Lived Urban Form Using Urban Morphology to Explore Social Dimensions of Urban Space

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Cover image: Peace Bench at Inner Cyprus Border in Nicosia. Picture by Luisa Bravo
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Published: Dec 31, 2023
DOI: https://doi.org/10.32891/jps.v8i3.1410
Keywords:
urban form urban morphology education social space representation

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Tihomir Viderman
TU Wien
Ilaria Geddes
University of Cyprus
Chrystala Psathiti
Neapolis University in Cyprus

Abstract

The urban form is a political and social arena. It is produced as a composite of sediments of various ways of living, of complex flow of history, of relationships and subjectivities through which people build and exercise their agency to negotiate and change contingent urban realities. Studies of urban form have so far confronted the challenge of grasping this complexity by scrutinizing a city's physical features. However, this paper puts forward a proposition that urban morphological approaches can also be resourceful tools for conceptualizing and scrutinizing dynamic relations between plural urban realities and transformations of the physical urban fabric. By drawing on the experiences from the Erasmus+ project Emerging Perspectives on Urban Morphologies (EPUM), this paper suggests a multidisciplinary, open educational framework combining various urban morphological approaches as a productive means of developing an understanding of multifaceted spatializations of lived space within urban form, as well as materializations of urban form within lived space. Such an endeavour can extend the study of urban form beyond the focus on an object, to embrace the processes, practices and agents of the production of the built environment, including multiple tensions between changing scales and material manifestations of political, economic and social relations.

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How to Cite
Viderman, T., Geddes, I. and Psathiti, C. (2023) “Lived Urban Form: Using Urban Morphology to Explore Social Dimensions of Urban Space”, The Journal of Public Space, 8(3), pp. 79–92. doi: 10.32891/jps.v8i3.1410.
Issue
Vol. 8 No. 3 (2023): Mapping Urban Injustices in Public Space: Challenges and Opportunities
Section
Articles
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Author Biographies

Tihomir Viderman, TU Wien

Tihomir Viderman, is a PhD candidate at TU Wien, Austria, and a research assistant and lecturer at BTU Cottbus-Senftenberg, Germany. He has been engaged in interdisciplinary research and teaching focusing on culturally inclusive and locally embedded approaches to urban space, with a particular interest in mutually formative relations between affect, spaces of everyday life and the praxis of urban design and planning. His publications connect the analysis of structural conditions to the thick description of materialities and representations of continuously unsettled urban space. His methodological competences include the proficiency in conducting socio-cultural analyses with a spatial focus, carrying out field research using ethnographic methods and developing analytical concepts on urban and regional transformations.

Ilaria Geddes, University of Cyprus

Ilaria Geddes is a Research Fellow at the Society and Urban Form (SURF) Research Lab, Department of Architecture, University of Cyprus. She is the Research Coordinator of the Erasmus+ project Knowledge Alliance for Evidence-Based Urban Practices (KAEBUP) and Senior Researcher on the Horizon Europe project Twinning Towards Research Excellence in Evidence-Based Planning and Urban Design (TWIN2EXPAND); she contributes to teaching courses on Mediterranean Cities, Research Methodologies, and Special Topics in Urban Planning and Design. Her research focuses on diachronic analysis of city development, socio-spatial theory, evidence-based design and planning, and analysis of the public realm, towards the translation of scientific evidence for application in design and planning policy and practice. She is the co-president of the Cyprus Network of Urban Morphology (CyNUM) and an Editorial Board Member of the journal Cities & Health. As a Research Fellow at the UCL Institute of Health Equity, she contributed to the Strategic Review of Health Inequalities in England Post-2010 (Marmot Review) and authored the report The Health Impacts of Cold Homes and Fuel Poverty. She previously worked in urban design practice as a Project Consultant for Space Syntax Limited.

Chrystala Psathiti, Neapolis University in Cyprus

Dr Chrystala Psathiti is a researcher and practitioner exploring the relationship between architecture and human behaviour. She is currently a Lecturer in Architectural Design & Theory at Neapolis University Paphos and the founder of Splace Architecture. Trained as an architect, she holds a Diploma in Architecture from the University of Cyprus and an MSc in Spatial Design: Architecture & Cities from the Bartlett, UCL London and a PhD from the University of Cyprus, funded by the National Scholarship Foundation and Youth Board Cyprus. She was also a visiting researcher at the Bartlett School of Architecture and has been involved in European Research Projects such as Twin2Expand, KAEBUP, EPUM and Innovaroom. The two major themes of her past and current research are exploring the relationship of spatial design with human spatial behaviours in various building types as well as how architectural design praxis is related to architectural research (evidence-based design).

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