Beginnings: from practice to PhD
Working in practice as an Urban Designer and Chartered Landscape Architect the last 8 years has given me insight into the way built environment decisions, designs and policy happen in the ‘real world’. This has been a brilliant experience, working with wonderful people, skilled professionals and those passionate about the ways we can design places to be better for both people and environment. I am extremely grateful to have worked alongside these leaders in their fields, particularly at HERE+NOW, where I worked with an amazing team to develop and apply co-design and user-centred methods of giving people a voice in the future of their local places, for clients from community groups to private developers to local government. HERE+NOW is continuing this excellent work under the continued directorship of Liz Thomas, and is certainly worth keeping an eye on in relation to innovative approaches to landscape architecture and participatory design.
A PhD is something I have long considered. I love learning, researching, and sharing findings that can have a real positive impact on the places we inhabit and built environment we move through in our daily lives. The route from working in practice to a PhD is perhaps slightly less common than those that continue more directly along the academic track, though certainly not unique. The focus of my PhD research has come from this experience in industry, and identifying where I hope the PhD can add value and positively impact both academic knowledge and the application of built environment design, decisions and planning in practice.
There are substantial and pertinent opportunities to ensure that the places designed and decisions made today make the cities of tomorrow as successful as they can be. In a rapidly changing world, with huge and continuing steps forward in technology and innovation, can we harness what we are now able to learn about the city - as part of a more data-driven approach to urban design and planning - to result in the most ‘successful’ places and cities in the future? How can we use this ‘data and design’ approach, to maximise positive ‘place’ outcomes for both people and the environment, in this time of public health crises and climate emergency?
My research will use surveys with global practitioners, precedent case studies and prototypes to understand how contemporary urban data innovations, approaches and technologies (from crowdsourcing, to big data mining, in-person co-design workshops, IoT, and sensors) can add value to decision-making processes by informing built environment decisions, designs, planning and policy. For example, their input might help form an evidence-base that better directs and prioritises public funds and resources, add an extra layer of information to post-occupancy evaluation or improve reliability when modelling future scenarios. The research will also assess the places that result from these data-driven decision processes, and any subsequent impact on user experience, environmental, health and well-being outcomes. This might be a result of - for example - creating more pedestrian/cycle-friendly cities, promoting social interaction in public space, or increasing green space provision. If you would like to be involved in participating in a survey, or are aware of a case study that may be of interest do please get in touch.
I am extremely grateful to have an amazing team of supervisors as I start this journey, comprising Dr Nina Morris (GeoSciences, University of Edinburgh), Dr Larissa Pschetz (Design Informatics, ECA), Prof Catharine Ward Thompson (OPENspace research centre, ESALA), and industry partner Euan Mills of Connected Places Catapult. I have also been fortunate in being accepted by the AHRC and SGSAH as one of their PhDs under the Collaborative Doctoral Award scheme.
I will be updating this blog throughout the 6 year part-time PhD, with posts about both my research and findings, as well as the select urban design and user research freelance commissions I am doing alongside this, which I hope will enable the cross-pollination of ideas, theory and practice.
