The Aalborg Survey / Part 4 - Literature Study: Diverse Urban Spaces (DUS)

Background and purpose
The Aalborg Survey consists of four independent parts: a web, GPS and an interview based survey and a literature study, which together form a consistent investigation and research into use of urban space, and specifically into young people’s use of urban space: what young people do in urban spaces, where they are in the urban spaces and when the young people are in the urban spaces.
The answers to these questions form the framework and enable further academic discussions and conclusions in relation to the overall research project Diverse Urban Spaces (DUS). The primary aim of the DUS research project is to investigate why young people do what they do in the urban spaces, and how this knowledge can contribute to an increase in young people’s use of urban spaces.
It is the overall aim of the DUS research project to facilitate an increased and more diverse use of urban spaces, and consequently young people are used as target group, as they represent the future users of urban spaces. Moreover, it is easy to get in touch with young people through educational institutions and schools, which makes it possible to carry out the investigations in a fairly simple way, economically and logistically, and further enables eventual reproduction of similar empirical data.
The DUS research project is related to the general research focus found within the Urban Design section at Institute of Architecture, Design and Media Technology (AD:MT), Aalborg University (AAU) and the research focus within the cluster of Mobility and Tracking Technologies (MoTT), AAU.

Summary / Part 4 - Literature Study
The 4th part of the DUS research project has been carried out during the spring 2012 and consists primarily of a literature search and bibliographical listings of literature by the three specific authors: William Hollingsworth Whyte (1917-1999), Jan Gehl (b. 1936) and Erving Goffman (1922-1982), as well as literature on the topics of ‘plazas’, ‘squares’, ‘parks’, ‘young people’s use of urban space’ and ’GPS’.
Secondarily, there has been made a bibliographical listing of publications that are related to the abovementioned topics by respectively Associate Professor Henrik Harder and Professor Ole B. Jensen, Department of Architecture, Design and Media Technology, Aalborg University. Henrik Harder is the main author and initiator of the DUS research project, and both Henrik Harder and Ole B. Jensen are conducting research within the field related to this research project. Furthermore, both are intended end users of the outcome of this literature study.
Finally, all references have been collected in a digital database in RefWorks.