Barriers of social class, ethnicity and economic inequality are generating segregation between different backgrounds even if they inhabit in the same part of a city, this is particularly the problem in multicultural and high dense cities, where lack of interactions between users of the same space in has become a more frequent issue causing problems of segregation and distrust. Considering the public realm as the main or only space that users share with others makes it a favourable place to bring them into contact with other groups. For this reason, external open spaces have been considered fundamental and the best option for this project to allow people to mix. This project presents an exploration on how to use public space to promote social cohesion in areas with the mentioned problematics. Information from multiple theories, research and authors has been compiled by using a literature review to explore how different groups make use of the public space, what characteristics of a public place attract users and if there are existing elements that prevent people from having interactions among ethnic and social backgrounds groups and how these barriers could be reduced. By using the principles from the literature review, case studies and in situ observations, design strategies are developed and applied in a network of public spaces in the Borough of Tower Hamlets, London, UK, to respond to the problem of segregation by using the built environment as a tool to allow interactions to take place, creating social mix and inclusion without people perceiving each other’s status or ethnic background.

Cities are places of exchange, meeting and social gathering which rely on proximity and connectivity to fulfil these functions. Road junctions are where the physical intersection of streets enables the intersection and intensification of these social functions. In this respect, they are essential to the function of the city and should be considered as key nodes in the urban fabric. However, in the 20th Century as cities grew and cars became more prevalent, major interventions were made on road junctions to improve the flow of traffic, often destroying parts of the city to achieve it. While this helped increase mobility overall in doing so it damaged the very fabric and functionality of the city. They are designed to segregate and accelerate traffic flows, thereby removing the opportunity for interaction and exchange, in this respect it is argued that these interventions were anti-urbanAs cities start to turn away from the dominance of private vehicles, and towards more sustainable modes of travel such as cycling and walking, many of these road junctions are being re-configured to make them safer for pedestrians and cyclists. It is argued that many of these new improvements repeat a similar mistake; they are primarily highway infrastructure schemes. Is there a missed opportunity to undertake better interventions that repair and strengthen the fabric of the city? Can major road interventions ever create successful places? Can we learn from the historical street layouts in order to undo these anti-urban interventions?The purpose of this project is to learn from best practices and historic precedents and provide practitioners with a toolkit to deliver holistic urban design on these sites

This work aims to explore opportunities to regenerate the mining site and make it central to community life.Paper in-depth analyses issues and existing regeneration strategies of mining towns, that can be translated into a new design concept for Stainforth.

Exposure to excessive heat is responsible for thousands of deaths and emergency room visits annually in the United States. Due to climate change, Texas cities have been warming faster than the rest of the world. Within 25 years, the number of 100 F days is expected to double. Cities are even more vulnerable than the countryside due to the Urban Heat Island (UHI) effect. (Bielson-Gammon 2021)Adapting cities to this new climate reality is critical to ensure the vitality of public spaces and the health of urban dwellers. This major research project (MRP) evaluates the most effective means to reduce UHI at a neighborhood scale in a humid subtropical context. The MRP presents two massing frameworks and nine toolkit items that can be used by architects and urban designers to lower the air temperature and improve human thermal comfort.

Urban design is an interdisciplinary and dynamic discipline with an increasing importance in our urban world. In recent years, the discipline has shown an heightened interest in gathering scientific evidence on how the urban built environment shapes human-beings. Disciplines that have been making significant progress in this area are brain sciences (psychology, cognitive science and neuroscience). There is a potential, strong link between urban design and brain sciences in regard to human-centred urban design. To investigate this link in practice, this dissertation explores how far it is possible that urban designers and brain scientists cooperate at the intersection of both fields to create more human-centred urban built environments. The dissertation has been utilising a ranking-type Delphi study to let participants who are from brain sciences and urban design, agree on a hypothetical research agenda for human-centred urban design research. We hypothesised that the higher the consensus the higher the cooperation potential for the two fields. Their consensus on the research agenda acts as a proxy that indicates if the two fields have the potential to cooperate. This is based on the assumption that pre-existing overlap of research topics is an effective parameter that indicates cooperation potential for both fields. The dissertation found that there was a slight consensus for the ranking exercise, although it was non-significant. However, in combination with supplementary data from the other rounds of the Delphi study, this indicates that cooperation potential is apparent, yet practical challenges remain (e.g. different methodology and research language). Also, there have been a range of limiting factors in regard to the Delphi method. Therefore, more research is needed to further explore the link between the two fields in practice and to establish a better knowledge base.

This is a dissertation project completed as part of the MSc Space Syntax: Architecture and Cities course at the Bartlett School of Architecture, which explores the urban morphological implications of the motorway in the city centre. The study takes the Westway motorway as an example of a Modernist approach to urban transport infrastructure and analyses its long-term impact on the hierarchy of centrality in the neighbourhood. Relations between change in spatial configurations and building attributes such as land use diversity and density are statistically examined. Finally, the study discusses to what extent the impact of top-down urban design manifested in urban growth would implicate community severance.

This dissertation investigates social implications of built environment interventions (BEI) related to bicycle urbanism from a Spatial Justice (Soja, 2010) perspective. By combining urban spatial theory and mobilities research, the novel theoretical framework Mobility Space helps to analyse spatial, experiential and discursive aspects of urban mobility priorities concomitantly and is thus an adequate analytical tool to uncover how recently proliferating cycling strategies impact society through an alteration of urban space. A qualitative and multi-method research design combines descriptive mapping, virtual site observation and semi-structured interviews to apply Mobility Space to the controversial Mini-Holland programme in Waltham Forest, London. Examining in detail the Walthamstow Village scheme, the research finds three patterns by which BEI related to bicycle urbanism re-organize movement, re-allocate space and re-design public realm to prioritize active travel and dwelling while discouraging car use. Those spatial alterations shift the political organization of space which in turn affects the Right to the City (Lefebvre et al., 1996) – an expression of Spatial Justice – as it enables a greater diversity of people to use urban space (right to appropriation) and makes them conscious how the space they inhabit is discursively produced and the outcome of contentious decision-making processes (right to participation). This research is relevant for urban professionals as environmental as well as pandemic-related urban mobility challenges necessitate a transformation of urban space to accommodate cycling, but negative outcomes for social equity, as resulting from car-urbanism, need to be avoided.