urban planning

Simone Tappert

Researcher Name: 
Simone Tappert
Affiliation/s: 

University of Applied Sciences Northwestern Switzerland, School of Social Work, Institute for Social Planning, Organisational Change and Urban Development

Country/ies: 
Switzerland, Germany
Contact Email: 
Description of Research in Relation to Placemaking : 

My research revolves around socially sustainable urban development, neighbourhoods as spaces of belonging, collaborative place-making, urban governance and the emergence of hybrid spaces. 

Within my position as a researcher at the University of Applied Sciences Northwestern Switzerland, I currently investigate place-making as a people-based instrument in planning and designing urban environments at the local scale. Conceptualising urban development processes as a highly conflicting political arena, I am particularly interested in how new forms of communication, negotiation and intervention emerge through digitalisation, how it contests power relations in urban development projects and what new forms of urban governance are created.

In my PhD project, I analyse meanings of neighbourhood and the everyday production of locality and belonging in a socially mixed housing area in Kreuzberg, Berlin, along the theoretical nexus of practices-space-materiality.  Within this project, I conceptualize place-making as an embodied everyday practice producing notions of belonging and dis-belonging. My ethnographic research approach includes walking methodology and mapping interviews.  

 

Interest in Contribution Field/Context: 
  • exchange of information and knowledge related to contemporary ways of multi-actor planning and design of urban space and the exploration of digital tools in place-making processes
  • comparative analyses and evaluation of digital tools in urban development projects 
  • methodological discussion and the development of suitable research strategies for research on digital tools and hybrid space
  • cooperation in publications (preparing, writing, editing, reviewing)
  • participation in discussions, seminars, meetings, conferences
  • organising STSM at the University of Applied Sciences Northwestern Switzerland
Case Studies Conducted / Participated In: 

Case Study 1. Placemaking through Idealizations and the role of local knowledge and practices in the age of digitalization, Swiss National Science Foundation, 03/2021 – 02/2023

Case Study 2. Everyday Urban Practices of Belonging, Embodiment and Doing Neighbourhood in a socially-mixed housing area in Kreuzberg, Berlin, PhD project, LMU Munich, 10/2017 - ongoing 

External Stakeholders Engaged With: 

Municipalities and local administrations, community centres, municipal housing associations, neighbourhood associations and initiatives

Modes of Investigation: 

Qualitative research, ethnography, mapping methodology, walking methodology