ISTP News

Often research can be difficult to understand or inaccessible. The Urban Research Incubator’s new interactive 3D website allows a broad audience to learn about segregation in cities and how infrastructure can affect sociospatial mobility with visual renderings.

The residents of the PJS Informal Settlement in Cape Town have faced safety challenges at night as they did not have enough light from high-mast lights. ISTP researchers Yael and Stephanie changed this together with many locals and partners. By installing solar public lights, people in the settlement felt safer and could fulfil basic needs at night. 

How does urban design become consciously mobilized as a technology of security politics, and how does a reflexive perspective on this use offers productive research avenues? Focusing on the two case studies of Bogotá and Zürich, former ISTP researcher Jonas Hagmann and ISTP PhD candidate David Kostenwein provide new insights into these topics.

Taking Bogotá with its 3,500 gated communities as his case study, ISTP PhD Candidate David Kostenwein created a novel typology focusing on the gated community’s spatial dimension. He portrays it as an integral part of the urban realm as opposed to an isolated island.

ISTP PhD Candidate Michael Walczak assessed Switzerland's spatial policy which rejects the use of new land in favour of promoting densification. Using the agglomeration of Lausanne as a case study, he applied an automated spatial policy model to assess building reserves that are still available within the current building regulatory framework.

An insightful study with the aim of evaluating the application of Virtual Environments in lighting planning and policy-making by ISTP researchers from the Urban Research Incubator David Kretzer & Michael Walczak was recently published in the Athens Journal of Architecture. Watch the latest video of our "ISTP4Public" series and gain deep insights into their research and main findings.

With the aim to evaluate the application of virtual environments (VEs) in lighting planning and policy making, ISTP PhD Students Michael Walczak and David Kretzer recently published in the Athens Journal of Architecture. They conclude that the dynamic VE technology appears to be a promising decision-making tool for illustrating potential planning and design shortcomings to policy stakeholders.

The "Social aspects of public lighting" lecture will take place online on Monday, October 12, 2020, at 14.30.

The night-time condition in informal settlements is often characterised by a lack of light on pedestrian path networks. A common technological approach in some countries to address these needs is to provide high-mast luminaires. In his paper, ISTP researcher David M. Kretzer shows that the application of high-mast luminaires has several limitations, as it fails to create adequate consistent lighting conditions in common forms of informal settlements.

Architects and urban designers are currently developing new concepts and tools to comply with the participatory design approach emerging. Urban Research Incubator researchers Michael Walczak & David M. Kretzer are investigating innovative lighting approaches and their performance in Bogotá, co-created with informal settlement dwellers and tested with Colombian policy-makers. Their work is hosted by the Network City and Landscape Newsletter addressing the topic of "Participation".

ISTP PhD Student David Kretzer will give an online lecture on lighting and crime ("Beleuchtung und Kriminalität"), as part of the "10. Straßenbeleuchtungstage" Symposium, on Thursday, 07. May 2020, at 10.15.

A session on Urban Borderlands at the RGS-IBG Annual International Conference 2020 is organized by Dr Deljana Iossifova from the University of Manchester and ISTP PhD student David Kostenwein.

"Between Walls and Fences - Gated Communities in Bogotá and the decline of Public Space" on Monday, 18. November 2019 at 14.45.