What is ‘The Social’?

‘The social’, from a sociological perspective, refers to the practices, beliefs, relationships and institutions that structure collective life. It is therefore about the ways in which people organise themselves in different places to carry on a way of life. It also refers to the particular forms taken by things and materials in specific places and social worlds.

The social is therefore – necessarily – a mass of disparate stuff interrelated in complex and changing ways. Think of all the interconnected things that make up what we call a street or an office, and about the arrangements that allow a street or an office to keep its shape, more or less, over time. Because ‘the social’ is basically a very messy complexity, it is useful to think of it as an ‘assemblage’: we understand a street or an office not through abstract definitions or statistics but by understanding the way things are assembled or put together, and how they hold together (or fall apart) over time.

All this should make it clear that ‘the social’ does not refer to particular places that are, for example, deprived (‘social housing’) or problematic (places with ‘social problems’) or that appear to be ‘communities’ (‘neighbourhoods’ as opposed to commercial centres). All spaces used by people are ‘social’, involving public lighting in the interplay of the many different understandings, actors and interactions that make up a specific public space. Social life can be differentiated by factors such as age and class and ethnicity, as well as many finer distinctions that may be crucial: whether someone is a night worker, dog walker, teenager, homeless or a drug user and so on might be important in terms of how people inhabit the city after dark.

There are three more issues that are important for understanding ‘the social’ in relation to design. Firstly, people often talk about ‘the social’ versus ‘the technical’ or ‘material’. In fact, it is more useful to assume that ‘the social’ does not include only humans and their relationships but also materials, technologies and objects. Social assemblages like streets and offices clearly involve integrated relationships between materials, technologies and social practices and people. This is crucial for lighting design: we do not simply light a social space, or respond to social needs. Rather, our lighting designs are part of constructing assemblages: we make ‘the social’ as much as we respond to it.

Secondly, ‘the social’ is different from ‘the psychological’ or ‘the economic’. Psychology and economics are largely concerned with individuals – both might ask, ‘How do individual people choose or decide?’ and both might add up those individual decisions to identify ‘group behaviour’. Social research assumes that individuals are not the best starting point. Individuals do indeed populate the social world but they do so as members of families, subcultures, communities, cities and nations. If we focus solely on the individual’s choices we can learn only so much about social uses of design. In fact, the things that appear to make us ‘individuals’ are very much shaped by our identity and membership of our particular ‘social’ world. Understanding ‘the social’ means paying attention to the shared social characteristics shaping individuals’ use of things and the shared and located social context of design use.

Thirdly, there are complicated questions about how to connect social knowledge and lighting design, and, above all, questions about what kind or form of social knowledge is most useful for design work. The many different uses of the terms ‘evidence-based design’ and ‘research-informed design’ (as well as the huge literatures on participatory design, design anthropology and studio studies) all hinge on different analyses of what kind of knowledge enters or should enter into design work. The social research in design approach we use in the Configuring Light research programme (based in the Sociology department at LSE) aims to produce site-specific ‘evidence’ or knowledge that helps designers take design decisions based on a clear and research-based social rationale: i.e. good social reasons, based on evidence, for their lighting interventions. We therefore focus on deploying the most rigorous and creative social research methodologies to learn about a specific place or site – how its diverse users understand, use and imagine the past, present and future of this place. The approach also focuses on how to integrate social and design thinking over the course of a project. It is therefore closer to ‘research-based design’ or ‘research-informed design’.

For us as sociologists, ‘research’ or ‘evidence’ means reliable knowledge of a place and its stakeholders. By contrast, much evidence-based design defines ‘evidence’ as the findings of generic research, conducted elsewhere, which can be applied by designers to their site. For example, the impact of light on circadian rhythms or on hospital treatments, it is claimed, can be studied through experiments or surveys, and the results can take the form of general laws or causal links between light and behaviour that designers can then apply locally. While designers clearly should be aware of the latest findings from such research, they equally need to research their site, and they need to understand how these ‘general laws’ are mediated and modified as light operates in different social contexts, on different social groups with very different conditions and requirements. At the same time, we all need a healthy scepticism regarding scientific claims about the invariant effects of lighting on any behaviour; good evidence usually takes the form of a good understanding of the dynamics of the particular social world you have been entrusted to light.

What is Social Research?

Architects, designers and other professionals concerned with urban lighting clearly rely on social knowledge and understandings of the spaces they intervene in. The issue is how secure and rigorous that knowledge is, and how it is integrated into design and planning. To begin with, designers generally start from a spatial analysis of plans and maps: they use their experience and training to make social interpretations of spaces. The assumption, too often, is that just by looking at a plan they can know what paths people are likely to take, or which areas are fragmented or problematic. Some methodologies (for example space syntax) assume that you can (at least initially) infer social patterns from the spatial form or geometry of a space rather than from observation of actual social use. These resulting interpretations of a space may be right or wrong, or right for some stakeholders and not for others. We can know only by engaging with actual users of the space, observing and interviewing them, rather than projecting our own assumptions or those embedded in our methodologies. Moreover, we cannot know how different people interpret the same space – older people might take entirely different paths to teenagers, or dog walkers, or homeless people.

A vivid example highlights this. During a social-research-in-design workshop, held at the Peabody Trust’s Whitecross Estate (see Figures 1.1 to 1.4), a group of designers was asked to develop a lighting design strategy for a part of the site, a row of six-storey mansion blocks at the edge of the estate whose facades faced both an external street and a green space internal to the estate. The group started with a plan of the site, which they assumed could easily be translated into a confident social understanding of the space. They felt it was clear that, because the mansion

Figure 1.1 Whitecross Estate workshop, October 2014, London, Configuring Light Team: view of Whitecross Estate by night

Figure 1.2 Whitecross Estate workshop: conducting social research by interviewing residents

Figure 1.3 Whitecross Estate workshop: lighting mock-up

blocks fronted onto the street, the residents would feel somewhat cut off from the main estate; moreover, the frontage was largely fragmented parking space. The solution would have to be a lighting strategy that emphasised the identity of the blocks and their connection to the estate.

Figure 1.4 Whitecross Estate workshop: a night walk with the residents, prior to the workshop

It took not much more than an hour of interviews to discover that the facade the designers believed to be the front of the buildings was in fact the back as far as the residents were concerned: they used the ‘back’ entrances to access their homes, did not feel cut off from the estate at all, and mainly wanted the lighting to emphasise what was actually their ‘front’ so that passers-by would understand, acknowledge and respect their entrances. This story highlights a simple but very common problem: designers’ professional ways of reading a space tend to draw on interpretations and assumptions that need to be challenged by the actual social practices and understandings of the people they design for.

Secondly, designers are generally supplied with various kinds of social data, often with their initial briefing, such as survey data, footfall counts and crime statistics. This can be useful background but needs to be interpreted and contested rather than accepted as indisputably true. Often this data is best for raising questions that can then be followed up: Can we get a clearer picture of what kinds of people make up a total footfall figure? Why are these people in this place at this time? Can we relate different people’s experience of safety in a space to the actual kind and quantity of incidents in that place?

Both this kind of background data and the socio-spatial assumptions that designers make are also closely connected to the issue of standards. Standards are important as attempts to define best practice by categorising different kinds of spaces (for example, exits, pavements, pathways and so on), usually identifying them with different kinds of risks and tasks, and then setting average and minimum light levels and other parameters, such as uniformity, glare and colour rendering as consistent indexes (CRI). What is generally forgotten is that these different spaces are in fact social spaces, and therefore cannot be so easily categorised, or treated as the same for different stakeholders in different contexts.

At the Whitecross Estate, the 1960s buildings had walkways on each storey that passed in front of the flats’ front doors and were lit by harsh bulkhead lights at 150 lux, suited to internal corridors or interior spaces. The reason for this lighting was definition of the space as external passageways not private entranceways. However, for residents, the walkways were virtually part of their private spaces; indeed, some residents had to tape black bin liners over their windows so that they could sleep at night or use their living rooms. Had designers followed the residents’ definition of this social space, the light levels could have been set as low as 1–5 lux (by applying the standard for emergency exits, for example). This was not simply a matter of ‘over lighting’; it was a question of social knowledge, understanding and voice. Who gets to define a social space? Moreover, standards have an ambiguous legal and professional status: while designers, architects and planners sometimes hide behind standards to legitimise their decisions (I had to follow the standards), they also know in practice that choosing and applying a standard for a specific and unique space actually requires careful understanding and interpretation. In other words, social research and knowledge can help to generate an understanding of what kind of space this is and who uses it.

Thirdly, and often most usefully, designers rely heavily on anecdotal and ad hoc information gathered from site visits and casual conversations with both residents and officials. This is the all-important ‘getting a feel for the place’, and in practice these impressions are usually key to design decisions: design professionals become adept at bringing their experiences of many specific places to bear on each new site, enabling them to quickly seize on socially significant features, issues and potentials. The problem is that they rarely have either the time, money or training to build up their knowledge, or follow these hunches and insights, with the danger of sticking with views that are shouted loudest or that fit their own preconceptions. A major task of social research in design is to find ways to help develop and structure designers’ ways of knowing and understanding the spaces they work with.

Fourth, and finally, the problems noted above apply also to public consultations, which are the most frequent means by which planners garner understandings of social space. From a sociological perspective, consultations produce material that is often eloquent and rich but anecdotal, ad hoc and skewed. Part of this is the problem of the ‘usual suspects’: certain types of people, and indeed specific individuals, can be extremely vocal, motivated and omnipresent, and their views can push design thinking in specific directions, particularly if they are either voicing politically sensitive issues (for example, crime) or if they fit what the designers or clients wanted to do in the first place. Consultations may appear to represent ‘the people’ or ‘the community’, whereas in fact many types of people and points of view simply do not enter into this political process.

The aim of social research, by contrast, is to go out into the community to find and represent the widest range of impacted stakeholders, including types of people that may not have been recognised by those in the design process. For example, in the case of Whitecross, there was a gardening group on the estate whose members were very vocal and present on tenant committees, but other perspectives – those of children or of the many non-residents who passed through the estate every day – were not organised or vocalised. A major issue is the confusion between consultation as a vital tool of engagement, mobilisation and democracy as opposed to consultation as a tool for building a social understanding of a space. In fact, consultations work best when they are linked into good social research so that the voices raised in consultations can be contextualised and interpreted within a much wider range of stakeholder views. In this way the issues raised in consultations can be used to guide further research.

All four of these sources of social understanding and knowledge are useful and – most importantly –available to some degree to designers and architects. The problem is normally how to structure them more rigorously, use them to raise more questions and issues to investigate, and then interrelate them to build up a more design-oriented basis for lighting – and all this within the time, money and institutional constraints of actual design work. For all these reasons, it is useful to think about social engagement and understanding of a space to be lit in terms of four overarching issues that any lighting design needs to address, but to address in ways that are specific to that place:

• Diversity: we need to identify and then understand the different types of social actors that make up this space. The social life of an urban space does not comprise either ‘people’ or ‘the community’: it is made up of young mothers, old couples, dog walkers, retailers, commuters, teenagers, and so on. The social research job is to make sure that we know about all these people, and in as much depth and complexity as our resources and clients allow.
• Practices: what are all these people doing or what do they want to do (but can’t)? Can we map the diverse movements, activities and events of diverse gatherings in this space – and understand enough of why people are doing these things and what they mean to them?
• Places: the same space will be a different place for different people, and each possible design will produce a different kind of place for people in the future. Social research needs to look at the identity of a space for its different stakeholders, what it means, how it feels, what atmosphere it has, and what conflicts and commonalities it gives rise to.
• Connections: how does this space connect to other spaces and other times – to different histories; to adjacent or even remote other places; to wider political and economic processes? How do different users connect this space to others through their everyday itineraries, or their memories and identities?

There is a useful way of relating these four points to urban lighting design decisions, of directly connecting all this wide-ranging social research to specific lighting choices and placements. This way of putting things comes out of another social research tradition: material culture studies. We can say that – from a social point of view – decisions about what to light and how to light it are decisions about what is of value to people in an urban space. Deciding to light this bridge rather than that facade may be a decision about the features that are crucial to wayfinding, or about the historical significance of a building, or the atmospheric feel of the space, or about memories or fear of crime, or some combination of all of these; and it may relate to only some, not all stakeholders. But lighting decisions surely need to be informed by knowing what is valued by different types of people wanting to carry out their practical lives in a meaningful place.

So far we have said little about social research methods. There is some remaining mystique about research methods, as if disciplines like sociology and geography have, or should have, specific technical tools or approaches – akin to taking light readings or mapping spaces. Sometimes this equates to fixing on surveys and quantitative social measures such as opinion polls and footfall measures. We would rather promote a more fluid and flexible approach that is oriented to understanding spaces and that is more appropriate for the different practical ways of ‘knowing’ that we listed above. This is often, but not exclusively, associated with an ethnographic approach to social research. Ethnography involves a commitment to understanding a social world initially in terms of the diverse people who inhabit it. These diverse groups, and the spaces they inhabit, are unique, meaning that we need to develop methods and combinations of methods to understand place, much as a designer starting a brief knows that whatever commonalities they might find with previous experiences, a specific place has to be understood in its own terms. For example, a location may have very different meanings to long-term residents as opposed to others who might pass through it, rarely stopping. Different means may be required to ensure that both kinds of people are captured by the researcher; we will need quite different ways of accessing and learning about these different groups and each is likely to raise quite different questions.

Having said this, social researchers generally start from fairly recognisable types of methods, though they may have to reinvent each type for particular purposes (for example, interviews can take as many different forms as there are conversations between different people). These types of methods include:

• Interviewing: structured conversations, with individuals or groups, preferably in situ, aiming to raise and explore themes in participants’ own terms.
• Observation: watching, listening, experiencing and participating in a social scene to understand how it works for those who interact in it.
• Photography and video: documenting social and spatial organisation of a space, and distribution of lighting within it, across different times of day, week and year, both for close textual analysis and as an aid in interviews and discussions.
• Demonstrations and installations setting up lighting displays, situations and experiments, mock-ups and simulations to explore the complex socio-material interactions of light in a real space and to expand and explore stakeholders’ understanding of lighting.
• Workshops, consultations and public engagement including night walks: using action research events in which participants can interact with lighting and space, generating both public engagement and crucial research material on their understanding of both light and their space.
• Published data including statistics, media reports, maps and historical material: online and published data on the site in question, including documents concerning its wider economic and political context; increasingly this includes ‘big data’ and social analytics produced by social media, smart systems (including smart lighting) and open source data.

Finally, we have been focusing largely on situation-specific research – who is doing what and why in this space. It is nevertheless an important part of social research to locate a space in ever-wider networks that connect this place spatially and temporally to ever-wider contexts. Sometimes the issues are fairly obvious: perhaps we cannot understand how to light a particular high street without understanding how it fits into wider pathways, recognising its relationship to surrounding neighbourhoods and acknowledging the different kinds of people who use it – for example, hipster cyclists and middle-class gentrifiers coming into a formerly working-class or immigrant area. This can take us into sensitive territory: the meaning of a place for many stakeholders may be caught up in long histories of political disputes, historical traumas, crimes and tragedies, ethnic conflict and so on. A development site in a big city may reference major concerns about gentrification, globalisation, ethnic cleansing and inequality. Clearly, lighting professionals may have limited professional (as opposed to personal) capacity to intervene. Nonetheless, ignoring the wider histories and interconnections of a place by implementing a generic lighting design, or simply trying to light for pure function or aesthetic attractiveness, may well be a recipe for the social failure or unsustainability of a space.

Social Research in the Design Process

The following case study of a public realm design project in Hackney, London, explores ways in which lighting designers and social researchers can work together to develop more insightful and responsive understandings of the complex and often conflictual social lives they are intending to light. Social research identified both shared attitudes (most stakeholders were proud of both the diversity of the area and its ‘village’ feel) and differences (such as widely different issues regarding safety concerns). Social research can be involved in a dialogue with design processes, not simply providing facts or evidence to which designers must respond, but also developing or reframing questions such as ‘What is the problem with cycling, and for whom?’ in ways that allow for creative design approaches – which may then throw up further social questions to be researched.

Case Study Narrow Way: London

Architects are not usually trained in social research. Though some may consider it important, they commonly see it as too slow, difficult or academic a process, resulting in reports that are not easily rendered into practice. To exemplify how social research can practically support more effective planning in urban regeneration projects, this section analyses a case study that illustrates the transition from social research to urban – and specifically lighting – design. Social research can produce different design results, by providing different methodologies and targeting the specific social issues and aspects of the place itself, studied in situ. Our approach therefore starts with observation of the space and how it is used, in order to identify the questions that need answering and the methodological strategies that might provide answers. A place is never just a space: it is constantly signified and re-signified by its residents’ social and cultural practices, and each place requires a bespoke research strategy.

The lighting designer was commissioned by Hackney Council in 2015 to develop public realm design for Narrow Way. The council’s concern with the social complexity of this high street required an additional commission to bring social researchers from Configuring Light into the project.

Hackney has a strong social identity that is on the cusp of major changes. It was historically a largely working-class area with cheap housing stock that attracted various waves of immigrant communities. In recent years, Hackney has become a very popular area to live and work, very much tied to the gentrification (or ‘hipsterisation’) processes that London, like similar cities, is experiencing. This gentrification is radically changing the social composition of entire neighbourhoods.

Narrow Way is a relatively short and narrow high street and, at the time of our work (2015), was in an unregenerated and underdeveloped area (see Figure 1.5). It had been recently pedestrianised, but had few independent shops and many chains, such as McDonald’s, Poundland and Coral, the betting shop. However, its southern part had recently been affected by gentrification: house prices had greatly increased in the previous year and some independent shops were beginning to open, alongside trendy cafes and restaurants and fancy roof-terrace lounges. The north side of Narrow Way ends with the Pembury Estate, a very large social housing area owned by Peabody. Pembury received much media attention in 2011 for the riots that erupted in the area following the death of Mark Duggan.¹¹ Following the riots, a project for a Hackney Fashion Hub was promoted – a £1.5 million plan to ‘develop Hackney’s status as the creative heart of London and as a retail hub for the Borough’s fast-growing fashion industry’.¹²

Figure 1.5 Existing conditions of Hackney Narrow Way

The situation was therefore very complex in terms of the area’s history and future, and any intervention that did not take these social dynamics into account risked early rejection and failure. As early as 2012, just a few months after the riots, an architectural team was appointed by the council to propose a regeneration project for the area. The architects presented a photorealistic image showing the new scheme – but exclusively representing white ‘hipsters’ as the future of Hackney, forgetting both Hackney’s roots and its more recent history. The public consultation that followed unsurprisingly rejected the project for fear of gentrification and social cleansing.

This reaction led to the dismissal of the architects, and acknowledgement of the complexity of Narrow Way led the council to ask Configuring Light to lead a piece of social research alongside the development of the lighting design. The lighting designer was involved as much as possible in the research process. The research took place in May and June 2015 and included evening morning and afternoon visits to the neighbourhood. Configuring Light used a mix of methods to capture different users’ experiences, including commuting, shopping, eating and socialising practices on Narrow Way. The methodology was qualitative, largely based on semi-structured interviews (with individuals and groups), both in situ along Narrow Way and in a council meeting room, as well as participant observation with photo-elicitation throughout the day and into the night. Of particular value were interviews with market vendors, customers, buskers, local retailers and church leaders, as well as stakeholder representatives, estate agents, the fashion hub and the council. In addition, we conducted some group discussions with a mothers-and-toddlers group and a senior citizens’ bingo club, and attended a meeting with local resident committee members in St Augustine’s Tower. The aim was to ensure that we heard the widest range of views from people with a stake in, as well as knowledge of, the street and area.

The picture that emerged looked something like this: Narrow Way’s pedestrianisation meant that buses, which had once travelled along the narrow street, were now routed elsewhere, significantly altering the street’s character and generating much less footfall. A few shopkeepers expressed sadness that there was less hustle and bustle than before and trade was noticeably slower. In addition, without a clear route to follow, cyclists now sped down the street, making pedestrians feel less safe. Nonetheless, pedestrianisation had made the street a more attractive and pleasant place to walk along.

Many interviewees testified that Narrow Way lacked an identity. For example, one person stated that despite attempts to ‘move upmarket’, Narrow Way had ‘no sense of purpose’ and there was ‘no real reason to go there’. In its current configuration it had become neither a shopping destination nor a leisure/eating one. Despite the relatively minimal retail and leisure offering, many users saw much potential for the street. There is widely felt pride among Hackney residents in the community spirit of the area – it was described by one local businessman as being like a ‘village’ – and Narrow Way was potentially the heart of this village. Everyone was profoundly aware of gentrification processes, combining a fear of displacement with a generally welcoming attitude to newcomers as yet another new addition to Hackney’s cosmopolitanism. Interestingly, the plans for a Fashion Hub in the vicinity were little known among ordinary residents and shoppers on the street and it was felt that such an area would not be frequented by locals, but tourist shoppers.

Social research findings and the design process

Configuring Light’s research threw up complex social findings that were valuable during the design process. The role of the designer is to effectively integrate responses to these findings into the design process, bearing in mind the ‘normal’ design constraints: costs, maintenance, standards, council policies and provisos, and the limits of the design brief and commissioning process. We explore three issues here to demonstrate the value of social research in design.

First, a significant issue to emerge was how to retain Narrow Way’s vibrant diversity, proudly considered archetypally ‘Hackney’ in this respect. People of all classes and ethnicities articulated how they were open to change and redevelopment, including welcoming new businesses, gentrifiers and new ethnicities, so long as the mix and diversity was maintained, and provision and prices did not exclude people socially or financially. Thus, it emerged clearly from the data that people from all classes wanted to see Narrow Way ‘upgraded’, with provision of ‘nice’ shops with a wider offering, and a reduction of shops that attracted a rough and non-family-friendly clientele (such as betting shops and pawnbrokers).¹³

However, social research can also throw up conflicting problems and requests. Thus a second, significant issue for Narrow Way (like many public spaces) concerned the use of benches and whether these are desirable (to allow people to gather) or undesirable (providing space for homeless people to sleep or antisocial groups to hang around). At the Pembury Estate end of the road there were reports of antisocial behaviour, mostly by a group of homeless men who liked to gather and drink at the corner. At this end, there was resistance by retailers to benches being installed. Further along the road, however, parents of young children wanted benches, and even a few activities in the centre of the space, where they could gather and spend time. In other words, there was strong resistance to the installation of seating, but a positive response to installing activities (even if seating was involved).

A third issue concerned safety. Since pedestrianisation, the lack of pavement to separate pedestrians and cyclists made the space difficult to navigate. In fact, research showed two separate problems where the council had only identified one: firstly, commuting cyclists, including new local families, who raced through the street and were hazardous for pedestrians, and secondly teenagers hanging around the street on their bikes. Both were regularly mentioned but as part of different problems, and symbolising different tensions: for example, when older people referred to the ‘problem’ of cyclists, they meant teenagers; the council assumed they were talking about commuters. It took some careful interviewing to find out what ‘the problem’ was and for whom. Clearly, disrupting movement down Narrow Way with street furniture would deal with the first but not the second of these problems. Moreover, older people linked cycling to a range of mobility and safety issues: the current pavements are difficult for both mobility vehicles and older pedestrians; older people rarely use the street at night, are afraid of both kinds of cyclists, and are more concerned about crime.

As these examples illustrate, including social research in the design process makes for a more complex and richer understanding of a public place. It highlights social issues that the designer should at least address, if not target, in their design. Ultimately, the designer’s role is to translate this complexity into effective designs that can be implemented. What is different about this process, as opposed to public consultations or other user engagements, is that design decisions have a basis in the real-world issues of the place itself; they are responses to the realities of the space rather than presumed interpretations – ‘best guesses’ or ‘common sense’ – of the designer, and thus can be defended with evidence from the data. Moreover they acknowledge that these issues and realities are likely to be very different for different types of stakeholders.

The social research identified Narrow Way as an area characterised by both conflict and a ‘village’ feel, with a strong sense of local pride. This set a task for lighting and other design: to acknowledge difference while supporting the inclusiveness that most stakeholders agreed to be key to regeneration. Although lighting cannot resolve all the many social issues of a place, good lighting design, supported by social research, could help enhance Narrow Way’s visual identity. In particular, many of the local people interviewed identified and valued specific architectural features, and the generally interesting and unique appearance of Narrow Way (for example the design of the upper storeys above the shops, and a large tree at the southern end of the street).

Lighting that emphasised such features could be very effective in changing the perception and value of the street in general, as well as with wayfinding. Of course, social research findings do not settle aesthetic design choices; they do not tell the designer what to do but only what diverse social realities their choices will engage with. In the case of Narrow Way, they pointed to some very general design directions, in particular, the manifestation of pride for the ‘village’ feel of the area, especially for a lighting project.

The ‘village’ feel was translated into lighting design: soft and warm light was chosen to provide a cosy environment, with uplighting to trees and light close to benches. The main architectural features, such as the clock tower, were enhanced and highlighted at night. The choice of lighting system also reflected the ‘village’ feel: a catenary system with a random composition of lanterns to recall the aesthetic of a more human-scale environment. The lanterns are shaped in an old-fashioned style but with an insertion of copper mesh to create a very warm light and give the sense of historical value (see Figure 1.6).

Highlighting some of the main historical features was a central design decision, which incorporated the clock tower (see Figure 1.7) and some of the historical painted advertisements signage on buildings, with plans for lighting the facade of the Old Town Hall (currently the Coral betting shop) when the council gets the lease back (with an undertaking not to lease it to another betting shop).

Figure 1.6 Sample of the style of lantern, with copper mesh, chosen for Narrow Way

Figure 1.7 Mock-up of the lighting on the clock tower

Figure 1.8 Narrow Way’s market area

The idea of using a catenary system also came from the desire, expressed throughout the research, for a space that would accommodate as many activities as possible. Hence it was important to declutter the space from obstructive columns and free it up for people. Moreover, the catenary wires were structurally calculated to host temporary lighting for special events, such as Christmas and any other events the community proposes.

The paving reflects the idea of a village as well: warm bricks in an informal layout to allow activities and a shared ground for pedestrians, cyclists and children. The idea not to have dedicated cycle lanes was agreed with the council in order to prevent conflict zones: a shared pedestrian space should encourage everyone to be conscious of and responsible for the other users.

The trees are uplit to give a sense of direction and to integrate lighting in the urban elements. This is an approach normally used to create pedestrian zones and public space, in opposition to crude street lighting where the only focus is the street and vehicular traffic. Uplit trees are widely understood to signify enjoyable pedestrian spaces like parks.

The idea of an ‘urban lounge’ for everyone provided the other main design idea. The design therefore included different public elements, from benches to water fountains to trees for shade. The furniture proposed can play different roles, including seating but also street games, urban chess water features, and places to read and exchange books, as well as phone charging stations and free wifi to attract teenagers and students.

In the end, the discussion about having seating and benches was successful. A very long journey through the community groups and the council was needed to get approval to install benches and create aggregating points. No water fountains or structural games could be integrated into the scheme due to budget constraints, but it was a major achievement to convince the council to ‘force’ the bench issue and create a space for everyone to sit and enjoy.

Another important issue was the existence of one or two stalls in the little square at the southern end of Narrow Way (see Figure 1.8), close to the betting shop. This area was clearly underused and presented a very good opportunity to create various activities. We suggested hosting more stalls during the day and also promoting some night markets. This suggestion has been taken into account by the council.

In social research/design collaborations, designers (and social researchers) need to take strategic decisions about which findings they can and should deal with, and at what level of complexity. In the case of Narrow Way, several social research findings were relegated to the margins. For example, it was decided not to take into consideration the fact that Narrow Way is not a lively place by night, as this was implicit in the minimal social and retail activity. The lack of connection to the Fashion Hub was also not crucial to the design because it proved not to be an issue of concern to users. Whatever the council hoped for in terms of a connection with the surrounding area, the design intervention was focused solely on Narrow Way. The suggestion that Narrow Way could become a place for families was important, but not as important as the need for it to be a place for everyone. Rather than targeting one specific group of users we opted instead for activities that would be attractive and accessible to most users (we observed many teenagers in the area) and to have affordable/free activities at different times of the day in order to bring the place to life by night, too.

As with any design project, the outcome of the entire process will be the result of an ongoing negotiation among many stakeholders, taking into account political interests, structural constraints, costs, maintenance issues and capabilities. Some of the ideas we initially proposed have been accepted, others have been refused due to cost or maintenance issues. Despite our role being limited to lighting design, it was evident that the social research had significant implications for the wider design context, and highlighted the ways in which lighting interventions were embedded in much wider social and material interconnections. Applied social research can be subversive because it brings out issues that designers and planners may not want to see or talk about, which might otherwise be swept under the carpet. Ultimately, research of this kind pushes the designer/architect/planner to question initial design ideas or preconceptions about a project and forces them to delve into the social life of the neighbourhood. As social researchers and designers, we are aware that our efforts alone will not solve complex social, cultural and economic issues, but our work can raise questions and provide opportunities for change.

Conclusion

This chapter has focused attention on the potential role of social research within the design process. Social research helps to develop deeper understanding of social spaces, as well as to raise questions about social users and social practices that might not otherwise have occurred to designers and planners who are committed to a more spatial approach. We have outlined some of the overarching principles and methods of social research, as well as illustrating, through a case study of Narrow Way, how these can be applied to develop more socially informed, socially aware designs.