Researching the role of planning and urban design in promoting intercultural encounters and experiences of social cohesion [Abstract]

Aelbrecht, Patricia ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4270-0796 and Stevens, Quentin 2022. Researching the role of planning and urban design in promoting intercultural encounters and experiences of social cohesion [Abstract]. Presented at: 20th Swiss Geoscience Meeting 2022, Université de Lausanne, 18-20 November 2022.

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Abstract

This paper seeks to address long-standing questions in academia, practice, and policymaking regarding the role of urban planning and urban design in promoting crosscultural encounters and experiences of social cohesion in socially and culturally diverse urban contexts. It develops and tests an innovative theoretical and methodological framework which draws together key analyses of social cohesion by Jenson and Kearns and Forrest with recent urban design literature to hypothesize how four key social dimensions – ‘belonging and Identity’, ‘inclusion’, ‘participation’ and ‘recognition’ – that characterise the social experience of cohesion link to physical, management and use attributes of public space design. It builds on established theories and methods from experimental social psychology and urban design and integrates them with sociological and geographical theories and methods for studying social relationships. Its methodology consists of five different methods (design review, post-occupancy evaluation, non-verbal communication, ethnographic and biographical) that aim to collect five different types of data (design, spatial, behavioural, social, and cultural) for studying person-environment relationships. It tests its effectiveness to examine three London’s public spaces – Gillett Square, Windrush Square and Kings Crescent Estate public spaces – in areas that are similarly ethnically diverse and socio-economic deprived, but with distinctly different approaches to symbolic representation, spatial design, and programming. The proposed theoretical and methodological framework develops a pathway for new knowledge. It addresses a gap between the built environment disciplines and social sciences in terms of methods for studying social encounters in public space by linking the spatiality and materiality of public spaces with the observed varieties of sociality underlying everyday’s intercultural encounters. It also provides a multi-dimensional analysis of how public spaces with different design approaches are connected to different experiences of social encounter and wider consequences for social cohesion.

Item Type:	Conference or Workshop Item - unpublished
Status:	Unpublished
Schools:	Schools > Geography and Planning (GEOPL)
Last Modified:	29 May 2026 10:02
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/154581

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