UDI5605 · Urban spatial reasoning

Overview

Urban spatial reasoning equips you with essential geospatial tools to address key aspects of future urban life as it is experienced across neighbourhood, town, city, and regional scales. The unit is designed to prepare you to analyse and influence urban environments through data-driven insights and practical applications, addressing challenges at multiple spatial scales. Through it you will explore how social, economic, demographic, and environmental aspects of life interact with urban form, physical buildings, and infrastructure. The unit is structured around two complementary themes. The first focuses on geospatial software, covering data collection, management, analysis, and visualisation using relevant GIS platforms. You will also explore emerging technologies such as Artificial Intelligence (AI), Augmented Reality (AR), and Virtual Reality (VR) and their potential in urban design. Additionally, you will integrate field data to enrich your spatial analysis, grounding your digital work in real-world contexts. The second theme examines theoretical principles of urbanisation across scales, including central place theory, economic overspilling, shadow effects, carbon emissions, sprawl, in-situ urbanisation, polarisation, segregation, poverty, economic circularity, and net-zero development. By connecting these principles to practical geospatial tools, you will gain a comprehensive understanding of how these dynamics shape urban environments and inform sustainable design decisions.

Offerings

Assessment

The Handbook does not list a final examination among the assessment items. That is not a guarantee there is none.

100% in-semester assessment

Assessment details may change. Please refer to the assessment information in Moodle closer to the start of the teaching period.

Requisites

The Handbook lists no prerequisite, corequisite or prohibition for this unit.

Learning outcomes

1. Demonstrate proficiency in using GIS platforms and related geospatial software to collect, manage, analyse, and visualise spatial data relevant to urban design and planning;
2. Understand and apply emerging technologies such as AI, AR, and VR in the context of urban spatial reasoning and design, incorporating these tools to enhance spatial analysis and visualisation;
3. Critically evaluate the spatial and demographic structures of urban areas using theoretical principles such as central place theory, economic overspilling, carbon emissions, urban sprawl, and in-situ urbanisation
4. Integrate field data with geospatial analysis to provide contextually grounded insights into the physical, social, and environmental dynamics of neighbourhoods, cities, and regions;
5. Use geospatial data to develop strategies for addressing urban challenges such as inequality, segregation, poverty, and environmental sustainability, focusing on the interaction between social, economic, and environmental factors with urban form and infrastructure;
6. Synthesise geospatial and theoretical knowledge to propose sustainable, data-driven design solutions that respond to the future needs of urban life, including achieving net-zero development goals.

Workload

12 hours per week including 3 contact hours. The remaining 9 hours are to be used for self and group learning activities.

Student experience, not official rules. Nothing here changes what the Handbook says.