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In collaborative reasoning about what causes the seasons, phases of the moon, and tides, participants (three to four per group) introduce ideas by gesturing depictively in personal space. Other group members copy and vary these gestures, imbuing their gesture spaces with similar conceptual properties. This leads at times to gestures being produced in shared space as members elaborate and contest a developing group model. Gestures in the shared space mostly coincide with conversational turns; more rarely, participants gesture collaboratively as they enact a joint conception. An emergent shared space is sustained by the joint focus and actions of participants and may be repositioned, reoriented, or reshaped to meet changing representational demands as the discourse develops. Shared space is used alongside personal spaces, and further research could shed light on how gesture placement and other markers (such as eye gaze) contribute to the meaning or function of gestures in group activity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Shared mobility spaces need to be understood as complex sites of practice. • These spaces often present partial and dysfunctional approaches to sharing space. • In the UK, shared mobility spaces represent limiting approaches for promoting sustainable mobility. • Researchers need to question whether shared spaces promote sustainability. Shared mobility spaces have become increasingly popular internationally as attempts to increase the uptake of active travel modes (walking, cycling and running) have turned pavements, shopping streets and public spaces into multi-mode mobility spaces. From a sustainability perspective, policy makers in the UK have argued that shared spaces afford greater opportunities for cycling off-road in areas with busy traffic, whilst in public spaces they provide greater accessibility and connectivity to a wider range of users. Yet there has been little conceptual critique and empirical research on the impacts of how individuals and groups negotiate what are new forms of public space in the UK. Accordingly, in this paper we use insights from the new mobilities paradigm and social practice theories to analyse data gathered from qualitative research with different travel mode users in the city of Exeter (South-west England) to demonstrate the complexity of shared spaces, the tensions they produce and the challenges they may pose for promoting sustainable mobility. First, we explore the practices that unfold within shared spaces and demonstrate how researchers need to appreciate the social complexity of negotiating new and conflictual sites of practice. Second, we examine how a fragmented approach to the design of shared spaces may compromise the development of sustainable mobility practices through representing a partial and dysfunctional approach towards sharing space in cities. Third, we demonstrate the problematics of deploying shared spaces as short-term and politically expedient devices for delivering individually-focused behavioural goals instead of radical alternatives that embed sustainable mobility infrastructure into urban fabrics. We conclude by suggesting that to realise the benefits of collectively sharing mobility space in the UK requires long-term changes in urban infrastructure that can embed practices and promote a shift away from the political dominance of the private vehicle as the axis around which urban development pivots. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The reproduction of space along the border in post-conflict divided cities is an important issue in relation to urban resilience. Nicosia, widely known as the last divided capital city in Europe, is the capital city of Turkish Cypriots in the north and Greek Cypriots in the south. The Buffer Zone was formalized in 1974 as an emergency measure against inter-communal clashes. Further, the walled city of Nicosia was bisected, and thus urban and social unity became a relic of the past. In addition, the city center became the edge of the two bisected halves. The Nicosia Master Plan (NMP) was initiated by professionals on both sides. Moreover, it was in the first planning attempt that Nicosia was considered as a whole. The NMP was the first self-reliant quest that was developed for the purpose of finding a solution that could operate without having to wait for a political consensus. The Ledra Palace crossing opened in 2003 as the first opening on the border that ran across the United Nations (UN)-controlled Buffer Zone in Nicosia. Such a crossing possessed a symbolic meaning; the two communities feel as if they are socially united, and it encouraged NGOs and artists to step forward and allow the border to be perceived not as a boundary but as a shared space. The Buffer Fringe Festival is one of the recent cultural organizations that was held along the divide of Nicosia and it is also the festival scrutinized in this paper. This festival was designed to explore the boundary as a phenomenon experienced in daily life; furthermore, discussions were had regarding how the Buffer Fringe actors and artists perceived the festival as a peace-making tool. Together with visual and verbal records, the analysis conducted in this paper is based on qualitative data within a theoretical framework concerning body–space connections. In this paper, the aim is to emphasize how festivals can function beyond the limits of borders, provide an arena for connecting people, and exemplifies how one can interpret the spatial transformation of a space within the context of post-conflict divided cities.

Art and design students' occupation and use of physical studio spaces have decreased and altered during the Covid 19 pandemic, and online learning spaces have become increasingly important. This case study explores the value of collective memories of shared space in the creation and inhabitation of online studio, using recalled narrative and thematic analysis to inform refinement of the virtual studio used during a unique year. Interior design practice is rooted in collective human interactions within the built environment. We describe the positive effect familiar layout and language have on interior design students' ability to engage effectively in online studio activities, thus enabling students to feel optimistic about the events they have experienced and highlight the effectiveness of the events. Feedback from students and staff provides insight into the influence of digital proxies for space, and the use of familiar language affects the perception of online studio. We conclude by testing our early findings, describing elements the student body found most supportive and propose how we may further expand this research to provide a basis for designing effective and engaging virtual studio spaces. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• A theoretical framework is developed from various behavioural theories to predict pedestrian-cyclist interactive behaviour in shared space. • Structural equation modelling (SEM) is adopted to validate the framework using 592 perception survey responses. • Pedestrians adjust their behaviour (compensate) for their own risks and act more cautiously but take advantage of cyclists' risks and act less cautiously. • From the safety perspective, overtaking interactions are more critical than on-coming interactions. Commuting on space shared by active mobility users such as pedestrians and cyclists is of great safety concerns due to users' differences in sizes and speeds. This provides the impetus to study the interactive behaviour of pedestrians and cyclists along shared footpaths in Singapore, which is considered as a type of non-motorised shared space. Online survey responses from 292 pedestrians and 300 cyclists were gathered. The data were analysed using structural equation modelling based on a theoretical framework that integrates various behaviour theories. In essence, the findings suggest that pedestrians adjust their behaviour (compensate) for their own perceived risk level and behave more cautiously if the risks are higher. However, as they perceive cyclists' risk level to be relatively higher, pedestrians tend to be less cautious (than the cyclists). On the contrary, cyclists compensate for pedestrians' risk level. Moreover, from safety perspective, overtaking interactions are more critical than on-coming interactions in terms of safety and users' behaviour control. A better understanding of the potential risks and respective right-of-way is important. With better behavioural control, users are more likely to behave positively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In order to improve the comfort and functions of the old living shared space environment, and enhance the suitability of the shared space ecological environment, in this paper, an old living area shared space planning method based on the improvement of the ecological environment is proposed. The ENVI met model combined with one-dimensional and three-dimensional algorithms was established, and the microclimate environment was simulated through the calculation of the thermal stress relation ship between vegetation and air. In addition, the shared space in the old residential area is planned from four aspects: architectural layout, activity venues, landscape greening and road organization. Ac cording to the simulation results of ENVI-met, the layout of the building and the location of the event venue were planned by "bearing the shade and embracing the sun and side by side staggered layout. In the end, road grades and transportation methods combined with plant morphological characteristics were used to complete road organization and land scape greening planning. The experimental results show that the shared space planned by this method can ensure the best environmental suitability and sunshine effect. After planning, its temperature drops by an average of about 12 °C, which can improve the comfort of the human body in the shared space. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Germany, approximately 2.7 million crashes occurred in 2019. Especially vulnerable road users (VRU) have a high risk of being seriously injured or killed in traffic. Within the safe system approach, changes to the traffic infrastructure have been implemented to increase VRU safety. The creation of so-called shared spaces, in which all road users are encouraged to negotiate priority, is part of these efforts. Even though the concept has been known and applied for more than 40 years, comparatively little is known about interactions between different road users and methods to quantify interactions in shared spaces. The aim of this study is to investigate similarities and differences in quantifying the level of severity of encounters between pedestrians and motorised vehicles applying the Swedish traffic conflicts technique (STCT) and the pedestrian-vehicle conflicts analysis (PVCA). The STCT integrates the factors conflicting speed (CS) and time-to-accident (TA) to arrive at a severity level. In contrast, with four factors, the PVCA integrates more elements: time-to-collision (TTC, corresponding to TA), severity of evasive action, complexity of evasive action, and distance-to-collision (DTC). Trajectory and video data of a shared space were recorded using the Application Platform for Intelligent Mobile Units (AIM) in Ulm, Germany. 1364 interactions were randomly selected. Due to different exclusion criteria, such as interaction partners not being a car or pedestrian, missing values, and detection errors, 69 encounters were available for analyses. Using the PVCA, nine encounters were classified as critical and 60 as non-critical interactions. In contrast, computing the values based on the STCT, only three of the 69 encounters were categorised as critical. The results of a Spearman rank correlation did not show a significant correlation between the severity categories of the PVCA and severity levels of the STCT (r = 0.03, p = 0.78). An additional analysis of the encounters ranked as critical by the PVCA but as non-critical by the STCT showed that all six encounters had a large temporal distance (> 2 s) combined with very small spatial distance (< 5 m for vehicles and < 2.5 m for pedestrians). While the PVCA and STCT yielded similar results in most encounters, this could not be confirmed for all. Results indicate that spatial distance may contribute to the severity of encounters between pedestrians and vehicles in a shared space. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The influence of the types of architectural space on the residents’ consciousness of shared space, targeting mixed-status-family traditional residential buildings in the West Street area of Quanzhou City, Fujian Province, China was studied. The research was conducted through surveying, mapping, and an investigation of the current state of the buildings’ atria by using data statistics and function-fitting analysis. The study included the following four stages: 1. Because of modernization and urbanization, traditional buildings have been transforming from single-family to multi-family, leading to amalgamation. 2. With the emergence of amalgamated buildings, the shared space between households has changed from a street space to an atrium space, which is the most influential and includes three types: porch enclosure, hallway connection, and direct pathway. 3. The shared space consciousness of occupants was simulated by investigating how the overflow (two- and three-dimensional) of the atrium has been used. 4. The influence of space types on the consciousness of shared space is elucidated using data statistics and function-fitting analysis.

Modelling and simulation of mixed-traffic zones is an essential tool for transportation planners to assess safety, efficiency, and human-friendliness of future urban areas. This paper addresses the calibration and transferability of existing shared space models for pedestrians and cars. Specifically, our first contribution is enhancing the Game-Theoretic Social Force Model (GSFM) by a generic methodology for largely automated model calibration. The second contribution is an investigation into the transferability of shared space models. We define criteria for model transferability and present a case study, in which we evaluate transferability of the model we constructed based on the ''German data set'' to a different shared space environment from China. Our results indicate that although the model faces difficulties replicating road users' motion from a new environment, by adding social norms (derived through analysis) of that environment to our model, satisfactory improvement of model accuracy can be obtained with little effort. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In shared space, all road users are encouraged to legally occupy the same road space with little physical or visual separation. Complex social interactions that appear in these spaces create complicated ecosystems, which make the estimation of future impacts difficult using classic modeling techniques. This study introduces a concept Agent-Based Simulation Model to represent this complex ecosystem at a network level. The proposed model is based on the methodological framework of Multi-Agent Transport Simulation (MATSim). Two critical factors are integrated in this iterative simulation process, i.e. traffic complexity level that influences network supply and perceived safety that affects mode and route choices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In its central location at the intersection of the Palestinian cities of Ramallah and Al-Bireh, the popular market of Al-Hisba represents one of the most vital spots in the area. A singular “informal” setting, the market occupies an area of about six dunams in the governorate’s center, consisting of continuous open spaces laid out among several commercial and public buildings. Without formal entrances to define its borders, there is an unmistakable atmosphere that characterizes the market and contributes to its charm, creating an experience of passing through an invisible filter as one goes inside. Beyond this intangible edge, voices of sellers promoting their goods can be heard echoing throughout the space, leading along linear zones into a central plaza, where sellers have organized their stalls underneath a metallic coverage. Over the approximate range of sixty years, those spaces expanded from what had been planned as an indoor market inside a building from the fifties and grew into the extensive, loose market we see today.

Understanding and interpreting landscapes entails the encoding of symbols and deciphering of codes left on the palimpsest. Interpreting the Neolithic and more significantly Neolithic temple sites, is challenging and rife with contested meanings. The overall landscape is used by adherents of the New Religious Movements, on faith-based visits, and as an extension, spiritual fulfilment is sought in the Neolithic temples of Malta. The same landscape is then part of both the inner and outer pilgrimage in the context of not only the modern designer religions, but also of the established religions. This paper presents a case study of the Neolithic temple sites located in the Maltese Islands, which are significantly located at the centre of the Mediterranean Sea. The paper suggests that although these are shared spaces they are also contested space as the interpretation of these sites are firmly biased.

Though the concept of shared spaces had been known in Groupware and Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) for quite a while, it did not become popular until the arrival of the Internet and social software. Implicitly, the concept of shared spaces has penetrated many IT-areas, including the area of Business Process Management. Though shared spaces are used in many systems and tools, like Google Drive and Projectplace, there is a lack of research investigating this usage in a generic way. The article aims to fill this gap by introducing a generic model of a Business Process Support (BPS) system based on shared space that supports the comparison, analysis and design of BPS systems. In addition, the article goes in more details on one design issue – the structuring of shared spaces. This is done by analyzing and comparing two different BPS systems that exploit the concept of shared spaces, though implicitly. These systems use different approaches to shared space structuring. The first one organizes the information by grouping similar types of items without regard to the flow of activities in a business process, while the other organizes the information around groups of activities that are usually completed as a block. Which model to choose in a particular situation depends on the characteristics of the business process and its participants. In order to facilitate this choice, the article offers a number of guidelines derived from the experience of using the two BPS systems in practice. The article also discusses in what circumstances BPS systems with shared spaces are preferable to traditional workflow BPS systems.

• Behaviours in road user interactions recorded using novel observation protocol. • Looking behaviour and use of signals associated with response of drivers. • Communication between road users can lead to greater certainty during interactions. • Results have implications for communication by automated vehicles. Appropriate communication between road users can lead to safe and efficient interactions in mixed traffic. Understanding how road users communicate can support the development of effective communication methods for automated vehicles. We carried out observations of 66 pedestrian-driver and 124 driver-driver interactions in a shared space setting. Specific actions and reactions of the road users involved were recorded using a novel observation protocol. Overall, results showed that pedestrians' failure to look towards a driver created the greatest uncertainty in the interaction, with the driver slowing down, but not completely stopping, in response to pedestrians. Looking towards the driver also influenced which road user took priority in driver-driver interactions. Groups of pedestrians were more likely to be given priority than an individual pedestrian, and the use of vehicle-based signals were also associated with taking priority during an interaction. Our observations show the importance of non-verbal communication during road user interactions, highlighting it as an essential area of research in the development of automated vehicles, to allow their safe, cooperative, interactions with other road users. Observations were made on a limited number of interactions to inform challenges facing future automated vehicles. Further work should therefore be done to corroborate and extend our findings, to examine interactions between human road users and automated vehicles in shared space settings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The findings of this article emerge from an eight-month study examining career identity practices amongst a select group of fitness professionals in the U.K. We examine how the inter-relationship between physical and social space can denote how power is acquired, displayed, and used by individuals interacting in a shared space. The findings show that power is signified through spatial practices as individuals negotiate through triadic space, creating an identity of space and place for both trainer and client that identifies power, and signifies who has power. Fitness professionals with high levels of symbolic power are able to subvert organizational spatial norms to better serve themselves and their clients, while those with lower levels of symbolic power are forced to, or choose to, negotiate or abdicate space to others. These findings are relevant to a wide range of occupations where self-employment and contract workers interact in shared space. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Understanding and interpreting landscapes entails the encoding of symbols and deciphering of codes left on the palimpsest. Interpreting the Neolithic and more significantly Neolithic temple sites, is challenging and rife with contested meanings. The overall landscape is used by adherents of the New Religious Movements, on faith-based visits, and as an extension, spiritual fulfilment is sought in the Neolithic temples of Malta. The same landscape is then part of both the inner and outer pilgrimage in the context of not only the modern designer religions, but also of the established religions. This paper presents a case study of the Neolithic temple sites located in the Maltese Islands, which are significantly located at the centre of the Mediterranean Sea. The paper suggests that although these are shared spaces they are also contested space as the interpretation of these sites are firmly biased. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This contribution aims to explore how ‘atmosphere’ can be disseminated in urban settings in Switzerland, through the development of what is referred to as ‘encounter zones` (‘zones de rencontre’ in French and ‘Begegnungszonen’ in German). This urban planning tool dedicated to regulating traffic and allowing different users (pedestrians, cars, bicycles, etc.) to cohabit in a non-segregated space has been introduced all over the country since its official integration into the national legislation in 2002. The main objective is to determine how these areas can become appropriate settings for the development of a desirable atmosphere, conceived here as a quality of place where social encounters and space sharing can happen. In other words, the purpose is to determine if these areas can become more than just a traffic regulation tool, and contribute to social cohesion and the development of lively neighbourhoods. This paper is based on anthropological empirical findings collected in a larger study on encounter zones in Western Switzerland.

This paper explores the planned attempt to create 10 shared housing projects in the social rented sector in Northern Ireland. Although residential desegregation has increased since the Good Friday Agreement 1998, it remains stubbornly high in the public housing stock. The analysis draws on a series of stakeholder interviews to highlight the contradictory politics, sectarianism and resource competition embedded in the rollout of the initiative. It concludes by identifying the value of spatial encounter beyond binary identities in creating a deeper awareness of the relationship between both segregation and poverty and mixing and wealth in the post-conflict city. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Each individual's primary objective is to secure its own self. Keeping this in mind makes it worth noting how difficult it may be to convey meanings and feelings to the group. How is the dilemma met instead of experiencing individual therapy having to share one space with up to eight other individuals? And what exactly do we have in mind when speaking of an analytic space? Does it actually exist or is it simply the product of group-interaction? Which challenges would need to be taken before individual space could transform into shared space? Is it noteworthy that the possible value of group therapy may lay within creating a shared space? And which impact could the capacity to absorb new members have on the state of the shared space? I would like to emphasize the area of conflict arising from relief and burden through sharing the same analytic space and will try to show its relevance with the help of theoretical issues and my own case material. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

If urban design aims to influence sociality in public urban space, a nuanced understanding of the dialectic relationship of the social and the spatial matters. Especially in street design, this relationship is frequently presented in a simplified and unidirectional way, with the spatial producing the social. Design experiments often lack to fully recognize the role of users in influencing socio-spatiality in public urban spaces. This paper meets this lack and applies a geosemiotic approach to explore socio-spatiality on a central urban square in Oslo, Norway, designed in line with a street design idea called shared space. The paper frames the idea as an experiment aiming to alter the dynamic interrelationship of different semiotic systems, highlighting users' agency in influencing socio-spatiality. The findings contrast most accounts in the literature tending to portray shared spaces as stable and calm traffic schemes. The paper reveals that such streetscapes may support a dynamic and constantly changing, mobile, socio-spatiality, based on permanently changing compositions of users and their distinct ways of interpreting and using the ambiguous environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In colocated multi-user Virtual Reality applications, relative user positions in the virtual environment need to match their relative positions in the physical tracking space. A mismatch between virtual and real relative user positions might lead to harmful events such as physical user collisions. This paper examines three calibration methods that enable colocated Virtual Reality scenarios for SLAM-tracked head-mounted displays without the need for an external tracking system. Two of these methods—fixed-point calibration and marked-based calibration—have been described in previous research; the third method that uses hand tracking capabilities of head-mounted displays is novel. We evaluated the accuracy of these three methods in an experimental procedure with two colocated Oculus Quest devices. The results of the evaluation show that our novel hand tracking-based calibration method provides better accuracy and consistency while at the same time being easy to execute. The paper further discusses the potential of all evaluated calibration methods.

• A measure was applied to encourage pedestrians to keep left when crossing, and to promote channelisation between pedestrians versus cyclists/ES riders. • The impact of the treatment was examined by intercept perception survey and naturalistic observations of trajectory movements via video analysis. • Conflict levels with oncoming traffic agents were reduced. • Pedestrians increased their crossing speeds. On a signalised crossing of a junction, large bidirectional flows of pedestrians, cyclists and e-scooter (ES) riders would converge and interact with each other in a confined space over a short time interval during each signal-enabled crossing stage. Such shared space interaction has hardly been researched. We experimented with a measure that encourages pedestrians' "keep left" behaviour while promoting channelisation between pedestrians versus cyclists/ES riders. The impact of the treatment was examined by intercept perception survey and naturalistic observations of trajectory movements via video analysis. The findings showed that pedestrians adopted better keep-left discipline after the treatment, which consequently reduced their perceived conflict levels with other oncoming traffic agents on the crossing which increased their crossing speed. Cyclists and ES riders also indicated lower conflict levels when pedestrian movements on the crossing become more predictable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

High-resolution trajectory data from the intersection shared space (ISS) is an ideal resource for testing autonomous driving and studying microscopic traffic flow theory in urban road traffic environments. It is common to use computer vision (CV) technologies to extract trajectory data from camera recordings at the ISS. However, it is challenging to accurately extract non-motorized (NONM) trajectories due to vehicle occlusion and mutual interference, which cause trajectory noise and missing. This study proposed a novel NONM trajectory reconstruction method, which integrates the social force model with the particle filter to reduce trajectory noise. The approach was tested on trajectories extracted from two advanced CV algorithms (ie, Yolov7 and MASK RCNN), and its performance was compared with seven SOTA methods. The results show that the proposed method achieved a much better RMSE (0.6 meters) than both the baseline (unprocessed CV trajectories, the RMSE is 1.16 meters) and selected SOTA methods (the best RMSE is 0.78 meters). The contribution of the study is to enhance the classical noise reduction algorithm by introducing the driving interaction model; ablation experiments and sensitivity analysis further demonstrate the importance of the driving interaction model in reducing trajectory noise and the stability of the method. The approach also includes an LSTM-Hungarian part to make up the missing trajectory. The proposed method is expected to serve as a useful post-processing tool for current CV algorithms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]