*2.2. Methodology*

This research was carried out at the Faculty of Architecture, University of Montenegro, within the semester course Urban Design Project 2016/17. Under the supervision of a professor and associates, 15 postgraduate students were included in the study.

The study was articulated with the goal of regenerating the central core of Podgorica through a creative urban planning design in the context of socio-spatial sustainability. Primarily on the basis of the subjective perceptions of users and students of architecture, for the 12 streets of Mirkova Varoš, we obtained objective criteria for the physical regeneration of the case study area.

Lynch points out the importance of perception as a two-way process between the observer and the environment-built structure—i.e., the interaction between a person and the city, stimulus, perception and cognition of a space [38,61]. In the cognition of a space, the observer goes through four stages: cognitive (thought sorting and archiving of data), a ffective (involving feelings a ffecting perception), interpretive (linking and comparing with one's own "database" of previous experiences), and evaluative (forming "opinions" or values of a space) [62]. The richness of the multidimensional aspects of experiencing a space is one of the main goals in the urban design process [61]. A series of mental images and "experiences" (feelings) are formed by the observer based on stimuli that receptors of the observer take in from the environment to form a sensory image-experience [38,63,64].

This study o ffers 12 specific urban street solutions developed by architecture students, with the goal of promoting the sustainable regeneration of streets through physical creative intervention. The ultimate goal of this study is to promote the concrete impact of physical transformations in a space—the influence of "small" urban design interventions that, in accordance with the needs of users (social beings), can shape a space that activates human senses and interacts with local processes and global requirements.
