Social cooperative monitoring tool for the production of inclusive public spaces.

The project explores inclusive planning and design, specifically related to the needs that disabled citizens have as users and creators of urban spaces. It questions how to plan, design and govern cities as growingly complex systems to ensure justice, equality, inclusion and sustainable growth. Particularly we try to understand how cities can enhance collaboration between public space users and public space agents through the use of participatory and collaborative digital tools in a most holistic way. Hence, we aim at reaching beyond the quantitative research and big data that mainly offer insights into what is happening. We rather focus on qualitative ways of understanding the how-s, and the why-s. For this purpose we design an exploratory model of four dimensions: a) human, b) special, c) technological, and d) relational level. This 4-dimensional model serves as a framework for conducting qualitative research within the urban practice by first defining specific societal challenges and questions that we aim to explore, and second by exploring them through a combination of methodological approaches. Based on the experimentation with diverse technologies, tools and techniques, conducted within four case studies in Maribor and Ljubljana, both Slovenia, we propose a combined methodological approach (CMA). The CMA is grounded on slow, small and deep-data oriented ethnography, complemented with behavioural mapping and post-occupancy evaluation, and as such offers a wide array of complementary and overlapping techniques and tools. It aims supporting stakeholders in gaining in-depth understanding of the people, space, technology and the relations between the three in order to be able to make informative decisions and appropriate responsive measures.

Keywords:ETHNOGRAPHY, URBAN SPACE, INCLUSIVE DESIGN

Disciplines:Urban and regional design, development and planning, Public health services, Anthropology, Applied sociology, Policy and administration, Social psychology, Social stratification, Social theory and sociological methods, Sociology of life course, family and health, Other sociology and anthropology