- Title
- Social connectedness and the built environment
- Creator
- McHarg, Alec David
- Relation
- University of Newcastle Research Higher Degree Thesis
- Resource Type
- thesis
- Date
- 2013
- Description
- Research Doctorate - Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
- Description
- My research thesis is an inquiry into a socio-spatial process: research planned to identify some of the challenges European urban designers face when tasked with implementing a government-planned regeneration programme for an existing urban suburb because of challenges to their economic and social stability. More specifically, to identify their challenges in implementing changes that will promote social connectedness and contribute to more socially cohesive communities in town centre and neighbourhood settings. Recent research has suggested that social capital, broadly defined as the social connectedness of a community, fosters vibrant, sustainable and healthy communities more likely to work collaboratively together to solve community issues. My research will consider the expectations interviewees have in terms of whether the interventions with which they were involved would contribute to social capital, defined in this way. My research will be an attempt to determine whether social connectedness improved as a result of a regeneration aimed at economic and social revival of deprived neighbourhoods in Neukölln and whether it will be reinvigorated following the planned regeneration of the urban town centre of Croydon. By using a qualitative interpretative form of inquiry, the objective of my PhD thesis is to determine how urban designers tasked with implementing such a regeneration programme can intervene without compromising the social connections that are possible within urban space. Four methods would be applied, utilising interviews, a review of government regeneration proposals and documents associated with the management of urban space supported by observational field research and photographic analysis. My research will focus on identifying a range of common themes arising from urban regeneration approaches taken by government designed to improve economic competitiveness and to address social exclusion. My field research involves numerous visits to the town centre (and inner-city surrounding space) of Croydon and neighbourhoods of Neukölln in order to conduct my data collection, including continual partial snapshots of the social lives of inhabitants as I observe their interaction with their respective built environments. My field research, photographic review and interviews with urban design professional evolve as I attempt to plot the extent of proposed changes and consequences to the urban terrain and social cohesion over the research period. According to the views of Putnam (2000), there are fewer opportunities for personal encounters of a less formal nature in neighbourhood and city-centres in the current period compared to the decade after WW11. There are however alternative views that argue that social connections were changing in character, and were reflective of changing developments in the way people interact; influencing social capital (Avery and Guest 1999; Forrest and Kearns 2001). In order to develop a robust argument, the subject of urban regeneration is examined using an interpretive approach and analysed using observational and critical discourse analysis (CDA). Trying to prove or disprove that social life has declined because of the impact of changes to the built environment and the traditional facilities that serve as meeting places for people is a challenging objective however.
- Subject
- socio spatial processes; social connectedness; urban regeneration; urban designers; Neukölln, Germany; Croydon, England
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/1035951
- Identifier
- uon:13191
- Language
- eng
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