Report in English on the results of the international Master Class by Stadslab on intercultural park design. The case described is a design for for a park in Eastern Ukrainian city of Melitopol. A redevelopment strategy is proposed for its historic Gorky Park (1936). The book also contains essays by intercultural cities expert Phil Wood and introductions by Marc Glaudemans, Beatriz Ramo and Olexandr Butsenko.
The role of expert knowledge of the environment in decision-making about urban development has been intensively debated, largely in terms of a so-called ‘science-policy gap’. Most contributions to this debate have studied the use of knowledge in the decision-making process from the knowledge providers’ point of view. In this paper, we reverse the perspective and try to unearth how decision-makers use scientific knowledge in decision-making about an urban plan. We confronted municipal administrators, responsible for local urban development, with conceptions of the use of knowledge that were derived from the literature on this issue. From the reactions obtained, we conclude that, in the context of urban redevelopment, local administrators hardly perceive a barrier between themselves as decision-makers and experts – both environmental scientists and urban designers. They do, however, acknowledge that experts and decision-makers have distinct roles: unlike experts, local administrators have to balance all interests relevant to an urban plan. It is argued, therefore, that experts should engage in providing better decision frameworks rather than more or better knowledge.
Over the next 10 years, the City of Amsterdam plans to develop major housing schemes provide 90,000 new homes within the existing urban fabric. At the same time, an urban renewal program is being launched to revitalize the most deprived neighbourhoods. Together, these challenges call for more evidence based designprinciples to secure liveable places. Recent development in neuroscience, provides innovative tools to examine in a measurable, cause-effect way, the relationships between the physical fabric, users’ (visual) experience and their behavior in public spaces. In neuroscience, eye-tracking technology (ET) complements brain and behavioral measures (for overview see Eckstein et al. 2017). ET is already used to evaluate the spatial orienting of attention, behavioral response and emotional and cognitive impact in neuroscience, psychology and market research (Popa et al. 2015). ET may also radically change the way we (re)design and thus, experience cities (Sita et al. 2016; Andreani 2017). Until now, eye-tracking pilot studies collected eye fixation patterns of architecture using images in a lab-setting (Lebrun 2016).In our research project Sensing Streetscapes, we take eye-tracking outdoors and explore the potential ET may offer for city design. In collaboration with the municipality of Amsterdam and the local community, the H-neighborhood is used as a single case study. The main focus for urban renewal lies in the “transition-spaces”. They connect the neighborhood with the rapidly developing adjacent areas and are vital for improving the weak social-economic status. The commonly used design principles are validated (Alexander et al. 1977; Gehl 2011, 2014; Pallasmaa 2012) and the consistency of ET is tested, alongside (walk along) interviews and behavioral observations. In the next phase, the data will be analyzed by a panel of applied psychologists and urban designers. The initial results provide valuable lessons for the use of eye-tracking in urban design research. For example, a visual pattern analysis offers more accurate images of the spatial key-elements that matter when moving through transition spaces. More sensory-based city design research is needed to gather a full understanding of the relationships between the configuration of space, users’ (visual) experience, behavioral responses and in turn, perceptual decision making.
