Proposals for the use and the development of assessment procedures of the social impact of urban design interventions

This chapter presents one of the works of the research project entitled 'Social Impact of Urban Design for the Sustainable Development of Cities'. On the basis of methodological approaches, of the elaboration of tools and of project research results, it is clearly inferred the need for the development of practices and techniques to identify and monitoring changes in the city's space, by collecting and analyzing combined social and spatial data. The aim of this research work is to contribute in the discussion of the social view of urban design interventions in the modern city, with the city of Athens taken as research example, through the exploitation of the results of the empirical exploration of the project . Thus,  subject matter of the work is to formulate proposals for the development of a framework / process for assessing the social impact of urban design interventions. The proposals concern: (a) the promotion of the research dimension of the general framework of urban design; (b) the promotion of the ecological and cultural dimension of urban development through urban design procedures; (c) the reinforcement of the urban design process through the institutionalization of the study of social impacts for the urban design interventions, the enrichment of the architectural competition process, as well as the research procedure of the necessity and prospects of urban interventions through public consultation, and (d) the establishment of procedures for monitoring of urban changes that aim to identify and assess the social impact of urban design interventions.