Dr Michael Martin

My research is international in focus and sits within the broad scope of urban design, urban studies and planning. To date, I have focused on inequalities resulting from urban crises in neoliberalised contexts, the inclusion and perspectives of marginalised stakeholders in urban regeneration programmes and ‘co-creative’ design processes, as well as the processes by which urban design operates and places are shaped.

Urban Crises, Regeneration and Temporary Use

My research in this area involves developing and applying different conceptual, methodological and analytical frameworks to understand contemporary urban regeneration and development processes and their impacts on land use pre/post the 2007-08 financial crisis – specifically, the emergence of temporary use as a focal response to weakened land and property markets in western cities after the recession.

It includes multi-scalar studies on: the role of temporary land use in urban regeneration; understanding the structural and spatial characteristics of temporary urban development in/between cities and utilising mixed methods to put forward statistical and geospatial analyses on temporary use.

Most recently, I have explored the emergence of temporary uses in response to the COVID-19 crisis, analysing how short-term experimental solutions can bolster urban resilience as well as how the current pandemic has revealed the presence of sophisticated and entrenched urban inequalities internationally.

Child-friendly Cities – Promoting Playful Places

This timely area of research responds to the recent reconceptualisation of children as active agents rather than passive objects in the design of the built environment and the burgeoning literature on participatory design involving adolescents and children in the ‘co-creation’ of cities.

My work in this area includes explorations of the recent fusion of knowledge from embodied cognitive science with the disciplines of architecture and design to discuss how designer-child collaboration can potentially influence placemaking and affordances for play in cities.

Recently, I have been engaged in collaborations with Innovation Centre Denmark (Shanghai) and Tongji University to explore urban childhoods and play in dense urban environments.

Applied Urban Design: Placeshaping Processes and Practices

Informed by urban design pedagogy and produced via a research by design framework, this area involves the study of the process by which urban design operates and places are shaped. It focuses on how context is utilised within these dynamics and puts forward ‘contextually responsive design’ as an alternative context-led design framework for practice/education.

My research explores placeshaping processes and practices internationally between the UK and Denmark. It attempts to address conceptual and methodological gaps in existing literature by developing an internationally tested framework on context-led placeshaping (processes, practices and governance) to inform more responsive urban design solutions, design education and practice.

I welcome applications for PhD research on topics related to any of my main research interests.