Marjan Khaleghi
Research
My research focuses on the relationship between people, the built environment, and wider urban systems, with particular interest in how environmental conditions shape people’s experiences, choices, movement, and well-being. My earlier research drew on socio-ecological approaches to examine travel behaviour and the multiple levels of influence surrounding individual choices. This systemic perspective continues to inform my work on urban transformation.
At NTNU, much of my research has focused on operationalising and further developing the New European Bauhaus-inspired Impact Model through participatory and analytical approaches. I developed the NEB Impact Model Dominoes Game and corresponding workshop methodology to bring together stakeholders with different forms and levels of agency, identify co-benefits and potential conflicts across urban transformation objectives, and facilitate conversations around shared priorities and impacts. The methodology has subsequently been applied and adapted across several European projects and contexts, including Re-Value, CrAFt, NEB-STAR, ENHANCE+, and Afurada Living Lab (EEA Grants). The game was launched professionally at the Cities Mission Conference in Vilnius in May 2025, where around 250 physical game units were distributed.
Within Re-Value, where I lead Work Package 1 on the Impact Model and Innovation Cycles, this work has evolved from individual city workshops into a multi-level synthesis of transformation processes across nine European waterfront cities. Drawing on Impact Model workshops, Innovation Cycle activities, Sister Spaces, city implementation experiences, and other project outputs, I developed city-specific, action-oriented representations of transformation journeys connecting local ambitions and actions with impacts, co-benefits, enabling conditions, and implementation needs. This work culminated in an aggregated transformation journey across the nine Re-Value cities and a taxonomy of recurring actions, ambitions, enablers, and associated impacts. The results are presented in the Re-Value Impact Model (final version) report.
Building on this research trajectory and my earlier work on travel behaviour and socio-ecological systems, I am currently coordinating the development of Neighbourhood in Motion (Ne-Mo), a Horizon Europe Research and Innovation Action proposal. Ne-Mo investigates how neighbourhood environments are experienced and perceived by inhabitants, and how lived experience can be connected with spatial and environmental evidence to inform neighbourhood transformation.