ABSTRACT
This chapter is a reflective essay on methods of researching urban design through the lens of place as assemblage – the ways the shaping of urban public space is enmeshed in complex practices of power. Such an understanding requires engagement with the production of meanings and morphologies. On the one hand, we have expressions of place identity that resonate with political, ethnic and class identities at multiple scales from the street to the nation-state. On the other hand, we have the materialities of the city – the densities, the mixing of forms and functions, and the access networks. While research methods for each may differ, we need to understand the ways meanings and morphologies intersect and are stitched together in alliances and synergies – the ways they are assembled. The broader research questions for urban design – the quest for a more walkable, healthy, smart, productive, creative, resilient, sustainable and equitable city – are all geared to this broader framework of understanding ‘place’ as a multi-scalar, complex and adaptive assemblage. If we want to understand how the city works and how urban design shapes urban outcomes, then we need to enter into these complex interrelations between the morphologies and meanings of public space.
