The Routledge Handbook of Urban Design Research Methods
As an evolving and contested field, urban design has been made, unmade, and remade at the intersections of multiple disciplines and professions. It is now a decisive moment for urban design to reflect on its rigour and relevance.
This handbook is an attempt to seize this moment for urban design to further develop its theoretical and methodological knowledge base and engage with the question of “what urban design can be” with a primary focus on its research.
This handbook includes contributions from both established and emerging scholars across the global North and global South to provide a more field-specific entry point by introducing a range of topics and lines of inquiry and discussing how they can be explored with a focus on the related research designs and methods. The specific aim, scope, and structure of this handbook are appealing to a range of audiences interested and/or involved in shaping places and public spaces.
What makes this book quite distinctive from conventional handbooks on research methods is the way it has been structured in relation to some key research topics and questions in the field of urban design regarding the issues of agency, affordance, place, informality, and performance. In addition to the introduction chapter, this handbook includes 80 contributors and 52 chapters organised into five parts. The commissioned chapters showcase a wide range of topics, research designs, and methods with references to relevant scholarly works on the related topics and methods.
Reviews
“This new Routledge handbook brings together a remarkable range of scholars, covering a vast range of topics and methods employed in urban design research. As much a snapshot of where we are now and how we've arrived here - as where we are heading in the field - it is a must have for any urban designer's bookshelf.”
Tim Townshend, Professor of Urban Design for Health, Newcastle University, UK
“The Routledge Handbook of Urban Design Research Methods is an expansive exposition of the diverse ways to interrogate and understand the city. The book critically demonstrates the modes by which urban practitioners can engage with city making and brings to sharp focus the unfulfilled potentials Urban Design.”
Rahul Mehrotra, founder principal of RMA Architects and John T. Dunlop Professor in Housing and Urbanization at the GSD, Harvard University, US
“This timely book presents a rich variety of approaches and hands on tools and has the format to become a key source of inspiration for researchers, practitioners as well as policy makers. In a world with much shouting and screaming on social media, also when it comes to the build environment, we need dialogue tools and creative approaches. The tools presented in this handbook could serve to create a constructive dialogue around the build environment.”
Birgitte Svarre, PhD, CEO, BARK Consulting A/S, Denmark (co-author of How to study public life with Jan Gehl)
About the editors
Hesam Kamalipour is a Senior Lecturer in Urban Design, Co-Director of MA Urban Design, and Co-Founding Director of the Public Space Observatory Research Centre at Cardiff University.
Patricia Aelbrecht is a Senior Lecturer in Urban Design and Intercultural Studies and Co-Founding Director of the Public Space Observatory Research Centre at Cardiff University.
Nastaran Peimani is a Senior Lecturer in Urban Design, Leader of the Urbanism Research and Scholarship Group, and Co-Founding Director of the Public Space Observatory Research Centre at Cardiff University.