- Title
- Urban vague and the wandererer
- Creator
- Tucker, Chris
- Relation
- University of Newcastle Research Higher Degree Thesis
- Resource Type
- thesis
- Date
- 2017
- Description
- Research Doctorate - Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
- Description
- Cities provide a landscape of public space. A landscape mediated by its proximity to private space, and collected by the street through its occupation. Of these spaces, this thesis is concerned with the residual and generic spaces of the pedestrian urban street that have become vague. These spaces of urban vague, tightly held against the surface of the pedestrian street, occupy urban space that might be put to better use. They offer little to the public condition, while their desirable location suggests that as cities become more compact, their sites should be interrogated to establish more social, public and urban roles. Urban vague exists within the maps of city planning as white space, but its potential for occupation can only be evaluated through its direct experience in time and space - wandering. To explore the theoretical construction of urban vague in relation to the culture of city planning, the thesis utilises the unique perspective of the wanderer as a research methodology. Reading and imagining the street through the event of its occupation, the wanderer prioritises this direct experience as a critical form of knowledge. Other knowledge and meaning about the same place, made available through historical documents, maps and diagrams, is of a second order. As a research methodology, the wanderer connects the architectural experience of the street with the city as project, revealing the site of urban vague. Where the commercialisation of the public street is broadly sanctioned by the linearly structured processes and hyper-regulation of city planning, urban vague has become a significant emergent condition of the contemporary street. This thesis argues that these city planning processes have become detached from the direct experience of the pedestrian, indulging urban vague to exist with a similarly detached view of the pedestrian street . Where the wanderer interrogates the architectural and spatial construct of the pedestrian street through its direct experience, this knowledge might inform city planning processes with methods for occupying urban vague, achieving a more compact city. The findings of this research also show that urban vague exists as a network of disconnected sites throughout the city, their subsequent occupation having the potential to reclaim and diversify the public, cultural and social landscape of the city.
- Subject
- urban vague; city planning; architecture and street; parlour space; generic street space
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/1351744
- Identifier
- uon:30767
- Rights
- Copyright 2017 Chris Tucker
- Language
- eng
- Full Text
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