Research Questions#

(filed under Thesis).

As is probably always the case - particularly in social sciences, art and design -, the exact framing and phrasing of my Research Questions was subject to ongoing challenge and reformulation throughout the PhD. The final version that made it to the thes is the following:

Situating my investigation at the confluence of inclusive urbanism, open-source technologies and methods, eco-social innovation and service design, I defined my Research Question (RQ) in the following terms: ‘How can practices of reuse contribute to reimagining and reshaping the way cities handle excess materials – from industry-oriented waste management to community-based practices of local waste prevention?’ The RQ unfolds and can be explored through a series of complementary approaches:

1. Who are the potential stakeholders of community-based waste prevention, how is their behaviour, and how do they interact with each other and with other entities?
2. What skills, methods, techniques, information, and technology can help increase the proportion of materials currently being reused in cities and regions?
3. How to expand practices of reuse in cities through policy-making and cooperative- and commons-based systems?

My methodology then involved diverse studies and approaches to respond to and expand on the RQ above.