19 May Public Space China | The nightmare of case study selection
Posted at 02:32h
in Minh Nguyen' PhD
Selecting case studies is no doubt an essential task in any research. Senior researchers might find it easy, but for a young architect like me, conducting a field survey for a research project in urban design, was not that easy, in fact, it took me a few months of consideration to come up with a list of 20 and then only 13 possible case studies.
For my situation in 2013, it was even worst, because I haven’t been to China once before. Without Google, Baidu, Open Street Map, and many good friends and Chinese researchers, this task is a mission impossible.
So, the interactive graph above introduces 13 case studies for my PhD research project. By clicking on each node you will see the Name, City, Suburb, and the Area of each case study. Each public space was observed on two days from 7 am – 7 pm. In total, we have 12 rounds, mapping down nearly 10 thousand people including the elderly, young, and children. These 10 thousand people are helpful for me to see the underlining patterns, logics that somehow explain why some areas are highly preferred, and in contrast why some areas are largely ignored even with a great provision of amenities and facilities.
Minh Nguyen
NOTE
- Click on each node to see the profile of each space
- If you want to read more about my PhD’ research, here is the LINK
- I am very grateful for the endless support of my supervisors, Prof. Diane Brand and Prof Jule Moloney, and Prof Marc Schabel
- I also owl a great debt to Dr. Kai Gu who examined my thesis and provided great feedback for further refinement