SSSEIC – StreetScapes for a Social-Ecological Inclusive City: A Model for the Interdisciplinary Consideration of Streetscapes and Public Spaces

Abstract

The multiple crisis that today’s metropolises and cities are facing, present an additional challenge when it comes to maintaining and improving the quality of urban public space in order to subsequently ensure living standards and quality of life. The conditions determining the state of public space represent an interwoven network of mutually dependent factors. Due to this complexity they cannot be treated by one discipline alone, rather, they require a strong inter- and transdisciplinary approach in order to ultimately produce future-fit urban spaces – ones that are ecological, social and inclusive (for human and not-human city-users). In contrast to work on the building scale – where collaboration between architects and specialist planners (with or without BIM tools) is common practice – interdisciplinary exchange and coproduction at the urban and regional planning scale are not yet standard. Although, planning teams with experts from the fields of traffic or landscape design are also common there, and cooperative processes or participatory workshops are sometimes carried out, shifting the focus to the crucial street/block/neighbourhood scale brings new complexities and challenges, as well as a multitude of different actors and stakeholders. What is missing here are co-operative instruments and methods that, on the one hand, enable inter- and transdisciplinary urban planning and, on the other hand, bundle all the spatial qualities of public space in a holistic and systemic way. The disciplines relevant to such co-operation are many and varied, ranging from practitioners such as urban planners, architects, landscape architects, traffic planners, road engineers, etc., to researchers in the same disciplines, also including sociologists, material sciences, etc. Finally, the executive and administrative units must also be taken into account: the people responsible for the furnishing, cleaning, maintaining and preserving public spaces have extensive knowledge in their field, which is of fundamental relevance for any future-oriented planning. This paper describes the design and development of the SSSEIC tool; a tool that encompasses two models in different spheres: on the one hand, aiming at a theoretical concept for capturing relevant qualities and, on the other hand, meaning a computer-based 3D model. The theoretical concept seeks to capture all the parameters that determine the quality of streetscapes, including, obviously, the parameters of the street space itself, but also those of the ground below and the adjacent buildings. To this end, interviews were conducted with experts from the fields of practice, research and administration, and a cooperative workshop was also held. The resulting concept represents a new type of holistic and systemic recording of qualities in the street space, including their interrelations and connections – and consequently it provides the basis for creating a 3D model that visualizes those qualities and parameters in an actual street space. The model should ultimately show/visualise/illustrate the impact and correlations of parameters and thus provide a possible planning basis for future inter- and transdisciplinary co-operation in the sense of a city information model (CIM).