Staff Profile
Dr Alexander Wilson
Lecturer in Urban Planning & Degree Programme Director BA Urban Planning & MPlan
- Email: alexander.wilson@ncl.ac.uk
- Address: Room 8.19
School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape
Newcastle University
Henry Daysh Building
Claremont Road
Newcastle upon Tyne
NE1 7RU
Background
I am a lecturer in the School of Architecture, Planning & Landscape. I have degrees in both town planning and computing, and recently finished my PhD (within EPSRC the Centre for Doctoral Training in Digital Civics) that explored how technology can create the means for an open dialogue around place, and how through these technologies, more meaningful discussions can happen about the future of cities.
My projects include: ChangeExplorer, a smart watch application to support citizen feedback, to investigate the extent to which digital wearables can support in-situ participation with planning proposals; and JigsAudio, a tangible situated device that was developed and deployed nationally and internationally with over 1,500 people to encourage expressive and creative discussion of places through drawing and talking.
My research sits at the intersection of digital technology, design, human–computer interaction and town planning, with a focus on alternative and enhanced tools and methods for participation in planning. These tools and methods include pervasive and wearable computing systems, alongside audio, visual and social media in novel interactive systems. Through this I explore how technologies can be designed, developed and evaluated within real world settings, with the aim of understanding the implications of these for citizen engagement and planning practice.
Research
Understanding the Implications of Technology-Enabled Urban Planning Participation for Practice
Funded by the ESRC, the key objectives of the fellowship are to: enhance my track-record of high-quality publications in the social sciences and consolidate my doctoral research; develop key pathways to impact through targeted engagement with professional audiences; and disseminate my findings at national and international conferences.
Funded by the ESRC, the key objectives of the fellowship are to: enhance my track-record of high-quality publications in the social sciences and consolidate my doctoral research; develop key pathways to impact through targeted engagement with professional audiences; and disseminate my findings at national and international conferences.
Metro Futures
Metro Futures is a project that co-designed, at scale, the future of the Metro with Nexus (Tyne and Wear Passenger Transport Executive), Stadler (Swiss train manufacturer) and Open Lab to engage people on their design preferences.
Mapping Gateshead
‘Mapping Gateshead’ is a five-month project that surveys and critically re-imagines creative and cultural activity in Gateshead through three interactive online workshops.
Tackling uncertainty across the centuries: medievals and moderns in conversation
This research project will bring together historical understanding, social science research, and interaction design within a model of community co-production to ask how our medieval churches can help tackle longstanding issues of uncertainty in rural life.
Teaching
I lead the following modules:
TCP3053: Development Management
This module seeks to develop students’ knowledge of Development Management including knowledge of planning law, institutional frameworks, decision-making and the processes to which planners must adhere in their work.
TCP2031: Digital Civics - Exploring Opportunities in Digital Public Engagement
In this module, students can research and design a service concept for digital public engagement.
APL1003: Planning Contexts
This module introduces the hybridity of the planning context - political, economic, legal, others, and reflects on how planning is an expression of these different dimensions, and articulates its purposes utilising these framings.
I also lead a project within Strategies into Action (TCP3028) that encourages students to develop an innovative digital engagement strategy for citizen engagement in planning processes
Publications
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Articles
- Bowen S, Wilson A, Rodger S, Feltwell T, Nappey T. Metro Futures 2020: Enabling Participation at Varying Depths and Scales via Digital Technology. International Journal of Human–Computer Interaction 2023, 39(18), 3663-3683.
- Senior T, Metcalfe T, McClean S, Wilson A, Bowen S, Ailes M, McGregor E. Medievals and Moderns in Conversation: Co-Designing Creative Futures for Under-Used Historic Churches in Rural Communities. Multimodal Technologies and Interaction 2022, 6(5), 40.
- Wilson A, Tewdwr-Jones M. COVID-19 and the Rise of Digital Planning: Fast and Slow Adoption of a Digital Planning System. Town Planning Review 2022, 93(5).
- Tewdwr-Jones M, Wilson A. Co-Designing Urban Planning Engagement and Innovation: Using LEGO® to Facilitate Collaboration, Participation and Ideas. Urban Planning 2022, 7(2), 1-10.
- Boland P, McHenry J, McKay S, Durrant A, Wilson A. A ‘Planning Revolution’ or an ‘Attack on Planning’ in England: Democratisation, Digitisation and Digitalisation. International Planning Studies 2022, 27(2), 155-172.
- Burrows R, Graham S, Wilson A. Bunkering down? The geography of elite residential basement development in London. Urban Geography 2022, 43(9), 1372-1393.
- Weise S, Wilson A, Vigar G. Reflections on Deploying Community-Driven Visualisations for Public Engagement in Urban Planning. Urban Planning 2020, 5(2), 59-70.
- Crilly M, Vemury C, Humphrey R, Rodriguez S, Crosbie T, Johnson K, Wilson A, Heidrich O. Common Language of Sustainability for Built Environment Professionals—The Quintuple Helix Model for Higher Education. Energies 2020, 13(22), 5860.
- Wilson A, Tewdwr-Jones M, Comber R. Urban planning, public participation and digital technology: App development as a method of generating citizen involvement in local planning processes. Environment and Planning B: Urban Analytics and City Science 2019, 46(2), 286-302.
- Wilson A, Tewdwr-Jones M. Let’s draw and talk about urban change: Deploying digital technology to encourage citizen participation in urban planning. Environment and Planning B: Urban Analytics and City Science 2019, 47(9), 1588-1604.
- Crivellaro C, Anderson R, Lambton-Howard D, Nappey T, Olivier P, Vlachokyriakos V, Wilson A, Wright P. Infrastructuring public service transformation: Creating collaborative spaces between communities and institutions through HCI research. ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction 2019, 26(3), 15.
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Authored Book
- Wilson A, Tewdwr-Jones M. Digital Participatory Planning: Citizen Engagement, Democracy, and Design. New York, NY, USA: Routledge, 2022.
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Conference Proceedings (inc. Abstracts)
- Bellini R, Wilson A, Smeddinck JD. Fragments of the Past: Curating Peer Support with Perpetrators of Domestic Violence. In: Proceedings of the 2021 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '21). 2021, Yokohama, Japan: Association for Computing Machinery.
- Bowen Simon, Wright Peter, Wilson Alexander, Dow Andy, Bartindale Tom, Anderson Rob. Metro Futures: Experience-Centred Co-Design at Scale. In: CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. 2020, Honolulu, Hawai'i, USA: ACM.
- Strohmayer A, Meissner JL, Wilson A, Charlton S, McIntyre L. “We come together as one…and hope for solidarity to live on”: On Designing Technologies for Activism and the Commemoration of Lost Lives. In: Designing Interactive Systems - DIS '20. 2020, Eindhoven, Netherlands: ACM.