Sayed_abstract_November_2020

Neha Sayed (Aalto): Analysing methodological artefacts for disciplinary bias

Abstract: An urban place is continuously conditioned by diverse disciplines aiming to implement projects for development.

Disciplines like urban planning and urban design generate artefacts through a process derived from their specific methodology having an embedded disciplinary bias. The bias is executed with a careful articulation of ideological frameworks. These ideologies depend on the theoretical standpoints which evolve within a disciplinary boundary. The methodologies are refined accordingly, adopted for this formulated approach to the subject. This effort is has a purpose of executing disciplinary projects. This bias in the artefacts renders the conceived projects prone to conflicts in the actual physical space. Their content generated through studying distinct aspects of spatiality does not elaborate on the nuances of its sociopolitical disposition. This has generated an everlasting impact on urban development.

The author of this research aims to elaborate on the varied limiting factors as a bias embedded in the articulation of these artefacts. This is done by conducting a geospatial analysis in a four hundred seventy years old port town of Panvēl on the west coast of India. The geospatial analysis is presented in the form of maps generated by adopting the methodologies of urban planning and urban design. The data was collected over a course of two years in a precinct around a market square in Panvēl called, Ṭapāl Nākā. The study presented here was part of an effort to articulate disciplinary meanings of the marketplace. The analysis of the bias in the maps as artefacts is done for a goal of speculating a possible break-away from the disciplinary boundary by articulating them under the non-disciplinarity of new media.