Long-term challenges in urban housing: in the search for intersections between design and policy regulations

Current discussions on urban housing confirm the central role of design in dealing with the rapidly increasing complexities of urban challenges. Nonetheless, design often remains detached from decision-making at the level of building regulations and urban policies. Situated around the debate of greater socio-spatial sustainability, this paper aims to an integrated understanding of housing performance devising an analytical discussion of both the design and the policy-making approaches. To explore the interplay of design with policy and regulations, the paper looks at historical housing transformations in different contexts. It focuses on those morphological, spatial and legal affordances that, once embedded into the design of urban housing, can contribute to its sustainability over time. In response to numerous studies of disurbanism and failures of housing interventions in the cities, this paper examines in turn long-standing housing schemes, which remain relevant in space and time. The selected case studies cover a range of different urban housing types from highly mixed-use to pure residential: originally planned row housing in West Village, Manhattan, NYC and Islington, London, UK, and low-rise mass housing in Cité Ouvrière, Mulhouse, France. Comparative results indicate the significance of the following contributing factors to those settlements’ long-term viability: the flexibility of both regulations and building morphology (buildings, plots and blocks) at the various scales of the built environment; the combination of policies and management by various stakeholders at different levels; and the inherent spatio-temporal relation of the schemes with the urban whole. Overall, the paper seeks to inform the design of future housing through an evidence-based understanding of the impact of form and policies in housing longevity. Results suggest that there are certain, cross-cultural, spatial properties acting as shared factors between the practice of architectural design and urban housing governance

The use of morphological description in neighbourhood planning: form-based assessment of physical character and design rules

Despite ongoing efforts to encourage the use of urban morphology tools into current practice, uptake remains limited. Shortcomings are largely attributed to time and resource intensive methods of historical settlement transformation study. However, developments in quantitative morphological approaches offer new possibilities for efficiency and easier adoption of research tools in practice. This paper proposes the use of typo-morphology methods to inform the adoption of form-based design guidance in neighbourhood master plans. The aim of the study is to develop a comprehensive yet flexible method for form-based character assessment (FBCA) of residential streets. The resulting FBCA classification identifies streets where compliance with form-based design rules could be tightened. The FBCA method is empirically tested in the context of the local neighbourhood plan for Radlett, Hertfordshire in the United Kingdom, offering reflections from practice on the usefulness and limitations of the method

Between buildings and streets: a study of the micromorphology of the London terrace and the Manhattan row house 1880-2013

This thesis examines the role of building morphology and street networks in shaping street activity and transformations in the historical built form. The core inquiry applies a configurational analysis to the street, viewing it as a complex entity which interfaces with both buildings and the urban street network. The research is founded on the identification of two theoretical and methodological gaps in the canon of urban design: how generic building morphology properties relate to street liveability; and, how urban diversity emerges as the result of diachronic processes. The thesis looks at architecture beyond function, geometry and aesthetics, focusing on the urban street as a generator for social contact. Building on space syntax theory, it seeks to advance the concept of the ‘virtual community’, proposing that encounter and co-presence patterns are the product of both city-wide connections and local building morphology. In order to study building-street relations in terms of the virtual community the thesis has developed a series of specialised techniques to describe and analyse the synchronic and diachronic aspects of space. The thesis is innovative in integrating space syntax and Conzenian methods to better examine the micromorphology of the street interface configurationally and typologically, capturing the changing nature of built form and building use over time. This methodology is applied to the study of two contrasting urban areas: Islington, London and West Village, Manhattan. Both possess similar building morphologies that have sustained street liveability and diversity over centuries. The results show how urban change and diversity are affected by diachronic processes working with the synchronic structure of the everyday city. The thesis asserts that urban configuration and built form together play an essential role in shaping the character of the ‘virtual community’ as well as the potential for street life itself

Gateway-pathway heritage and urban growth zagreb case study

This paper is a part of on-going research into the typological definition of 'urban gateway-pathways'. This term refers to routes used to connect peripheral settlements to the urban core of contemporary cities. The typology was developed with reference to a sample of 18 Central European cities that were formerly provincial capital cities of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy. This paper provides the first authoritative syntactical description of the city of Zagreb and reports on initial syntactical analysis of its historic pathway typology using the transect method established by Hi II ier (1999). The results from the transect analysis are then used to provide more refined typological descriptions of the gateway-pathways and their historical transformations, and to frame a future phase of research using segment analysis

An approach to supporting young people with autism spectrum disorder and high anxiety to re-engage with formal education - the impact on young people and their families

School refusal is an important factor impacting upon poor outcomes for adolescents and youth. Individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) experience characteristic difficulties regarding social interaction and communication, rigidity of thinking and sensory sensitivities. These difficulties, coupled with the heightened anxiety that many on the spectrum experience, place them at particular risk of school refusal. This study investigates activity undertaken in one UK local authority, where provision was developed to help such students to re-engage with formal education. Data were collected at three points through the first year of the provision’s existence. Findings show all students were successfully supported to attend the provision and re-engage with formal education. Factors supportive of re-engagement are presented and considered in the light of an ecological model of support for school refusers and what is considered as ‘good practice’ in autism education. It is suggested that the factors identified are indicative of good practice across both areas of activity

Digital Literacy and young children: towards better understandings of the benefits and challenges of digital technologies in homes and early years settings. : Policy briefing of DigiLitEY COST Action IS1410 and the Digital Childhoods SIG of the European Early Childhood Research Association.

Non peer reviewe

Large-scale remote fear conditioning: demonstration of associations with anxiety using the FLARe smartphone app

Objectives We aimed to examine differences in fear conditioning between anxious and nonanxious participants in a single large sample. Materials and methods We employed a remote fear conditioning task (FLARe) to collect data from participants from the Twins Early Development Study (n = 1,146; 41% anxious vs. 59% nonanxious). Differences between groups were estimated for their expectancy of an aversive outcome towards a reinforced conditional stimulus (CS+) and an unreinforced conditional stimulus (CS−) during acquisition and extinction phases. Results During acquisition, the anxious group (vs. nonanxious group) showed greater expectancy towards the CS−. During extinction, the anxious group (vs. nonanxious group) showed greater expectancy to both CSs. These comparisons yielded effect size estimates (d = 0.26–0.34) similar to those identified in previous meta‐analyses. Conclusion The current study demonstrates that remote fear conditioning can be used to detect differences between groups of anxious and nonanxious individuals, which appear to be consistent with previous meta‐analyses including in‐person studies

Digital Literacy and young children: towards better understandings of the benefits and challenges of digital technologies in homes and early years settings

This policy brief is based on an extensive body of research across Europe and elsewhere conducted by leading researchers in the field across more than 30 countries. We have studied the use of digital technologies by children under 8 years old in a variety of settings using an extensive range of research methods