Experiencing urbanity in the making - Embracing uncertainty in design for social diversity and rich public realm

This thesis looks at urbanity, a quality reflecting cities' ability to attract diverse people and translate a concentration of differences into active public life, creating possibilities for social interaction and contributing to the richness of urban experiences. Social encounters in public spaces have been proven to benefit human wellbeing, promote longevity, improve safety and create positive economic effects. While often linked exclusively to city centres, urbanity is crucial for peripheries of cities which frequently lack qualities that attract a diverse pool of people and businesses, resulting in sterile or homogenised environments. In the context of polycentric development, one of the strategic goals of Finland's capital region, urbanity could support the development of multiple active centres in a decentralised suburban periphery, enhancing economic vitality and living conditions in the region. Despite its significance and many benefits, the concept of urbanity is understudied and is often reduced to vague terms like vibrancy or equated with dense and compact form. This dissertation challenges the idea that public life is a consequence of good design or policies alone and suggests shifting the focus from the properties of the environment to the process of its production to recognise and cultivate the unique potential of the urban periphery to create urbanity in alternative forms. The research uses a case study of Otaniemi, a suburban area in the capital region of Finland which is evolving into a research and innovation hub, to investigate the emergent forms of urbanity. The case study, conducted over four years, employs ethnographic methods and a framework based on Henri Lefebvre's production of space. The results of the study surfaced several conflicts and tensions which threatened to flatten emerging differences, such as the contradiction between supporting student guilds with private rooms and the need for inclusive spaces for social encounters, the densification of the centre and the emergence of backstage urbanity on the periphery, or the renovation projects for commercial use which produce sterile environments and lose their role as places for ad-hoc activities and interactions. The implications of the study are two-fold. First, it clarifies the definition of urbanity as a place where differences evolve and engage in productive exchange, which can be instrumental in guiding suburban growth and supporting regional economic development. Second, this research has brought together an analytical framework based on Lefebvre's production of space and several ethnographic methods, which could be added to the toolbox of planners, architects or participatory designers who want to engage with the messy process of tracing urbanity in the making and embrace the uncertainty of designing for public life.