Objectives
The ultimate objective of this project is to assist policy makers, planners, architects, urban designers and ordinary citizens in the creation of urban environments that are conducive to the friendly encounter of different social groups and thus help to tackle the ground conditions of stereotypisation, societal polarisation and possibly even radicalisation. This requires, first of all, a better understanding of the recursive, socio-technical dynamics in cities with polarisation trends because we know from existing evidence that these dynamics are not a-spatial or a-material phenomena .
In a very literal sense, polarisation takes place in space, in streets, apartments, parks, shops where people sojourn, meet or linger. And it is reflected physically in the form of segregated neighbourhoods, fences, road bollards, street layouts, flags, gates, murals, the ornamentation and alterations of buildings and various kinds of territorial markers. But the urban environment is not only a mirror of social conditions, it also influences, conditions, accentuates, solidifies, in short: mediates them. As we know from places like Belfast, Beirut, or Nicosia it can either keep people apart and thus foster stereotypisation and polarisation or it can facilitate friendly encounters and thus potentially alleviate divisions. It is thus clear that the urban environment and social conditions shape each other; they co-evolve.
The proposed research thus aims to examine whether the forms of co-evolution between social trends and the urban environment differ in cities that are characterised by different patterns of polarisation and radicalisation and how this mutually shaping relationship can be steered away from a spiral downward trend towards a stable and more amicable constellation of artefactual and social conditions. These considerations led to the following four distinctive but complementary research questions:
- To identify and categorise the ways in which polarisation becomes materially imprinted in cities characterised by different patterns of conflict, polarisation, stereotypisation and radicalisation .
- To analyse the design features of cities (buildings, infrastructures, public spaces, etc.) that are particularly conducive to the generation and acceleration of different forms of polarisation and radicalisation.
- To explore the possibility of steering the momentum of co-evolution between social conditions and the urban environment in a way to facilitate friendly encounters between groups that would otherwise diverge.
- To critically assess the transferability of empirical findings between and beyond the case study cities.