Jan Schreurs

Building a Meta-Framework to ‘Address’ Spatial Quality

Abstract Spatial quality is a contested notion due mainly to its uneven conceptualization and methodological translation across fields in which space is a key concern. This article presents the building up of an inter- and transdisciplinary methodological meta-framework to analyse, assess and work towards spatial quality. It explains the thematic cross-reading of spatial quality across three fields (social innovation in territorial development, strategic spatial planning, urban design). By use of a relational approach connecting seven dimensions of spatial quality and its making, and building on the symbiotic strengths of the three fields, it formulates a meta-theoretical framework as the central piece of a coherent joined-up methodological guide to address spatial quality.

Beyond Design and Participation: The ‘Thought for Food’ Project in Flanders, Belgium

The goal of this paper is to contribute to the development of methods of social innovation in participatory urban design. Based on the Synoikos scenario Workshop, an adapted methodology was applied to and evaluated within the (participatory action) research context of the European Thought for Food (T4F) landscape enhancement project concerning the agro-industrial area surrounding Roeselare in West-Flanders, Belgium. Within this complex spatial and social context, design-based scenarios served as a tool for stimulating participants to discuss their discordant views and to understand the consequences of their activities for others.

Pragmatism and Research by Design: Epistemological Virtues and Methodological Challenges

Abstract This article reflects on the methodological capacity of the field of knowledge and expertise called spatial design in pursuing spatial quality. The aim is to analyse the methodological aspects of the field and its heuristic processes understood as research-by-design. Research-by-design has an encompassing attention to space through two related and complementary vocations: interpretation and transformation of our environment. The article argues that a research-by-design process is characterized by creative-abductive reasoning. Abduction fits the analytical logic of pragmatism, which is understood as a social philosophy of collective action and knowledge-building. Because of its focus on co-production and social learning, and its use of abductive reasoning, research-by-design offers a powerful inter- and transdisciplinary methodology for exploring transformative capacities and achieving spatial quality, the article argues.

Integrative Spatial Quality: A Relational Epistemology of Space and Transdisciplinarity in Urban Design and Planning

Spatial quality is a central tenet and, at the same time, a highly contentious issue in the urban design and planning field. This is the case for practitioners, academics and researchers alike. Underpinning the canonical texts (e.g. Sitte [1889] 1965; Lynch 1960, 1981; Cullen 1961; Bacon 1974; Alexander et al. 1977, etc.) and even some major recent contributions in defining the theoretical foundations of the field (Sternberg 2000; Banerjee 2001; Madanipour 2006; Carmona 2014), is a broad consensus on the importance of spatial quality as a normative quest that runs through the theories, principles and methods of the field. Yet, different users, professional and research communities tend to have very different views on what makes a particular organization of space ‘qualitative’ or not (e.g. Madanipour 2006; Ewing and Handy 2009; Mehta 2014). A universal understanding of the concept ‘spatial quality’ does not exist, except as shorthand for either the intention to invest some ‘extra’ (talent, care, aesthetics, money, etc.), or to stress a ‘normative’ attitude and endeavour. Yet when addressing spatial quality within theoretical elaborations or professional operations, different spatial quality preferences cannot just be ‘added up’ when mobilizing this notion.