ABSTRACT
In this chapter we deepen our thinking around issues in design research in urban community domains. We discuss some ways in which community spaces are defined through urban practices, and ways in which these articulations serve to re-structure community spaces from the perspective of the professional designer or planner. We introduce a possible antidote to the problems of this kind of professional envisioning, in the form of configurational network approaches to urban spaces. We introduce notions of centrality and attraction from network theory, and their adoption to the design-research field of space syntax. We look into some of the sociological implications of this adoption for design thinking in urban domains, and reinforce the need for a ‘dialogic’ approach to design thinking.
