Enabling transformation: Linking design and land system science to foster place-making in peri-urban landscapes under increasing globalization

Project Information

GLOBESCAPE

Grant agreement ID: 757565

DOI

10.3030/757565

Project closed

EC signature date 13 March 2018

Start date 1 June 2018

End date 31 May 2023

Funded under

• EXCELLENT SCIENCE - European Research Council (ERC)

Total cost

€ 1 498 106,00

EU contribution

€ 1 498 106,00

Coordinated by

EIDGENOESSISCHE TECHNISCHE HOCHSCHULE ZUERICH
Switzerland

Periodic Reporting for period 4 - GLOBESCAPE (Enabling transformation: Linking design and land system science to foster place-making in peri-urban landscapes under increasing globalization)

Reporting period: 2022-12-01 to 2023-05-31

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

Unprecedented urbanization is threatening landscape diversity, bringing along new social and environmental problems. Standardized business centers, single family residential areas and shopping malls displace highly productive agricultural land, while the culture and lifestyles of local communities become absorbed into the sphere of globalization. GLOBESCAPE contributed to a next generation of tools and methods to understand and foster place-making. In particular, we obtained empirical evidence for the loss of emotions related to a homogeneization of landscapes. We developed a 3D serious game to activate intentional change of the landscape that generates a sense of place, and finally advanced fundamentally place theory by developing and operationalizing the concept of place-making.
In conclusions, GLOBESCAPE was able to promote novel ways of deliberative decision-making and governance, ultimately supporting humans to intentionally transform landscapes.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

Main achievements included, first, the conceptualization and operationalization of place-making to actively co-shape urban landscapes. This encompassed the development of a robust framework defining place-making, which built on a thorough literature review (Switalski and Grêt-Regamey, 2021), the demonstration of the validity of the framework using a large-scale panel survey (Switalski and Grêt-Regamey, 2023), and the use of the framework to measure place (Switalski et al., 2023b; Switalski and Grêt-Regamey, 2023c) and predict place (Switalski et al., 2023a).

Switalski, M., and A. Grêt-Regamey, 2021. Operationalising place for land system science, Sustainability Science, 16, 1-11.
Switalski, M., and A. Grêt-Regamey, 2023. Integrating place into agent-based modeling for supporting urban transformation. In preparation.
Switalski, Galleguillos-Torres, M., and A. Grêt-Regamey, 2023a. The 3P’s of place-making: Measuring place-making through the latent components of person, procedures and place, Landscape and Urban Planning, 238, 104817
Switalski, M., van Strien, M., and A. Grêt-Regamey, 2023b. Measuring place rather than space: integrating subjective values within urban-rural landscapes using big data and machine learning, Ambio, revisions submitted.
Switalski, M., and A. Grêt-Regamey, 2023c. La fabrique de lieux: un moyen de maîtriser les différences dans les interactions entre personnes et lieux. In Cattacin et al., 2023. Penser et planifier la ville des differences, Serie Chôra, Seismo press.

Secondly, we were able to measure how urban homogeneization leads to a loss of emotions (Grêt-Regamey and Galleguillos-Torres, 2022). In particular, we demonstrated how cognitive evaluations overrule emotions in residential choices (Galleguillos-Torres and Grêt-Regamey, 2023) and in place attachment to urban parks (Bazrafhsan et al., 2023). This pattern was also revealed in the individual mobility patterns of urban dwellers during the pandemic (Galleguillos-Torres et al., 2022), and was used to develop a tranquility map to guide people in search of locations for restoration (Leeb et al., 2021).

Grêt-Regamey, A. and Galleguillos-Torres, M. 2022. Global urban homogenization and the loss of emotions, Scientific Report 12(1):22515.
Galleguillos-Torres, M., Brouillet, C., Molooy, J., Axhausen, K-, Zani, D., Van Strien, M., and A. Grêt-Regamey, 2022. Do we have enough recreational spaces during pandemics? An answer based on the analysis of individual mobility patterns in Switzerland, Landscape and Urban Planning, 221, 104373.
Galleguillos-Torres, A., and Grêt-Regamey, A., 2023. What type of neighbourhood do people prefer? How emotions overrule the cognitive evaluation, Cities, in press.
Bazrafshan, M., Spielhofer, R., Wissen Hayek, U., Kienast, F., Grêt-Regamey, A. 2023. Greater place attachment to urban parks enhances relaxation: Examining affective and cognitive responses of locals and bi-cultural migrants to virtual park visits. Landscape and Urban Planning, 232, 104650.
Leeb, Ch., van Strien, M., Rodewald, R., Grêt-Regamey, A. 2021. Eine "Tranquillity-Map" für das Schweizer Mittelland. https://doi.org/10.3929/ethz-b-000501807.

Thirdly, the understanding of place-making was integrated into a serious-game to activate people to co-shape the peri-urban landscape (Schuur et al., 2023b), and allowed to identify levers of urban neighborhood transformation (Schuur et al., 2023a). We observed that a 3D representation of the serious game was essential to negotiate changes in the urban form and functions, thus key to support intentional changes of the landscape (Fischer et al., 2020). In particular, the 3D point clouds averred to be highly useful for allowing a direct manipulation by the planners (Urech et al., 2020) and developing urban development scenarios triggering discussions around the aesthetics of the places (Schalbetter et al., 2023).

Urech, P.R.W. Dissegna, M.A. Girot, C., and A. Grêt-Regamey, 2020. Point cloud modeling as a bridge between landscape design and planning. Landscape and Urban Planning, 203, 103903
Fischer, J., Wissen Hayek, U., Galleguillos-Torres, M., Weibel, B., and Grêt-Regamey, 2020. Investigating Effects of Animated 3D Point Cloud Simulations on Emotional Response. Journal of Digital Landscape Architecture 5.
Schalbetter, L., Salliou, N., Sonderegger, R., and A. Grêt-Regamey, 2023. From board games to immersive urban imaginaries: Visualization fidelity's impact on stimulating discussions on urban transformation. Computer, Environment and Urban Systems.

Finally, by analyzing a set of international exemplars, we were able to demonstrate the needs for coupling passive sensing technologies with active sensing to support urban transformation (Grêt-Regamey et al., 2021)
Grêt-Regamey, A., Switalski, M., Fagerhom, N., Korpilo, S., Juhola, S., Kyttä, Käyhkö, N., McPhearson, T., Nollert, M., Rinne, T., Soininen, N., Toivonen, T., Räsänen, Willberg, E., Raymond, C.M. 2021. Harnessing sensing systems towards urban sustainability transformation. Nature Urban Sustainability, 1, 40.

We also organized 5 workshops, presented at 10 conferences, and published 14 publications with many of them in high-impact journals.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

(1) The empirical results of the project, which made it to Nature, demonstrated the break-through nature of he suggested approach linking cognitive-psychological methods to understand place and ultimately place-making.

(2) The development of the novel sensing tools using 3D point clouds and serious games allowed to engage in an interesting international exchange with highly recognized colleagues in urban transformation on the use of such approach in supporting the needed transformative change within urban planning. The exchange allowed to obtain funds for a new large EU project with businesses and network partners: https://transformative-cities.eu/.

(3) The project allowed to contribute to the long-standing theory of place attachment and expand on the transformative aspects of place-making, which is essential to trigger actions for designing future cities.

(4) Finally, the application of the cognitive-psychological approach in a migratory context allowed not only to find out that place attachment can start to form in bi-cultural migrants in their host country, which is essential for integrating people with various cultural background in cities, but also allowed to obtain funding for a Swiss National Foundation Synergia project on “Cities of differences”.

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