Contextualised Convivialities in Superdiverse Neighbourhoods – Methodological Approaches Informed by Urban Design

ABSTRACT

This paper positions questions of conviviality as situational as well as relational, and describes and reflects on methods which give due precedence to different spatial scales, materialities and timeframes. In this urban design research project our central question focused on the affordances and value of different local outdoor public spaces for supporting conviviality in an ethnically diverse neighbourhood in Sheffield UK. This neighbourhood had become known for tensions, played out in outdoor public spaces, resulting in part from social dynamics between more recent arrivals and relatively settled communities. We built trust by embedding responsiveness and shared benefit as key ethical commitments in our practice alongside learning about spatial and temporal dimensions of encounter across difference. Building on our urban design professional skills relating to place enquiry and understanding, we tested walking, photography, drawing, making and mapping methods including collaborating with local groups. These allowed us to develop theoretical understandings of conviviality as a pluralistic construct, fundamentally informed, shaped and responsive to the complexities of context – including socio-economic place-based histories, physical environments and ongoing social negotiations.

KEYWORDS:

• Methods
• migration
• participatory
• visual
• ethics

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 By this term we want to explicitly include the professions of landscape architecture, architecture and urban planning at neighbourhood scales.

2 The research project was conducted 2015–2018, with Vodicka’s position funded by a University of Sheffield scholarship.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Goran Vodicka

Goran Vodicka is a Senior Lecturer in Architecture at Sheffield Hallam University, UK. His research is mainly focused on diversity and equity in public open spaces as well as socially-engaged spatial practice and pedagogy. Recently he was a Research Fellow in ‘FESTSPACE: Festivals, Events and Inclusive Public Space’, a project funded by HERA (Humanities in the European Research Area) exploring sociability in public spaces in five European cities. He is also an Associate of Architecture Sans Frontières-UK (ASF-UK), a non-profit organisation that supports communities and practitioners in codesigning more equitable cities.

Clare Rishbeth

Clare Rishbeth is a Senior Lecturer in Landscape Architecture at the University of Sheffield, UK who brings a research focus on migration histories and experiential qualities of place to the professional remit of Landscape Architecture practice and education. Her academic research, teaching practice and social values are focused on profiles of marginalisation - shaped by intersections of ethnicity, class and gender - set against the civic ethos of public space. She has led a number of Research Council UK collaborative projects across academia and practice, including focusing on the role of benches in urban spaces to support inclusion (2015) and how refugees and asylum seekers may be supported to use urban greenspace as an integration and wellbeing resource (2017). Clare is currently working on a three year research project within a broad ‘Treescapes’ series which extends an equity and inclusion focus specifically with young people (2021-2024).