About – SPATTERN

FUTURE HERITAGE OF SPA SETTLEMENTS

Digital Platform for Advancing Knowledge and Innovation
in Urban Morphology Approach for Environmentally-Sensitive Development in Serbia

Funded by Science Fund of the Republic of Serbia
2023-2026

Objectives and Challenges

The overarching objective of SPATTERN is to develop an innovative, collaborative and systematic approach for decoding the values and potentials of urban patterns within spa settlements through design and development of digital infrastructure. Implementation of SPATTERN will fill a critical gap by providing a sound and flexible methodological framework for deriving local patterns through digital tools that will be applicable across a range of scales and adaptable to distinct regional, national and local contexts.

Objective 1

To upgrade state-of-the-art within urban morphology approach through challenging collaborative character of research and conducting expert questionnairext

Objective 2

To classify types of urban patterns that target ecological, cultural and environmental indicators of both tangible and intangible values

Objective 3

To anticipate perspectives of environmentally-sensitive urban transformation of spa settlements in Serbia

Objective 4

To develop a digital platform for processing and visualizing urban patterns within Spa Settlements in Serbia

Challenge 1

Previous research on the urban morphology of spa settlements has been conducted through the analysis of general morphological characteristics without challenging the topics of urban development from the environmentally-sensitive perspective.t text

Challenge 2

The potentials of urban patterns for generating environmentally-sensitive development are not adequately recognized in legal and planning documents in the context of Serbia.

Challenge 3

Struggle between development based on environmental and health-promoting values or on market-oriented values in a process of spa settlements planning and development conditioned unsustainable perspectives for defining their urban identity and personalities.

Challenge 4

The need to improve documenting techniques through
digitalization of urban patterns and provision of an open access to digitalized repository.

Methodology

SPATTERN engages two-fold identification strategy in-between urban contextual factors and other variables of interest: (1) quantification of the urban context at both social and physical levels, and (2) establishment of the criteria for generating context-informed samples of urban areas. Accordingly, SPATTERN methodology is based on 5 pillars in order to bridge the gap in-between research and practice, as well as methodological foundation and its application.

Multi-scale dimension of research established through questioning a range of spatial levels from urban to architectural, from landscape to architectural detail, from comprehensive territory of settlement to single spatial unit

Collaborative character of research enhanced through active engagement of local representatives of spa settlements within research process through questionnaires, workshop and training for local practitioners and range of dissemination activities

Pragmatic approach to research
enhanced through cross-research of all practices in the field of software engineering related to the development of the digital platform and data visualization

Multidisciplinary nature of research
performed through engaging of cross-cutting topics and methods from three primary scientific areas
Social Sciences, Humanities and the arts and Engineering and Technology

Practice-oriented research
enhanced through anticipation of environmentally-sensitive transformation of spa settlements and creating scenarios for their further planning implications and development

Research Strategy

The SPATTERN unique research strategy is based on a relationship between (1) Role Models of spa settlements (12) that have a developed spa culture, a higher degree of urbanity and urban development, valuable architectural and urban heritage and accordingly a higher degree of tourism offers, and (2) Replicator spa settlements (26) that have natural resources for further development, but whose more extensive morphogenesis and establishment of urban personalities represents one of the leading challenges for policy makers and planners in the forthcoming period.

FUTURE HERITAGE OF SPA SETTLEMENTS

MISSION

VISION

VALUES