Dr Neil Turnbull

(he/him)

B.Arch (Hons), Dip.Arch, MA, PhD

Publication

• Date
• Type

Research

My research interests combine urban design, planning and urban geography with a focus on action to protect and enhance communities and neighbourhoods. I combine a broadly non-foundational pragmatist approach to knowledge whilst acknowledging critical theory. I use a range of methods engaging with quantitative and qualitative data to assemble understandings of urban transformation and draw on participatory methods.

This work is focused spatially on community infrastructures (including private and public community places) and urban neighbourhoods. I draw on a range of conceptual frameworks to make sense of the process at play across these sites including, urban practices of care and care ethics, community ownership, participation and action research, community activism, gentrification, austerity, and neoliberalism.

Most recently, I have been involved as lead researcher carrying out policy work with housing equality charity Tai Pawb for Gwent local authorities to assess the demand for, and experiences of existing, LGBTQ+ homeless services. This project won the LGBTQ+ Champion / Initiative or Campaign of the Year at the WalesOnline Diversity & Inclusion Awards 2022. This work has evolved into a pilot project to explore the extent of community infrastructure for LGBTQ+ people in situations of homelessness across the UK.

My recent PhD thesis also centred on scrutiny of community infrastructures focusing on emergent processes of community action related to Community Asset Transfer (CAT). This involved a UK survey of CAT practice, case study analysis of the rationales behind CAT at local authority level and an in-depth 12-month ethnographic inquiry across three individual sites in a major city in South Wales. This work suggested that CAT generates vulnerable physical and social infrastructure that is simultaneously shot through with logics of co-option, but importantly, can open out spaces of mutualism and care.

My PhD was closely related to prior participatory action research projects. One, ‘Practicing engagement – the value of the Architect in a Community Asset Transfer (CAT)’ with co-researcher Professor Mhairi McVicar (WSA, Cardiff University) focusing on the Grangetown Pavilion, Cardiff - funded by the RIBA Research Trust Awards 2015. Two, ‘Sobreviviencias de un barrio’ [Survival of a neighbourhood], a project supporting a community group impacted by gentrification in Santiago, Chile - funded by the Universidad Andres Bello and the Goethe Institut.

Other research includes work on urban transformations and their impacts in relation to public and community space, including studies of the commercial gentrification of traditional marketplaces, the public and private production of public space, and Privately Owned Public Spaces (POPs).

Teaching

I have held teaching positions at the Faculty of Architecture and Planning, Universidad de Chile, and at the Centre for Urban and Territorial Research (CITU), Universidad Andres Bello, both in Santiago, Chile. I was an associate tutor at the Cardiff School of Education and Social Policy, Cardiff Metropolitan University. I have also taught on under- and post-graduate courses in the School of Geography and Planning and Welsh School of Architecture, Cardiff University.

In 2022/23 I will be teaching on the PGT Masters in Urban Design (MAUD). I will be leading the MAUD Spring Studio CPT911 and co-lead of the MAUD Urban Design Dissertation.

Biography

I have recently joined the Welsh School of Architecture (June 2022) following completion of my PhD at the School of Geography and Planning (GEOPL), Cardiff University.

I worked as an associate tutor at the Cardiff School of Education and Social Policy at Cardiff Metropolitan University (2022) and have taught on under- and post-graduate courses at the WSA and GEOPL (2015-2021). I was a visiting research fellow at the School of Geography, Leeds University, UK (2015) as part of the contested cities project funded by the Marie Curie Action International Staff Exchange Scheme.

Between 2007 and 2014 I lived and worked in Santiago, Chile. I was employed in a variety of roles, including consultancy work for housing charity ‘Un Techo’, a masterplan for the 13,800-hectare ecological reserve ‘Parque Andino Juncal’ in the Chilean Andes, and advice on sustainable urban building codes for the Chilean Ministry for Public Works international competition to redevelop the civic centre in Santiago. Concurrently, I taught at the Universidad de Chile and Universidad Andres Bello where I was able to carry out research into the urban transformation of the city, engage in action research projects and participate in research into public space and gentrification.

Prior to 2007, I worked in architectural practice and led design and construction projects from small scale architectural interventions on micro ‘brownfield’ sites to large scale master plans with an emphasis on community participation and design at Studio Cullinan And Buck Architects Ltd (SCABAL), London. This included working alongside the RIBA Client Design Advisor as part of the Building Schools for the Future (BSF) investment programme. I also worked at EPR architects, London, and Dignan Read Dewar Architects, Edinburgh. I am an ARB registered Architect (RIBA III) with a Dip Arch (RIBA II) and BArch Hons (RIBA I) from Edinburgh College of Art. I spent my final academic year on Erasmus exchange at the Escola Tècnica Superior d’Arquitectura de Barcelona (E.T.S.A.B.) at the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya, (UPC) in Barcelona studying Urbanism and Architecture.

Honours and awards

2022

• Winner (with Tai Pawb) of LGBTQ+ Champion / Initiative of or Campaign of the Year. WalesOnline Diversity & Inclusion Awards 2022.

2020

• Selected for images of research competition, Doctoral Academy, Cardiff University.
• First prize, Poster competition. School of Geography and Planning, Cardiff University.

2019

• Selected for AESOP PhD workshop University of Ferrara, Italy.
• International conference fund, School of Geography and Planning, Cardiff University.

Professional memberships

• ARB registered Architect (since 2004).
• Ordinary committee member of the ‘Participatory Geographies Research Group’ of the Royal Geographical Society.
• Member of ASEOP (Association of European Schools of Planning) Young Academics Network.
• Member of ‘Contested Cities’ an international academic research network of European and Latin American Universities which discusses the neoliberal production of the city and its consequences, with members in UK, Spain, Brazil, Mexico, Argentina and Santiago de Chile.

Academic positions

• 2022: Associate tutor, Cardiff School of Education and Social Policy, Cardiff Metropolitan University, UK.
• 2015-16: Tutor, School of Geography and Planning, and the Welsh School of Architecture, Cardiff University, UK.
• 2015: Visitng Research Fellow, School of Geography, Leeds University, UK.
• 2012-14: Tutor, Faculty of Architecture and Planning (FAU), Universidad de Chile, Santiago, Chile.
• 2008-14: Tutor, Faculty of Architecture, Design and Urban Studies. Universidad Andres Bello. Santiago, Chile.

Committees and reviewing

Language editor

• Revista INVI the journal of the Housing Institute of the University of Chile, including technical language assistance and revision of papers translated from Spanish to English and vice-versa.
• English translator and language copy editor for several native Spanish academic outputs for peer reviewed journals and books (2015 to date).

Referee for Journals

• Journal of International Planning Studies (IPS)
• Revista de Urbanismo, the planning journal of the University of Chile.
• Revista INVI the journal of the Housing Institute of the Universidad de Chile.

• ARQ: Architectural Research Quarterly.

Book reviews

• Invited discussant for book presentation The meanings of the built environment by Federico Bellentani. School of Geography and Planning, Cardiff University, 21 October 2021.

Supervisions

I am interested in supervising PhD students in the following areas:

This work is spatially focused on community infrastructures (including private and public community places) and urban neighbourhoods. I draw on a range of conceptual frameworks to make sense of the process at play across these sites including, urban practices of care and care ethics, community ownership, participation and action research, community activism, gentrification, austerity, and neoliberalism.

• Community infrastructures (both place-based and communities of interest).
• Urban practices of care and care ethics
• Queer space
• Community participation and action research
• Community ownership
• Impacts and resistance to urban austerity and neoliberalism

Please contact me to discuss your proposals.