Urban Mixing

This project began with questions about how cities perform and how this performance can be mapped to reveal underlying patterns of urban behaviour. The Fenton Five used a research-based, design driven process to create an innovative tool for stakeholder participation and engagement about these issues - The Urban Mixing Toolkit.

Any change within the built environment requires policy makers, planners, developers and citizens to make informed decisions to shape their community. However each of these stakeholders will have different views about the course of that development and as such a common understanding of the underlying systems that shape these processes is required.

The Urban Mixing Toolkit is a flexible decision-making tool designed to help stakeholders engage with one another in the processes that shape the built environment in which they live, facilitate discussions, and develop a shared set of understanding about the value judgements of each stakeholder.

An extensive range of indicators are utilised to determine the performance of any one location in an urban area. Each indicator can be described as fitting into a wider theme, with a total of six themes used to describe the contemporary built environment: health, safety, learning, wealth, green and community. A Performance Score provides a weighted summation of each of these themes. These scores can then be used by stakeholders to make comparisons between different locations, their performance and the level of targeted investment needed in a particular area.

Overview

Any change within the built environment requires policy makers, planners, developers and citizens to make informed decisions to shape their community. However each of these stakeholders will have different views about the course of that development and as such a common understanding of the underlying systems that shape these processes is required.

The Urban Mixing Toolkit is a flexible decision-making tool designed to help stakeholders engage with one another in the processes that shape the built environment in which they live, facilitate discussions, and develop a shared set of understanding about what each stakeholder values most.

Working on the basis that a vibrant built environment is one in which people will want to live, work and play in, it must possess a diverse range of facilities, programmes and infrastructures. As such the performance of the Urban Mix is called into question using the Urban Mixing Toolkit. Identifying this mix and presenting possibilities for tuning the importance of its constituent parts.

A Performance Score provides a weighted summation that measures the performance of any location in an urban area, incorporating contextual issues in the form of thematic indicators. These indicators assess the built environment in terms of an agreed set of criteria within the themes of health, safety, learning, wealth, green, and community. The Performance Scores can then be used by stakeholders to make comparisons between different locations, their performance, proximity to particular resources and the level of targeted investment needed in a particular area. This is done through the medium of Performance Maps, a graphic visualisation of the Performance Score that relates the data to stakeholder’s daily experience of the city.

Each score can be modified so that each weighting reflects the personal preferences of that stakeholder, based on their own value judgements. Mapping these scores makes legible the underlying patterns of urban behaviour and serves as a tool for building a common understanding of the built environment. Revealing the interconnectedness of these environments has the potential to highlight and determine the level of strategic development or infrastructural improvement required in an area to improve its performance. As such the Performance Maps generated are dynamic representations, providing an integrated framework that is possible to operate at multiple scales.

Undertaking such an analysis comprehensively for an entire urban region can help determine the level of investment required to improve that areas performance and, most importantly, inform that decision-making process and engagement with all stakeholders.

Thematic Indicators

The Urban Mixing Toolkit relies on an extensive range of indicators to determine the performance of any one location in an urban area. Each indicator can be described as fitting into a wider theme, with a total of six themes used to describe the contemporary built environment:

• HEALTH: A place where people live longer and have a better quality of life.
• SAFETY: A place where individuals and communities feel safe and that is increasingly free from crime.
• LEARNING: A place where people are continually learning and developing their skills.
• WEALTH: A place that provides good quality housing with good job prospects and good wage levels.
• GREEN: A place that provides a quality environment for future generations.
• COMMUNITY: A place with a strong sense of community that celebrates diversity and equal opportunities.

Generating Performance Scores

A Performance Score provides a weighted summation that measures the performance of a given data point in an urban area. The score is calculated in two stages; the first giving an individual weighted score for each of the six themes at a given data point. Each indicator is assigned a weighting between 0 and 10. A weighted summation of these indicators is divided by the total of all the weightings, and then multiplied by a factor of 10 to give an individual theme score out of 10. The second stage gives a weighted summation of these themes to provide a measure of the Urban Mix and its overall performance at a given data point. Each theme score is assigned a weighting between 0 and 10 (Wt). A weighted summation of these indicators is divided by the total of all the weightings, to give a combined score for performance of the Urban Mix out of 10.

There are two degrees of interactivity that allows stakeholders to control the weightings used in the two stages of the calculation. In the first stage users can control the weights assigned to individual indicators and in the second the weights assigned to the themes. This has the affect of generating a weighted Performance Score that is unique to each stakeholder based on their own preferences. In the most basic scenario the indicator weightings can be kept constant for all stakeholders, reducing the number of variables by only changing the theme weightings and making comparisons easier. When indicator weightings are also changed the differences between stakeholders may become larger, making comparisons more difficult.

These scores can then be used by stakeholders to make comparisons between different locations, their performance and the level of targeted investment needed in a particular area. The lower the Performance Score the worse performing that data point is, in the opinion of that particular stakeholder, and as such it will require targeted investment to raise the performance of that area. It is through discussion that stakeholders can discuss the weightings and importance of each theme to them and begin to understand the reasons behind the value judgements that define those weightings.

The same process is used to calculate scores for each data point, from which Performance Maps can be drawn, to enable decisions to be made about wider built environment.

Utilising Performance Scores

Performance Scores can be used to draw comparisons between different locations using the six thematic indicators. However the scores alone are limiting when simply compared in a tabular format. A visualisation of the scores is required in the form of Performance Maps. These maps provide an accessible format which can be understood by all stakeholders and it is these maps which serve as a tool for building a common understanding of the built environment. Different stakeholders can be empowered and align their actions towards a common, sustainable future that maximises the potential and the performance of the built environment.

Limitations & Potentialities

It is important to understand the limitations of any system, tool or framework when using it to make decisions about the built environment. First and foremost the Urban Mixing Toolkit is designed to aid the decision-making process and facilitate discussion amongst stakeholders; it does not provide a series of solutions.

Secondly, whilst the nature of the Urban Mix Score is closely linked to programmatic diversity there are no indicators assigned to a number of other variables such as house tenure or land prices which may have an impact on the built environment. There are also a range of other dynamic fields relating to social, cultural, political and economic landscapes that the Performance Scores do not take account of. However, there is the potential to read the Performance Maps in conjunction with other maps or data sets—natural systems, zoning, planning policy, historical analysis, infrastructure, population diversity—to improve the clarity of information on display. As such the toolkit could be expanded so that:

Decision-Making Tool = Healthier City + Safer City + Learning City + Wealthier City + Greener City + Community + … +…

This expanded decision making tool could also be linked to other applications, such as web based tools, including Google Maps or Street View, or other data feeds to augment the Performance Maps with real time information.

Whilst the data is presented in a two dimensional field there is the potential to move the visualisation into a three-dimensional landscape so that the data begins to resemble topographical maps. Whereas the current system displays data points as a series of circles, with the radius corresponding to the Performance Score, when represented as a three dimensional landscape height from a base point would be the determining factor. When analysing a larger area of the built environment, particularly when using grid-based analysis to determine data points, this may provide a more accurate interpretation of the performance of that area.

The way in which data is collected can also be expanded to improve its accuracy. Instead of a simple yes/no survey recording whether or not a particular indicator is present, the frequency of that indicator can be recorded instead: for example, low, medium or high. These can in turn be tied to a weighting to generate a more accurate Performance Score.

The Urban Mixing Toolkit is designed to be Open Source in so much as that it can be modified relatively easily by Policy Makers, Planners, Developers or Citizens depending upon the scenario they are being applied it to. It is hoped that the flexibility it affords will enable stakeholders to adapt the tool to these new scenarios in so doing develop new unforeseen applications that further aid the engagement and decision-making process.