Frontiers of Design Science: Evidence-based Design

Post's title refers to the interesting article, written by By Michael Mehaffy and Nikos Salingaros. I already posted it on my linked-in group “Sociology of Spatial Planning”.

I believe it would also be challenging to see how urban planning might evolve if planners, in addition to focussing on individuals, would target social groups.

That is, to make things clear, if you transform the key phrase of the text

"Design computations employ a sequence of steps: trial-and-error observations of how a person interacts with his/her specific environment, each time enhancing that interaction to benefit the specific task to be performed and situating that person optimally in the immediate built environment, like an urban plaza, a building’s entrance, a computer screen, to something as small as a cabinet handle."

into

“[…] trial-and-error observations of how PEOPLE INTERACT AMONG EACH OTHER WITHIN THEIR specific SOCIO-ECONOMIC AND CULTURAL environment, AND HOW PEOPLE, AS SINGLE PERSONS AND AS GROUPS, ARE INFLUENCED BY THE SPECIFIC PHYSICAL ENVIRONMENT WHERE THEY LIVE IN […]”

perhaps one could apply the method of “design computation” to social environments… of course without forgetting the historical coherence analysis of the social and physical environment where buildings, spaces and other urban artefacts would be inserted.

This would be very interesting, I reckon.