M. Akay
info
Please Note
<p>This page displays the records of the person named above and is not linked to a unique person identifier. This record may need to be merged to a profile.</p>
3 records found
1
Urban design is increasingly shifting from top-down planning approaches towards hybrid systems that combine strategic large-scale interventions with locally driven, participatory processes. Within this transition, tactical urbanism has emerged as a method for testing innovative urban solutions through temporary transformations of public space. However, limited understanding remains regarding how physical design elements influence the performance and applicability of such interventions. This thesis addresses this gap by developing a toolkit to support the planning of tactical urban interventions, with a specific focus on school environments, including school streets and schoolyards.
The developed toolkit consists of two complementary components. The first component, the Abacus, is an interactive material-selection tool that catalogues commonly used urban design materials, semi-processed materials, and temporary furniture elements based on relevant performance properties. The tool enables users to select appropriate materials according to specific design requirements and allows further adaptation to different contexts. The second component is a co-design framework aimed at engaging primary school children in the design process through two workshop-based activities: Treasure Mapping and Imagine. These activities enable children to express current experiences and envision future uses of their school environment through drawings, physical cards, and storytelling.
The toolkit was validated through a simulated design process at the International School Delft, involving two workshop iterations with 44 primary school children. The outcomes were analysed through clustering of emerging themes and translated into design scenarios using a variation of the Scenario-Based Design approach. Subsequently, the Abacus was applied to transform these scenarios into conceptual design solutions based on required material properties. The results demonstrate the potential of combining participatory methods with structured material-selection tools to support tactical urban design processes. Although further validation with experts and physical testing of materials are required, the toolkit provides a flexible foundation for future applications beyond the school context. ...
The developed toolkit consists of two complementary components. The first component, the Abacus, is an interactive material-selection tool that catalogues commonly used urban design materials, semi-processed materials, and temporary furniture elements based on relevant performance properties. The tool enables users to select appropriate materials according to specific design requirements and allows further adaptation to different contexts. The second component is a co-design framework aimed at engaging primary school children in the design process through two workshop-based activities: Treasure Mapping and Imagine. These activities enable children to express current experiences and envision future uses of their school environment through drawings, physical cards, and storytelling.
The toolkit was validated through a simulated design process at the International School Delft, involving two workshop iterations with 44 primary school children. The outcomes were analysed through clustering of emerging themes and translated into design scenarios using a variation of the Scenario-Based Design approach. Subsequently, the Abacus was applied to transform these scenarios into conceptual design solutions based on required material properties. The results demonstrate the potential of combining participatory methods with structured material-selection tools to support tactical urban design processes. Although further validation with experts and physical testing of materials are required, the toolkit provides a flexible foundation for future applications beyond the school context. ...
Urban design is increasingly shifting from top-down planning approaches towards hybrid systems that combine strategic large-scale interventions with locally driven, participatory processes. Within this transition, tactical urbanism has emerged as a method for testing innovative urban solutions through temporary transformations of public space. However, limited understanding remains regarding how physical design elements influence the performance and applicability of such interventions. This thesis addresses this gap by developing a toolkit to support the planning of tactical urban interventions, with a specific focus on school environments, including school streets and schoolyards.
The developed toolkit consists of two complementary components. The first component, the Abacus, is an interactive material-selection tool that catalogues commonly used urban design materials, semi-processed materials, and temporary furniture elements based on relevant performance properties. The tool enables users to select appropriate materials according to specific design requirements and allows further adaptation to different contexts. The second component is a co-design framework aimed at engaging primary school children in the design process through two workshop-based activities: Treasure Mapping and Imagine. These activities enable children to express current experiences and envision future uses of their school environment through drawings, physical cards, and storytelling.
The toolkit was validated through a simulated design process at the International School Delft, involving two workshop iterations with 44 primary school children. The outcomes were analysed through clustering of emerging themes and translated into design scenarios using a variation of the Scenario-Based Design approach. Subsequently, the Abacus was applied to transform these scenarios into conceptual design solutions based on required material properties. The results demonstrate the potential of combining participatory methods with structured material-selection tools to support tactical urban design processes. Although further validation with experts and physical testing of materials are required, the toolkit provides a flexible foundation for future applications beyond the school context.
The developed toolkit consists of two complementary components. The first component, the Abacus, is an interactive material-selection tool that catalogues commonly used urban design materials, semi-processed materials, and temporary furniture elements based on relevant performance properties. The tool enables users to select appropriate materials according to specific design requirements and allows further adaptation to different contexts. The second component is a co-design framework aimed at engaging primary school children in the design process through two workshop-based activities: Treasure Mapping and Imagine. These activities enable children to express current experiences and envision future uses of their school environment through drawings, physical cards, and storytelling.
The toolkit was validated through a simulated design process at the International School Delft, involving two workshop iterations with 44 primary school children. The outcomes were analysed through clustering of emerging themes and translated into design scenarios using a variation of the Scenario-Based Design approach. Subsequently, the Abacus was applied to transform these scenarios into conceptual design solutions based on required material properties. The results demonstrate the potential of combining participatory methods with structured material-selection tools to support tactical urban design processes. Although further validation with experts and physical testing of materials are required, the toolkit provides a flexible foundation for future applications beyond the school context.
Urban Heat Islands (UHIs) represent socially contextualised experiences shaped by factors such as housing conditions, daily activity patterns, and access to cooling infrastructure. Despite this complexity, heat vulnerability is predominantly assessed through quantitative, top-down frameworks that privilege demographic proxies over lived experience. This research challenges such approaches by ethnographically grounding the understanding of heat vulnerability in the perspectives of residents themselves, documenting how urban heat shapes the everyday realities of diverse urban residents and how their personal contexts determine how they are affected.
Conducted in Delft, the Netherlands, this mixed-method study frames heat through three analytical perspectives: personal heat experience, perception of heat impacts, and expectations of future thermal conditions. Drawing on fifteen semi-structured ethnographic interviews and spatial analysis across eight neighbourhood typologies, the findings suggest that residents live within a personal contextual bubble of heat experience. Personal experience dominates residents' narratives of heat vulnerability, with limited recognition of effects beyond immediate bodily sensation. A structural disconnect emerges between participants' awareness of climate change at a global scale and their capacity to recognise its consequences within their own daily life.
The analysis identifies three interrelated dimensions through which residents engage with heat vulnerability: lived experience shapes awareness of heat effects, relational perception informs environmental awareness, and socio-cultural contexts frame expectations of thermal comfort. Together, these reconceptualise vulnerability as contextually determined rather than demographically fixed. Whilst existing literature privileges demographic characteristics as the primary axis of heat-related inequality, this analysis surfaces six clusters of relational factors shaping heat vulnerability: socio-economic position, bodily capacity, spatial situatedness, social state, conditions of daily activity, and socio-cultural heat sentiment. These are operationalised in the Heat Vulnerability Model, a framework of thirty indicators developed to assess vulnerability at the level of the individual resident.
This research challenges demographic determinism in heat vulnerability research, demonstrating how a qualitatively-led, emic approach reveals the situated, context-dependent nature of thermal comfort, and how design can translate that understanding into a personally meaningful and human-scale awareness platform. The Heat Vulnerability Model and the design criteria derived from the platform analysis together informed the development of Heat City, a digital platform prototype that guides residents of Delft through an interactive exploration of urban heat and their personal heat vulnerability, situated within the familiar visual context of their own neighbourhood. Validated through eight structured user tests, the prototype demonstrates that an incremental, narrative-driven translation of climate data, grounded in the resident's own spatial and personal context, is an effective means of making urban heat legible and personally relevant to non-expert audiences. The project argues that design thinking, grounded in ethnographic insight, is a particularly capable instrument for bridging the distance between scientific knowledge and public awareness of urban heat.
...
Conducted in Delft, the Netherlands, this mixed-method study frames heat through three analytical perspectives: personal heat experience, perception of heat impacts, and expectations of future thermal conditions. Drawing on fifteen semi-structured ethnographic interviews and spatial analysis across eight neighbourhood typologies, the findings suggest that residents live within a personal contextual bubble of heat experience. Personal experience dominates residents' narratives of heat vulnerability, with limited recognition of effects beyond immediate bodily sensation. A structural disconnect emerges between participants' awareness of climate change at a global scale and their capacity to recognise its consequences within their own daily life.
The analysis identifies three interrelated dimensions through which residents engage with heat vulnerability: lived experience shapes awareness of heat effects, relational perception informs environmental awareness, and socio-cultural contexts frame expectations of thermal comfort. Together, these reconceptualise vulnerability as contextually determined rather than demographically fixed. Whilst existing literature privileges demographic characteristics as the primary axis of heat-related inequality, this analysis surfaces six clusters of relational factors shaping heat vulnerability: socio-economic position, bodily capacity, spatial situatedness, social state, conditions of daily activity, and socio-cultural heat sentiment. These are operationalised in the Heat Vulnerability Model, a framework of thirty indicators developed to assess vulnerability at the level of the individual resident.
This research challenges demographic determinism in heat vulnerability research, demonstrating how a qualitatively-led, emic approach reveals the situated, context-dependent nature of thermal comfort, and how design can translate that understanding into a personally meaningful and human-scale awareness platform. The Heat Vulnerability Model and the design criteria derived from the platform analysis together informed the development of Heat City, a digital platform prototype that guides residents of Delft through an interactive exploration of urban heat and their personal heat vulnerability, situated within the familiar visual context of their own neighbourhood. Validated through eight structured user tests, the prototype demonstrates that an incremental, narrative-driven translation of climate data, grounded in the resident's own spatial and personal context, is an effective means of making urban heat legible and personally relevant to non-expert audiences. The project argues that design thinking, grounded in ethnographic insight, is a particularly capable instrument for bridging the distance between scientific knowledge and public awareness of urban heat.
...
Urban Heat Islands (UHIs) represent socially contextualised experiences shaped by factors such as housing conditions, daily activity patterns, and access to cooling infrastructure. Despite this complexity, heat vulnerability is predominantly assessed through quantitative, top-down frameworks that privilege demographic proxies over lived experience. This research challenges such approaches by ethnographically grounding the understanding of heat vulnerability in the perspectives of residents themselves, documenting how urban heat shapes the everyday realities of diverse urban residents and how their personal contexts determine how they are affected.
Conducted in Delft, the Netherlands, this mixed-method study frames heat through three analytical perspectives: personal heat experience, perception of heat impacts, and expectations of future thermal conditions. Drawing on fifteen semi-structured ethnographic interviews and spatial analysis across eight neighbourhood typologies, the findings suggest that residents live within a personal contextual bubble of heat experience. Personal experience dominates residents' narratives of heat vulnerability, with limited recognition of effects beyond immediate bodily sensation. A structural disconnect emerges between participants' awareness of climate change at a global scale and their capacity to recognise its consequences within their own daily life.
The analysis identifies three interrelated dimensions through which residents engage with heat vulnerability: lived experience shapes awareness of heat effects, relational perception informs environmental awareness, and socio-cultural contexts frame expectations of thermal comfort. Together, these reconceptualise vulnerability as contextually determined rather than demographically fixed. Whilst existing literature privileges demographic characteristics as the primary axis of heat-related inequality, this analysis surfaces six clusters of relational factors shaping heat vulnerability: socio-economic position, bodily capacity, spatial situatedness, social state, conditions of daily activity, and socio-cultural heat sentiment. These are operationalised in the Heat Vulnerability Model, a framework of thirty indicators developed to assess vulnerability at the level of the individual resident.
This research challenges demographic determinism in heat vulnerability research, demonstrating how a qualitatively-led, emic approach reveals the situated, context-dependent nature of thermal comfort, and how design can translate that understanding into a personally meaningful and human-scale awareness platform. The Heat Vulnerability Model and the design criteria derived from the platform analysis together informed the development of Heat City, a digital platform prototype that guides residents of Delft through an interactive exploration of urban heat and their personal heat vulnerability, situated within the familiar visual context of their own neighbourhood. Validated through eight structured user tests, the prototype demonstrates that an incremental, narrative-driven translation of climate data, grounded in the resident's own spatial and personal context, is an effective means of making urban heat legible and personally relevant to non-expert audiences. The project argues that design thinking, grounded in ethnographic insight, is a particularly capable instrument for bridging the distance between scientific knowledge and public awareness of urban heat.
Conducted in Delft, the Netherlands, this mixed-method study frames heat through three analytical perspectives: personal heat experience, perception of heat impacts, and expectations of future thermal conditions. Drawing on fifteen semi-structured ethnographic interviews and spatial analysis across eight neighbourhood typologies, the findings suggest that residents live within a personal contextual bubble of heat experience. Personal experience dominates residents' narratives of heat vulnerability, with limited recognition of effects beyond immediate bodily sensation. A structural disconnect emerges between participants' awareness of climate change at a global scale and their capacity to recognise its consequences within their own daily life.
The analysis identifies three interrelated dimensions through which residents engage with heat vulnerability: lived experience shapes awareness of heat effects, relational perception informs environmental awareness, and socio-cultural contexts frame expectations of thermal comfort. Together, these reconceptualise vulnerability as contextually determined rather than demographically fixed. Whilst existing literature privileges demographic characteristics as the primary axis of heat-related inequality, this analysis surfaces six clusters of relational factors shaping heat vulnerability: socio-economic position, bodily capacity, spatial situatedness, social state, conditions of daily activity, and socio-cultural heat sentiment. These are operationalised in the Heat Vulnerability Model, a framework of thirty indicators developed to assess vulnerability at the level of the individual resident.
This research challenges demographic determinism in heat vulnerability research, demonstrating how a qualitatively-led, emic approach reveals the situated, context-dependent nature of thermal comfort, and how design can translate that understanding into a personally meaningful and human-scale awareness platform. The Heat Vulnerability Model and the design criteria derived from the platform analysis together informed the development of Heat City, a digital platform prototype that guides residents of Delft through an interactive exploration of urban heat and their personal heat vulnerability, situated within the familiar visual context of their own neighbourhood. Validated through eight structured user tests, the prototype demonstrates that an incremental, narrative-driven translation of climate data, grounded in the resident's own spatial and personal context, is an effective means of making urban heat legible and personally relevant to non-expert audiences. The project argues that design thinking, grounded in ethnographic insight, is a particularly capable instrument for bridging the distance between scientific knowledge and public awareness of urban heat.
Designing an AI-Supported Framework to Interpret Social Media Narratives on Urban Heat
A Human–AI Collaborative Workflow for Bridging Big and Thick Data
This thesis develops the Narrative-Centered Framework (NCF) and an AI-supported workflow to map meaning about urban heat from fragmented social-media posts. The workflow combines interpretable topic modelling, human oversight, and Generative AI–assisted narrative synthesis to organize short and uneven expressions into coherent themes. Applied to online discussions of urban heat, the approach showed that AI can help process large datasets at scale, while human review is essential for preserving contextual nuance and avoiding misinterpretation. The findings illustrate how this combination can reveal concerns, tensions, and lived experiences that are not visible in physical heat metrics alone. While the study is limited by its single-platform dataset and modelling constraints, it provides a transparent and adaptable starting point for interpreting public expressions of urban heat and may be extended to other domains.
...
This thesis develops the Narrative-Centered Framework (NCF) and an AI-supported workflow to map meaning about urban heat from fragmented social-media posts. The workflow combines interpretable topic modelling, human oversight, and Generative AI–assisted narrative synthesis to organize short and uneven expressions into coherent themes. Applied to online discussions of urban heat, the approach showed that AI can help process large datasets at scale, while human review is essential for preserving contextual nuance and avoiding misinterpretation. The findings illustrate how this combination can reveal concerns, tensions, and lived experiences that are not visible in physical heat metrics alone. While the study is limited by its single-platform dataset and modelling constraints, it provides a transparent and adaptable starting point for interpreting public expressions of urban heat and may be extended to other domains.