Everyday urban life at neighbourhood centres : Urban design and co-presence

Urban segregation and increasing polarization in the metropolitan areas in Sweden is considered a major societal problem. Several municipal and na-tional initiatives have been launched to ameliorate residential segregation and to improve the living conditions in socio-economically disfavoured neighbourhoods, but so far they have been only marginally effective. In fact, urban polarization and segregation have been increasing rather then held back. However, urban segregation can also be studied through everyday ur-ban life in public space, where people are brought to interact in different ways with others. Public spaces – streets, squares, and parks – are used in everyday practices and become important social arenas; and public spaces are subject to different uses and meanings. It has been demonstrated that access to resources varies greatly within the city, influenced to a high extent by urban morphology, and this results in unequal living conditions. As such inequalities are affecting social groups with fewer resources, it becomes especially problematic, thus reproducing and establishing segregation patterns. This research explores and investigates the role of urban design and urban form in relation to urban segregation. It looks beyond residential segregation and seeks to develop descriptions and understandings that acknowledge urban form and configurative properties, with the aim of being relevant from an architectural and urban-design per-spective. The objective has been to increase the understanding of how urban form relates to the segregation phenomenon; how urban layouts, through their spatial arrangement and organization, create affordances and limita-tions; and how urban design can be used to counteract segregation and pro-vide cities with more equal living conditions.QC 20200109Formas, Strong Research Environment, In the Makin