Urban Depth & Autonomy

Urban Depth & Autonomy

We’re exploring how the spatial, social, temporal and psychological ordering of space shapes people’s capacity to exercise their autonomy in buildings and cities.

Urban Depth & Autonomy is a collaboration between urbanism, social science, architecture and philosophy, aiming to make practical recommendations to those who design and control the use of buildings and cities to improve spatial or organisational practices, to grow users’ capacity to flourish through exercising their autonomy. There is a relationship between the pursuit of autonomy (the capacity of a person to be the author of their own life and freely choose their actions), and the way the built environment is organised and designed. The core team is Jane Clossick (Architecture, London Metropolitan University), Ben Colburn (Philosophy, Glasgow University) and Emily McTernan (Political Science, UCL).

There have been two phases to the Urban Depth & Autonomy project to date. The first phase in 2021 focussed on Defining Urban Depth from the varying perspectives of a range of disciplines. A series of four workshops considered the city at a range of scales and explored how urban depth is organised and designed, how it shapes resilience of economic activities and social life, how it can help or hinder social integration and much more. Global cities are becoming bigger and more diverse, and it is key to elaborate a greater understanding of how we can build better, more inclusive buildings and cities.

The second phase is happening in 2023 and is zooming in to examine specifically the Spaces of Birth and Death. A series of three interdisciplinary workshops explore how the rooms and buildings we occupy in these crucial, deeply human, transitional moments facilitate or prevent contact between people, how such contacts are architecturally and spatially moderated, and by whom. Involving medical practitioners (nurses, doctors, midwives, death/birth doulas, hospice staff), we aim to develop a philosophical apparatus for understanding how key human values (like autonomy, freedom of association, and well-being) are distinctively promoted or hindered by the spaces in which we are born or die. We aim to build a framework for evaluating existing architectural or urban arrangements, and policy tools to help architects and planners make good choices when designing spaces of birth and death.

Read more about Defining Urban Depth

Defining Urban Depth workshop series