*1.5. Research Directions*

The study is based on three main research directions:

Level I: The interactions between users and places, including the identification of local and global communication, engagemen<sup>t</sup> of visual, auditory and tactile perceptions, and sustainability of local aspirations in the era of consumerism;

Level II: The interaction between a place and the city system, including the socio-physical integration of places into the urban system;

Level III: The interaction between local process and global flows, including the level of spatial flexibility, thereby balancing the communication and establishment of an equilibrium between real and material values and the needs of the information age.

The initial research relates to the theoretical background and issues of preserving traditional spatial values, as well as the needs of users in the age of information, and contemporary environmental and technological capabilities. Three identified levels of interaction in the development of new spatial and social values in a particular street's micro space were articulated through creative urban regeneration of the case study streets via the method of creative urban design. Existing fragmented, dominantly inactive material contents can be regenerated into new, physical, dynamic, perceptually attractive programs that promote a high level of spatial–social connections. Road traffic, as the dominant catalyst for such processes, should lose its primacy in favour of more sensitive forms of networking and interaction, which promote functional, aesthetic, ecological, creative, and interactive comfort both within the street, and in interaction with the wider material and immaterial context. These changes include flexible small-scale architectural and urban interventions, creative checkpoints, new art programs, parterre and green areas and zones, attractive street fronts, and new spatial impulses, which are supplemented to a certain extent with digital information algorithms that promote global spatial-social networking.
