Prof Laura Vaughan
The Bartlett School of Graduate Studies is the source of some of the most outstanding minds and most influential research in the field of the built environment. Our work tackles some of the greatest challenges facing mankind, in areas such as health, sustainable cities and human well-being. We are part of The Bartlett: UCL's global faculty of the built environment.
Profile
Biography
Laura Vaughan completed a Bachelor of Design at the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design, Jerusalem in 1989. She worked at Shlomo Aronson Landscape Architects, Town Planners and Architects as a designer and as an illustrator for David Kroyanker books on the architecture of Jerusalem. Laura returned to London in 1992 and her Master of Science degree in Advanced Architectural Studies was completed in 1994 at the Bartlett, UCL. In parallel to her EPSRC funded PhD in Architecture, completed 1999, she worked as a Research Associate and Company Secretary at Space Syntax Limited (a UCL knowledge transfer spin out). Laura joined UCL’s Space research group in 2001. She was promoted to Senior Lecturer in 2007 and to Professor of Urban Form and Society in 2011. Dr Vaughan was elected a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society in 2005 and is a member of the Space Syntax Limited Scientific Advisory Committee and the International Space Syntax Steering Committee. She has been a Co-Director of the UCL Environment Institute since 2010. In addition to her extensive research and teaching activities, Laura is regularly invited to disseminate knowledge to industry, policy-makers and the general public. She has created a website on Mapping the East End Labyrinth for Museum of London and has contributed to several programmes on BBC radio and television.
Research Summary
Laura Vaughan is a member of the EPSRC Platform and industry funded Space Research Group at UCL Bartlett School of Graduate Studies. Her research stems from a concern with the challenges posed by an increasingly urbanised society. In collaboration with colleagues she uses space syntax to study the relationship between micro- and macro- scales of urban form and society and to this end has been collaborating with geographers, historians and social scientists for nearly a decade. The aim of this interdisciplinary work is to be able address the inherent complexity of the urban environment both theoretically and methodologically. She has an extensive track record of funded research into immigrant settlement patterns, poverty areas and suburban town centres and has published over seventy articles, book chapters and papers on these subjects.
Past and planned research into the fine grain detail of the urban environment - and the focus on social-economic activity across many scales - all contribute to the discourse on ‘place’ in geography and planning. Current methodological development using spatially-related social data and the ability to scale up and down from the particular to the general and back again is an essential part of modelling cities that until now has been primarily a theoretical and technical possibility, rather than one applied in a real-life context. The aim is to develop a better understanding of the processes by which the spatial structure of human settlement patterns develop over time.
Academia.edu page: http://ucl.academia.edu/LauraVaughan
Personal Blog: http://urbanformation.wordpress.com/
Research outputs
| Urbanity, discontinuity and diversity: the significance of place in Jewish East London | - | Vaughan L |
| A village within the city: an historical reading of the emergence of spatial diversity in West Village, New York 1850-2011 | - | Palaiologou G,Vaughan L |
| Suburban 'Hedgerows': how suburban centres foster diversity over time | - | Vaughan LS,Griffiths S,Jeevendrampillai D,Dhanani A,Carlisle R |
| Have the reports of the high street’s “death” been greatly exaggerated? | - | Vaughan LS |
| The emergence of urban diversity over time: a configurational analysis | - | VAUGHAN L |
| The nature of suburbia - change and continuity | - | VAUGHAN L |
| The intrinsically social logic of cities | - | Vaughan LS |
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