mpirical research and urban design / Description and analysis of urban changes (Introduction)

For the overall approach of the project 'Social Impact of Urban Planning and  for the Sustainable Development', there was at first the need to clarify the fields of expertise of exploration in conceptual terms and by relating with their contents. These fields are  urban design, urban sustainable development, the social impact of city space changes  and urban interventions in the city of Athens. Also, for the theoretical construction of the empirical exploration presented later in the book 'Empirical exploration for the social view of urban design interventions', a number of issues were revealed as meaningfull for research work processes. First issue is that  of reading reality of urban space is based on a consideration vision through which the urban phenomena to be read can be identified. In the case of reading the urban space with an interdisciplinary vision, a second issue is raised regarding the development of the methodologies combining scientific methods, technics  and tools provided from different disciplines in order to analyze the data of this reading. A third issue is to consider the procedures of urban design and of the producing  of scientific and political discourse sustaining these procedures taking into account the integration of scientific and interdisciplinary data and research results in them. Finally, the fourth issue is the evaluation of the effects of urban planning and design on sustainable development of modern cities, by developing methods and  techniques in order to identify and monitoring the impact of urban interventions by combining social and spatial data. This introductory chapter outlines  the issue of the approach of the overall function of an urban space in the framework of planning and urban design, also provides general remarks as regards the interventions and procedures of urban design, and concludes with a theoretical review of the use of several research methods for describing and analyzing the changes of the city's space.