Disentangling relational space as a new perspective for contemporary collective urbanism. The case Muide Meulestede Morgen, Gent, Belgium.

Cities, as relational incubators, are more than a container of physical infrastructure for social or economic processes to unfold, they combine all aspects of social life into a complex whole, in which absolute, relative and relational space are playing active roles. Where the role of the relational space within urban life is recognized and studied through various disciplinary approaches that focus on urban life, there is no transdisciplinary strategy or method to describe its actual role in the making of collective spaces and find ways to address the very relation between the relational space and absolute space (the built environment). The research is aiming at developing an transdisciplinary discourse on relational space in order to define possible new multidisciplinary socio-spatial design dialectics. The objective is to disentangle the relational space operating in the absolute space on a specific case, to gain new insights, within both the existing individual processes -sub- processes relating to a more overall process of place making. This serves as the basis for developing strategies for intervention in collective spaces. The research will focus on a case study, the district Muide-Meulestede in Ghent, Belgium. This district lies as a literal peninsula on the outskirts of Ghent and is at the start of a large-scale development process. This case study will feed the unfolding of the theoretical framework as well as contribute to explore interventions as a real- live project. In addition, a cooperation with the city of Ghent offers the opportunity to test and evaluate strategies and methods in practice. The results of this research will provide new insights and novel approaches to the transformation of the social urban fabric, as it will explore the very conditions that define different levels of collectivity in urban space and suggest ways of intervening in the absolute space.