City Rhythms: An Approach to Urban Rhythm Analysis

This chapter presents the results of the exploratory study City Rhythm, a project of the Deft University of Technology, in collaboration with AMS Institute and six cities in the Netherlands. City Rhythm constructed different rhythmanalyses by combining social sciences and architecture methodologies such as interviewing techniques and visualisations, for analysing social issues related with sense of safety in neighbourhoods. Examples for carried out case studies are integrating migrants in a residential area (The Hague); motivating older people to go out of their homes (Rotterdam); identifying why single mothers do not make use of the facilities that are provided to them (Amsterdam); changing perception about youngsters who socialize in the open every day (Zaanstad); and enhancing the atmosphere in a specific street and square (Helmond and Zoetermeer), from the perspective of trust (Nevejan 2009, Nevejan 2012). It will be argued that the results indicate that rhythmanalysis in societal contexts can function as boundary object in policymaking processes.