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Enabling people to have a voice on their city through walking
and reclaiming urban open spaces, public buildings, and university campuses
What is Co-Assessment?
Buildings and urban open spaces play a crucial role in enhancing the quality of life in cities. To ensure they are effectively designed and managed, comprehensive assessments are essential.
Co-assessment of our environments is a collaborative process that involves multiple stakeholders, including citizens, urban planners and designers, architects, local authorities, and community organisations. The aim is to develop an understanding of diverse perspectives and insights into the quality, functionality, and the overall experience of these environments.
Co-assessment allows for direct feedback from the people who use these spaces, enabling a better understanding of their preferences, requirements, and concerns.
Co-assessment provides an opportunity to identify the strengths and weaknesses of our environments. It allows users to evaluate various aspects, such as functionality, social interaction, accessibility, inclusivity, and perception, and to provide feedback on what works well and what needs improvement.
By involving users in the assessment process, the design of our buildings and urban environments can be tailored to meet their specific needs, resulting in environments that are more functional and enjoyable.
Innovative Mobile Applications for Co-Assessment
Creating the YouWalk-UOS and YouWalk-YouReclaim free mobile applications for co-assessing urban open spaces, buildings and campus open spaces is rooted in research highlighting the significance of user engagement and participation in urban design and planning processes. Numerous studies have shown that involving stakeholders, including citizens and users, in the decision-making and assessment of buildings and urban environments leads to more successful and sustainable designs.
Our mobile applications provide a platform for effective stakeholder engagement. They encourage active participation from a wide range of individuals and groups, including residents, community organisations, and relevant experts. By involving various stakeholders, the assessment process reflects the diverse needs and aspirations of the community.
We emphasise the importance of considering diverse perspectives and needs to create inclusive and user-friendly environments. By allowing users to assess the environments they experience through mobile applications, we aim to harness the community's collective intelligence, ensuring that the design of buildings and open spaces aligns with the actual preferences and requirements of the people who use them. Through co-assessment and engagement, these applications bridge gaps between various perspectives including users, designers, and decision makers, leading to well-informed and user-centric design solutions that enhance the overall experience for everyone involved.
Co-Assessment of Urban Open Spaces
Our impressions of a city are established by the quality of public open spaces, which are happy and diverse places for relaxation, comfort, entertainment, and meeting other people. If they are not appealing or if they impart a sense of insecurity, anxiety, or discomfort, we will hardly return.
YouWalk-UOS is an application developed by Ashraf M. Salama and Madhavi P. Patil to promote co-assessment of urban environments and enable people to voice their opinions about the urban open spaces they experience which enhance decisions on improving the quality of existing urban open spaces (UOS) and designing future ones. YouWalk-UOS aims at facilitating the co-assessment of urban open spaces based on three dimensions: functional, social, and perceptual. By engaging citizens and stakeholders in the assessment of these dimensions, we can develop valuable insights towards improving the overall quality of urban open spaces.
Towards an Active Campus Environment
What are the major aspects that impact our understanding of and emotional reactions to our campus environment including its buildings and public spaces?
To answer this question, Ashraf M. Salama, Madhavi P. Patil, Jane Arnfield have developed a toolkit, the purpose of which is to develop YOU the student and YOUR ability to have control over YOUR understanding of the Campus Environment by establishing and feeling the links between social, spatial, material aspects of a building or a group of buildings within our campus.
YouWalk-YouReclaim aims at facilitating the co-assessment of campus environments including buildings and public open spaces. For buildings, we include six dimensions: context, building components (massing), interface, wayfinding, socio-spatial, and comfort. For public open spaces, we include three dimensions: functional, social, and perceptual. By engaging students, faculty, and staff in the assessment of these dimensions, we can develop valuable insights towards an active campus environment.
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