A Dialectic Journey from Anthropology to Ethnography to Achieve an Inclusive Design and Planning: Transformation of Land Uses into Dynamic Metabolisms of Functions in City Centers View Digital Media

Workshop Presentation
Sanaz Shobeiri  

This workshop discusses how the city centers in a global context – currently and potentially – fulfill the expectations of users as collective phenomena, separate groups, and individuals. The aim is to elucidate the significance of the sociocultural characteristics of each context in forming the interpretations and subsequently the applications of land uses in city centers. While the current land use maps in comprehensive and master plans represent the existing functions, in reality, the buildings and urban spaces in each category (color) of land uses are divergently perceived and used. This would thus necessitate a restructure of design-planning maps incorporating the land uses and sociocultural indicators. To this end, this workshop invites the participants to select and navigate a particular city center in three sequential scopes including: 1) the interesting and disturbing functions from users’ points of views – both architectural and urban spaces – in the selected city center and the reasons of users’ likes and dislikes; 2) the sociocultural features of the existing groups of users and how these characteristics strengthen, alter or diminish the predetermined land uses; and 3) how the neglected commonalities, similarities and differences in various groups can add and remove layers in land uses of city centers. Based on specific findings of the researcher’s postdoctoral comparative project about Tehran and Belfast, the workshop will be started by exemplifying her different-scale case studies. This would thus motivate the audience to simultaneously ponder ‘scale’ and ‘complexity of land use layers’ while exploring their selected city centers.