that attending live online lectures was more helpful than watching pre-recorded lectures. Online formative feedback and synchronous interim reviews also allowed students to reflect on their progress and develop their projects further before their summative assessment. The outcomes of this paper can effectively assist educators who consider delivering programmes, adopting a blended online learning environment design model, in the post COVID-19 era. The findings of this study can also provide guidance for further developments and improvements in using digital technology and blended online learning in urban design education and pedagogy. Full article

The COVID-19 pandemic has become a critical challenge for the higher education sector. Exploring the capacity of this sector to adapt in the state of uncertainty has become more significant than ever. In this paper, we critically reflect on our experience of teaching urban design research methods online during the early COVID-19 lockdown in the UK. This is an exploratory case study with a qualitative approach with an aim to inform resilient practices of teaching in the face of public health emergencies. Drawing on the experience of teaching the Research Methods and Techniques subject during lockdown, we discuss the rapid transition from face-to-face to online teaching and point to the challenges and opportunities in relation to the learning and teaching activities, assessment and feedback, and digital platforms. This paper concludes by outlining some key considerations to inform the development of more adaptive and resilient approaches to online teaching in the context of unprecedented global health crises such as the COVID-19 pandemic. We argue that it is critical to move beyond fixed pedagogical frameworks to harness the productive capacities of adaptive teaching. Full article

There has been an emerging interest in the study of urban design dimensions associated with Transit-Oriented Developments (TODs). However, addressing the question of how TOD principles laid out in the international literature can be explored in the context of the global South remains in an incipient stage. In this paper, we investigate the nexus between station walkable catchments and forms of urbanity around transit nodes by adopting an assemblage approach to cut across any separation of sociality and spatiality. Drawing on empirical research from two case studies in Tehran, this paper contributes to studies on transit urban design by developing two measures of accessibility—the Catchment of Accessible Public Spaces (CAPS) and Accessible Interfaces (AI). We found that the combination of high CAPS and high AI within a given time can enable streetlife intensity, which is also linked to a synergistic effect of a larger assemblage, including the number of entries and diversity of functions. We argue that a focus on both measures is critical to understand the performance and potential transformation of street networks in a TOD. Full article

Street trading has become integral to how public space works in cities of the global South. It cannot be considered as marginal since it gears to the urban economy and works as a key mode of income generation for the urban poor to sustain livelihoods. A poor understanding of how forms of street trading work in public space can lead to poor design and policy interventions. While many practices of formalization aim at the elimination of informality, the challenge is to explore the complex informal/formal relations and the dynamics of street trading to understand how forms of informality negotiate space and visibility in the public realm. In this paper, we propose a typology of street trading, based on the criteria of mobility within public space and proximity to public/private urban interfaces. While exploring the degrees of mobility in informal street trading can be crucial to the modes of governance and adaptability involved, of critical importance is to investigate how street trading takes place in relation to the built form—particularly the edges of public space where public/private interfaces enable or constrain exchange and appropriation. The developed typology provides a better understanding of the dynamics of street trading and contributes to the ways in which the built environment professions can most effectively engage with interventions in public space without eradicating the scope for informal adaptations. Full article

Informal urbanism, ranging from informal settlements to trading and transport, has become integral, but not limited, to the ways in which cities of the global South work. At stake here is the role of the built environment professions in responding to informal urbanism where a poor understanding of the complexities of informality can lead to poor design interventions. Providing a better understanding of how forms of informality work is then a key task for the built environment education, which arguably falls short in this regard. With a particular focus on urban design, we suggest that it is critical to move towards an informal turn in the built environment education to address informality and engage with the dynamics of informal urbanism. We first investigate the scope of urban design and then explore the ways in which urban design education can respond to informal urbanism in its curricula by developing an urban design program on informality as an illustration. The suggested approach can be considered as an initial step towards an informal turn in urban design education. We conclude that while urban design alone cannot solve social and economic problems, including poverty and inequality, its capacity to address the complex challenges of urbanization cannot be overlooked. Urban design education cannot remain isolated from the questions of informality anymore. Full article