convivial-urban-spaces-creating-effective-public-spaces.pdf

ConvivialUrban Spaces

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ConvivialUrban Spaces

Creating Effective Public Places

Henry Shaftoe

London • Sterling,VA

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First published by Earthscan in the UK and USA in 2008

Copyright © Henry Shaftoe, 2008

All rights reserved

ISBN: 978-1-84407-388-7Typeset by Fish BooksPrinted and bound in the UK by Cromwell Press,TrowbridgeCover design by Rob Watts

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Shaftoe, Henry.Convivial urban spaces : creating effective public places / Henry Shaftoe.

p. cm.Includes bibliographical references.ISBN 978-1-84407-388-7 (hardback)1. Public spaces. 2. City planning—Social aspects. 3. Architecture—Human factors. I.Title.NA9053.S6S53 2008711’.4—dc22

2008001743

The paper used for this book is FSC-certified and elemental chlorine-free. FSC (the Forest Stewardship Council) is an international network to promote responsible management of the world’s forests.

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1 Introduction .......................................................................................................1■ Overview.................................................................................................................................................................1■ Discussion................................................................................................................................................................4■ Defining Convivial Spaces ..............................................................................................................................6

2 Public Spaces – Why Have Them and Who Are They For? .........................11■ Why Have Public Space and Who Is It For? ....................................................................................11■ Securing an Inclusive or Exclusive Urban Realm ...........................................................................16■ Children and Public Space ..........................................................................................................................33■ Addressing the Use of Public Space by Young People...............................................................39

3 What Makes a Space Convivial? ....................................................................47■ Principles and Underpinnings....................................................................................................................47■ The Psychology of Public Space..............................................................................................................51■ Aesthetics – Sensing the Character of an Area.............................................................................56■ Important Influences on the Use of Public Space........................................................................64■ Size, Shapes and Types of Public Space...............................................................................................73

4 How Can One Create and Sustain Successful Public Spaces? ...................81■ Designed or Evolved? ....................................................................................................................................81■ Case Study: Ciutat Vella, Barcelona ............................................................................................................88■ Comfort.................................................................................................................................................................92■ Case Study: Berlin ............................................................................................................................................107■ Joy...........................................................................................................................................................................111■ Case Study: Bristol ...........................................................................................................................................122■ Managing and Maintaining Public Spaces.........................................................................................125■ Case Study: Padua...........................................................................................................................................130■ Case Study:York................................................................................................................................................134

Conclusion:The Constituents of Conviviality.............................................139

References and Bibliography ........................................................................145

Index ...............................................................................................................151

Contents

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vi

Acknowledgements

All photographs are by the author, unless otherwise acknowledged.

I would like to thank the following people who have helped, in various ways, with the researchand production of this book:Tamsine O’Riordan, Michele Lavelle, Francesc Guillen, ClaraQuintana, Lorenzo Segato and Jamie Roxburgh.

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1

CHAPTER ONE

Introduction

OverviewWhy, when we have more overall wealthwith which to potentially enrich spaces andplaces for citizens to enjoy, have we oftenproduced built environments that are blandor ill-conceived for public use and, in somecases, positively unpleasant?

What kind of public spaces do people preferto be in? This book aims to tease out whatgives some places ‘personality’ and‘conviviality’, so that we can learn from thepast and present to design, maintain andmanage better quality built environments infuture.

This is not just an urban design book, nor is it a social policy book ormanagement guide – in fact it is a bit of all three plus some more.The

challenge in creating and maintaining successful public spaces is to achievean integrated approach, which includes design and management set withinthe broader context of urban policy. Many books have been written aboutpublic space from a design (usually visual) point of view and some bookshave been written from a policy viewpoint. I have undertaken the ratherdaunting task of straddling several disciplines, because I feel that only bytaking this multifaceted approach will we succeed in producing moreconvivial spaces. As Ken Worpole, one of the most prolific and perceptivewriters about public space, observes: ‘Given the deep social and economicnature of the circumstances that underpin or undermine a vibrantcommunity and public space culture, it is clear that design or architecturealone cannot solve these problems, though in many places there is still apretence that they can’ (quoted in Gallacher 2005 p11).

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Drawing on theory, research and illustratedcase studies, this book identifies the factorsthat draw people to certain places. In the1960s and 70s there was considerablepublished discussion about whatdifferentiates livable urban environmentsfrom unpleasant (and subsequentlyproblematic) ones (see for example Jacobs1961, Cullen 1961, Rapoport 1977).Thisimportant debate about the form and natureof successful spaces and places appears tohave been superseded by narrower technicaldiscussions about physical sustainability,security, management and aesthetics.

Many studies of the urban fabric (including anumber written by this author) start with ananalysis of what is wrong, but this book willalso look at what is right and see if there areany replicable formulas for successful publicspaces and places.

2 Convivial Urban Spaces

Figure 1 Unconvivial: Dublin docks arearedevelopment

Figure 2 Unconvivial: Causewayside, Edinburgh


Introduction 3

Figure 3 Convivial: Freiburg, Southern Germany

Figure 4 Convivial: Camden Lock, London


DiscussionI have spent most of my professional careerworking in or visiting the most unpopularand degrading parts of towns and cities, in an(often futile) attempt to help them improve.But in my travels to many towns and citiesboth here and abroad I have also tried tolook at the flip side – what it is about someplaces that makes me feel good in them?

There has been a recent interest in making‘better public places’, emanating both fromthe British Government (e.g. through theirsupport for the Commission for Architecturein the Built Environment [CABE]) and thebuilt environment professions (e.g. the UrbanDesign Group). In America, the drive forbetter place-making is spearheaded by theNew York-based Project for Public Spaces

and we now have the European Centre onPublic Space driving a similar agenda on thisside of the Atlantic.This has led to variousguides on ‘place-making’ (e.g. the Good PlaceGuide and various CABE briefings). But thisguidance is based on what professionaldesigners consider a good place. Lessresearch has been undertaken into whatordinary citizens want from their publicspaces and what they perceive as goodplaces to be in (i.e. convivial spaces).Thisbook is based on a multidisciplinaryunderstanding of what makes certain publicspaces more successful than others anddraws on user feedback as well asprofessional opinion and academic research.I have coined the term ‘convivial spaces’ todescribe open, public locations (usually squaresor piazzas) where citizens can gather, linger orwander through. In some cases, such as Stroget


Figure 5 Siena, Italy


(the famous ‘walking street’) in Copenhagen,streets and their associated open areas can beconvivial spaces.‘Convivial’ is defined indictionaries as ‘festive, sociable, jovial and fondof merry-making’, usually referring to people,but it can equally apply to a situation. Famously,Ivan Illich used the term in the title of hisseminal work Tools for Conviviality. Places wherepeople can be ‘sociable and festive’ are theessence of urbanity.

Without such convivial spaces, cities, townsand villages would be mere accretions ofbuildings with no deliberate opportunitiesfor casual encounters and positiveinteractions between friends or strangers.The trouble is that too many urbandevelopments do not include such convivialspaces, or attempts are made to design themin, but fail miserably.

However, convivial public spaces are morethan just arenas in which people can have ajolly good time; they are at the heart ofdemocratic living (Carr et al 1992) and areone of the few remaining loci where we canencounter difference and learn tounderstand and tolerate other people(Worpole and Greenhalgh 1996).Withoutgood urban public spaces, we are likely todrift into an increasingly privatized andpolarized society, with all its concomitantproblems. Despite some improvements inurban development during the last couple ofdecades, we still produce many tracts ofsoulless urban fabric that may deliver thebasic functional requirements of shelter, workand leisure but are socially unsustainable andlikely generators of future problems.

Introduction 5

Figure 6 Brent, North London


There are far too many sterile plazas andwindswept corners that are spaces left overfrom another function (such as trafficcirculation or natural lighting requirementsfor tall buildings).This phenomenon issometimes referred to as ‘SLOAP’ – spaceleft over after planning. Urban land is at apremium, so in a profit-orientated society,space where people can just loaf around isnot seen as a financial priority. Furthermore,contemporary worries about security,litigation and ‘stranger danger’ result in theurban realm becoming increasingly privatizedand controlled.

Some town centres (e.g. Dallas,Texas) andsuburbs have more or less given up oninformal communal spaces altogether, on thepresumed basis that they are costly tomanage and might attract the wrong kind ofperson or usage.This privatized retreat hasreached its apotheosis in the ‘gatedcommunity’ where no one, apart fromresidents and their approved guests, isallowed to enter. Can such places begenuinely described as ‘civilized’?

In this book I suggest that there is no singleblueprint for a convivial space, but there doseem to be some common elements, whichmay be broadly categorized under theheadings of physical (including design andpractical issues), geographical (location),managerial, sensual (meaning how a spacedirectly affects one or more of our fivesenses) and psychological (how the spaceaffects our mind and spirit).

The book is structured to flow from thetheoretical and political to the practical. Soearly sections cover the whys andwherefores of public space before movingon to principles and then some specificproposals and examples.

Defining ConvivialSpacesFrancis Tibbalds, in his seminal work MakingPeople-friendly Towns (1992), suggests thatsuch places should consist of ‘a rich, vibrant,mixed-use environment, that does not die atnight or at weekends and is visuallystimulating and attractive to residents andvisitors alike’. John Billingham and RichardCole, in their Good Place Guide (2002), chosecase studies that answered affirmatively tothe following questions: ‘Is the placeenjoyable – is it safe, human in scale, with avariety of uses? Is it environmentally friendly– sunlit, wind and pollution-free? Is itmemorable and identifiable – distinctive? Is itappropriate – does it relate to its context? Isaccess freely available?’

Given that many convivial places seem tohave grown organically through anaccumulation of adaptations and additions,can we design such places at the drawingboard? Critics of formal architecture andplanning such as Bernard Rudofsky(Architecture without Architects [1964]) andChristopher Alexander (The Timeless Way of



Building [1979], A Pattern Language [1977])suggest that we are better off ‘growing’ goodplaces and spaces, rather than trying to buildthem from a blueprint – this is discussed in‘Designed or Evolved?’ in Chapter 4 (page81).There are some ancient and modernexamples to suggest that it is possible todesign convivial places as a whole, but theytend to be relatively small in scale.The post-1947 culture of master-planning whole urbanareas is less likely to accommodate the finegrain, local nuance and adaptability that seemto be at the root of convivial places.

You may disagree with me about the kind ofplaces that are convivial; you may enjoy thebuzz of a much more hard-edged, clean andsymmetrical environment, such as CanaryWharf (London) or La Défense (Paris).Youmay even enjoy spending time wanderingaround the closely supervised and sanitizedspaces of out-of-town shopping malls such asCribbs Causeway near Bristol and Bluewaterin Kent; many do, but for what reasons? Andwhy do other people loathe such places?There are many such questions to beanswered about the effect of different placeson different people.

The rest of this book attempts to unpackthe various factors and observations,outlined above, that constitute convivialspaces. By understanding what theingredients of a successful public space are,we should be able to create more goodones, avoid constructing more bad ones andremedy some of the already existing badones. I recognize that good urban design is a

crucial factor in all this, but unlike manybooks on the subject, I also stress thesignificance of management and geographyand how all these objective factors affect oursenses and psychology. Ultimately, convivialityis a subjective feeling, underpinned by, butnot to be confused with, the actual physicalstate of a place.

This book is not an exercise in cosynostalgia. Examples will be given ofcomparatively recent ‘unplanned’ places thathave considerable ‘personality’ and recentdevelopments or redevelopments that havetranscended the sterility of many modernbuilt environments. Although arguing for amore humane approach to urbandevelopment that encourages positivesocial interaction, this is not based only onthe author’s whims but aims to bescientifically balanced and academicallyrigorous, based on a multidisciplinaryunderstanding of the functioning andperception of the built environment,drawing on theory and research fromenvironmental psychology, sociology,anthropology and urban design.

Because of my background, experience andcultural heritage, I mostly refer to urbanspaces in Europe. It could be claimed thatEurope has the longest history and mostsophisticated experience of designedpublic spaces (from classical Greece andthe Roman Empire onwards), but thiswould be to downplay the importance ofpublic spaces in all cultures andcivilizations. Africa, India and the Far East

Introduction 7


all offer historic examples of fine andpopular public spaces, suggesting that theneed for convivial space is fundamental tohuman nature:

You will also notice that many of thephotographs of people’s behaviour in publicspaces have been taken in my adoptedhome town of Bristol.This is purelyopportunistic insofar as I regularly havereason to walk through the streets andsquares of Bristol and I always carry acamera in case of a chance encounter. Andas Edmund Bacon (1975) says: ‘Only throughendless walking can the designer absorb intohis being the true scale of urban spaces’(p20). I would argue that the way people usethe public spaces of Bristol are notfundamentally different to how they woulduse them in Newcastle or Rotterdam, forexample, so I am not apologetic about usingso many images from my locality.

What follows is therefore a primarily British-focused, Eurocentric influenced, but I hopenot xenophobic, account of urban publicspace.


Figure 7 Marrakech, North Africa

Source: Kathryn Smith

Figure 8 Campo Santa Margarita,Venice – Europeanconviviality exemplified


In terms of structure, the book aims to flowfrom the theoretical and general to thepractical and specific. However, with such amultifaceted subject, there is bound to besome overlapping and arbitrary ordering ofinformation and discussion. One thing thatwill become immediately apparent is thesheer number of photographs – a deliberateploy, on the basis that photographs can oftentell you much more about public space thanany amount of text could. I also hope thatyou will find inspiration (or in some caseswarning) from the sheer wealth of fascinatingpublic spaces that proliferate in so manycountries.You will note that (with theexception of some photos of unsuccessfulspaces) nearly all the photographs havemany people in them.

This, to me, is the ‘litmus test’ of conviviality –successful spaces have people lingering inthem. Ultimately, public spaces are aboutpeople.This may sound like a platitude, butthere are still administrations and designerswho do not keep this as their central focus,with the result that we end up withimpressive or monumental spaces that aremostly empty or underused.What a wasteof space!

The main body of the book is divided intothree sections.The first section argues thecase for having public space and discussesthe social policies that affect the kind ofpublic spaces we have.The second sectioncovers the theories and principles thatinfluence the way we design and managepublic spaces.The third section aims to be amore practical one, suggesting how we mightapply our knowledge to create or maintain‘convivial urban spaces’.The five case studiesaim to illustrate many of the points raised inthe various sections.

Introduction 9

Figure 9 Oval Basin: part of the new Cardiff Bayredevelopment – nice big space, but where are thepeople?



11

Why Have PublicSpace and Who Is It For?

Reports of the death of public space haveproven to be premature. As Kayden

(2005) notes: ‘Corporeal public space has oflate taken something of an intellectualbeating in a world currently fascinated bycyber-public-space and chastened bydeclining civic virtues. Academic conferencesnow ask the question, is public space dead?Yet any observer of city streets andsidewalks understands that urban residents,employees and visitors are not ready just yetto abandon physical space for more esotericworlds’ (p136). Indeed it could just bebecause of the ascendancy of virtual realitiessuch as Sim City and Second Life thatpeople crave real encounters with other realpeople in real environments. After all,humans are a highly sociable species, on thewhole, and the company of others seems tobe fundamental to our sense of existenceand belonging. However sophisticated the

simulations of cyberspace become, they areunlikely to be a total substitute for the buzzand unpredictability of real life being playedout 360 degrees around you.

I should clarify what I intend to concentrateon in this book. Public urban space can covera wide variety of situations, including libraries,community centres and parks (see forexample Mean and Tims 2005). However, Iintend to concentrate predominantly onsmall-scale open spaces in towns – squares,piazzas, plazas, pocket parks and some kindsof street – the kind of places that WilliamWhyte (1980) focused on for hisgroundbreaking study in New York. I amconscious that for a public space to be real ithas to be used. As Worpole and Greenhalgh(1996) point out, many designers andarchitects regard public space as the publiclyowned empty bits between buildings. Manyof these spaces are useless or dangerous andabandoned, with the result that ‘this renderstheir definition as public space null and void’(p14).

CHAPTER TWO

Public Spaces – Why HaveThem and Who Are They For?Public Space is the playground of society;the public realm is the playground in which society reinvents itself.

Bunschoten 2002 p6


Why, if public spaces are so potentiallyproblematic, do we bother to have them atall? This is where we enter the big concernsof social policy. In an increasingly privatizedworld, driven by free-market economics,indeed public space can be seen assomewhat of a liability, unless it can be usedas a locus for selling and consumption.However, many commentators over the years(including Lewis Mumford, Richard Sennettand Ken Worpole, to name but a few) haveclaimed that successfully functioning publicspace is fundamental to the furtherance ofdemocracy and civilized life. Indeed Worpoleand Greenhalgh (1996) claim that: ‘Publicspace, we would argue, is now of centralpolitical importance to questions ofsustainable, equitable and enriching urban life’(p25).

Large claims indeed – surely public spacesare no more than that – places where thegeneral public are allowed? But it has beennoted by many that public spaces areimportant for health, wellbeing, learning,conflict resolution, tolerance and solidarity, tomention but a few benefits. Little wonderthat governments from the extremes of thepolitical spectrum, whether totalitarian orfree-marketeers, find public space potentiallyproblematic.

Health and wellbeing

Urban public spaces offer obvious healthbenefits insofar as city residents and workerscan get fresh air and exercise in them.Thisrequirement for healthy spaces accessible to

urban residents and workers is becomingcritical in the light of increasing levels of heartdisease and obesity, resulting from moresedentary lifestyles (National Heart Forum etal 2007,Ward Thompson and Travlou 2007).There is also a suggestion that they canpromote mental health and wellbeing too(see for example Guite et al 2006,Greenspace Scotland 2004). Possibly as aresult of our evolutionary heritage, humansseem to need both social contact with othersand some access to greenery in order tomaintain psychological balance (see Wilson1984, Kellert and Wilson 1993), both beingprovided by good public spaces.This ispresumably why people go mad when held insolitary confinement and why this is used asthe cruellest form of punishment.There is agrowing view that the success of good socialpolicy should not be measured by economicgains but by improvements in wellbeing andhappiness of citizens (Layard 2005). FinbarBrereton and colleagues at University CollegeDublin, have found that ‘environmental andurban conditions’ are critical to people’s senseof wellbeing: ‘Location specific factors areshown to have a direct impact on lifesatisfaction’ (Brereton et al 2006 p2).Therefore well-designed and well-managedpublic spaces could contribute to overallhappiness – surely a satisfactory end in itselfand the ultimate goal of enlightened policy?

Learning

Insofar as effective public spaces are arenasfor the ‘theatre of everyday life’ they offerconsiderable social learning opportunities.



Because by definition they are universallyaccessible, they offer one of the fewopportunities for people to directlyencounter other people with differentnorms, behaviours and cultures. So, forexample, in the same city-centre space,skateboarders may be observed by officeworkers on their lunch-break and people ofdifferent ethnicities and abilities can share abench.

People can thus learn about what makes uptheir society and how other people can havedifferent attitudes, backgrounds and values.This contrasts markedly with the experienceof (for example) visiting an IKEA store in anout-of-town shopping mall where one mixeswith a homogeneous but segmented part ofthe population.

In the more formal sense of ‘learning’, publicspaces are often used as arenas foreducation (field visits) and research (theubiquitous interviewer with a clipboard,found in so many urban spaces).

Conflict resolution, tolerance and solidarityElsewhere in this book there is discussionabout the positive aspects of encounteringdifference and potential conflict in publicspace, but suffice to say at this point thattolerance comes from close encounters withother citizens, rather than stereotyping themfrom monocultural enclaves. Public spacesalso offer opportunities to build up a senseof solidarity with your fellow citizens, boththrough ad-hoc encounters and throughorganized events such as festivals anddemonstrations.

Public Spaces – Why Have Them and Who Are They For? 13

Figure 10 Barcelona, Spain


Economic benefits

So much urban policy seems to be driventhese days by the desire to make profitsthat it can be refreshing to claim thatpublic spaces are worth having for purelynon-fiscal reasons. However, convivial placescan also generate financial benefits, bothdirectly through sales of refreshments,market produce and so on, but alsoindirectly by making the towns where theyare located more popular visitorattractions. The transformation of city

centres such as Melbourne in Australia(Gehl and Gemzoe 2001) and Glasgow inScotland and their subsequent increases intourist visits are at least partly attributableto improvements in their public spaces. Inits 2004 reports ‘Please Walk on the Grass’and ‘Does Money Grow on Trees?’ CABESpace argues that, as well as social andenvironmental value, good public spacesincrease property values and are good forbusiness.


Figure 11 St Enoch’s Square, Glasgow


Urban security

A later chapter will go into detail aboutcrime and safety in public spaces, but at thisstage it is worth pointing out that well-usedconvivial places are the alternative todowntown areas abandoned to criminals andthe socially rejected, as has happened in anumber of US cities.This is based on thetheories of having ‘eyes on the street’, firstespoused by Jane Jacobs (1961) and thepresence of ‘capable guardians’ (see Felsonand Clarke 1998), i.e. crimes are less likely tooccur if potential offenders are aware thatthere are law-abiding citizens in the areawho could witness, report or intervene.

Democracy

In democratic societies, public spaces are thegathering places where the citizenry canexpress their solidarity and also dissent.Theyare the locations for demonstrations,pamphleteering and soapbox orations; soimportant for grassroots democracy. AsDenis Wood (1981) points out, publicspaces, particularly the less surveyed ones,are where change is fermented and wherecountermeasures are formulated. Nowonder that totalitarian regimes try tocontrol the use of public space by heavypolicing, surveillance and curfews. Famouspublic spaces in non-democratic states (suchas Tiananmen Square, Beijing, Red Square,Moscow and Plaza de la Revolución, Havana)tend to be huge and intimidating, apparentlyexpressing the power of the ruling regimeand the insignificance of individual citizens.

History, politics and the law

I do not intend to reiterate the history ofpublic spaces, when others have done it wellalready (see for example Bacon’s 1975 workand Moughtin’s 1992 introductory chapter);suffice to say that, at least since the ancientGreek agora, open public places have beenat the heart of civilized urban life. Indeed, thequality and extent of urban spaces could beused as a litmus test for the state of varioussocieties’ political health (think of the greatparks of London in the 18th century and thereclaiming of Copenhagen’s streets forpedestrians in the 20th century.) Becausethey are so important in civic life, publicspaces have also been subject to variouslaws and controls, both positive and negative.Positive legislation that has helped to furtherthe provision of public space includes theBritish ‘section 106’ clause, which allows localauthority planning departments to negotiatethe provision of public space as a conditionof awarding planning permission todevelopers, and the similar New York‘incentive zoning’ scheme (see Kayden 2005).Less encouraging legislation usually centresaround the control of public spaces by theuse of surveillance, dispersal orders,exclusion orders, loitering laws and curfews.

In summary, small urban public spaces havehuge social, political and economic value.Theextent to which any town contains suitablyconvivial spaces is a reflection on howcivilized it is.



Securing an Exclusive or Inclusive Urban RealmA crucial influence on whether people willuse or avoid urban public spaces is thedegree to which they feel safe in them.Theactual risk of becoming a victim of crime isusually less than the fear people feel, but it isthe latter that can lead to avoidance. Ironicallythe people who are least at risk of streetcrime (older people and women, forexample) tend to be the most fearful, whileyoung men, those most at risk, are less fearful(or at least pretend to be!) (see Shaftoe2004).The consequence of all this is thatcertain public spaces become monoculturallydominated – Saturday nights in town centres,or parts of parks for example – whichundermines the intention for public spaces tobe democratic places for all. It can also leadto a self-fulfilling prophecy as, in the absenceof the moderating presence of a broad mixof citizens, certain places at certain timesbecome arenas for drunken confrontationand intergroup conflict.

Currently there is a debate about whetherwe should be providing exclusive or inclusivebuilt environments as a means of promotingurban security. On one side are the ‘designingout crime’ proselytizers who seek closureand limitation of use of spaces; on the otherside are the New Urbanists, Urban Villagersand 24 Hour City people who want to‘crowd out crime’ through mixed use andmaximizing activity in public areas.

This debate has become more salient sincethe publication of a raft of government-sponsored reports aimed at informingpractitioners about how to revitalize ourtowns and cities.The reports emanating fromthe Urban Task Force (1999) and thegovernment quango CABE Space (2005)come down firmly in favour of inclusive urbandesign as a means of achieving safer publicspaces, whereas the joint ODPM/HomeOffice-sponsored publication ‘Safer Places’(2004) is much more equivocal, trying (notentirely successfully, some have argued) toreconcile inclusive with exclusive approachesto urban security.

Certain assumptions are made in this debate,about the degree of influence different stylesof urban development can have on crime andoffending.This section will set the debatewithin the broader context of the linksbetween urban design, human behaviour andother social factors that may affect levels ofcrime and feelings of security in the publicrealm. Ultimately there are political choices tobe made about how we invest in developmentand regeneration that will determine whetherwe end up with a predominantly exclusive orinclusive urban realm.



Spot the difference

Both the photographs on this page are ofpublic squares in medium-sized provincialcities. One is a safe place to be in; the other ishostile and the scene of considerable crimeand incivilities.The differences between thesepictures offer a stark illustration of the linksbetween urban security, quality of life and thebuilt environment.A ‘reading’ of these twoimages could suggest that urban security isabout context (geographical), context (socio-economic) and context (cultural).This isbecause, although both squares are about thesame size, surrounded by shops and providedwith communal facilities, there are somecrucial differences that need contextualexplanation. Figure 12 is a peripheral housingestate in Bristol while Figure 13 is of a squarein the heart of an ancient city (Dijon).TheDijon square welcomes a mixed populationof shoppers, visitors and loafers, while theBristol square is only likely to be used by localpeople living on one of the mostdisadvantaged estates in the city.Attempts toredesign the Bristol square (with newshutters, shopfronts, CCTV for safety and apublic seating area) have simply notsucceeded in the face of overwhelmingdeprivation in the surrounding area.

What can be deduced from these picturesalone challenges the notion, proselytized bythe adherents of crime preventionthrough environmental design (CPTED)(see Saville 1996), that you can simply‘design out crime’ either in a hard (physicalsecurity) or soft (natural surveillance vianew urbanism) way. Once you havelooked at the wider geographical, social,economic and demographic context ofany built location, you realize that there arehuge variations in motivations and likelyreasons to commit crime.


Figure 13 Place François Rude, Dijon

Figure 12 Knowle West, Bristol


Design to keep out or bring in?

Given this problem of ‘context’, what designand management policies should we beadopting to make public spaces safer? Or isdesign irrelevant? I don’t think it is, but it is theindirect results of design, such as desirabilityand the types of usage it facilitates, that seemto have as much effect as direct things liketarget-hardening and surveillance. However,this topic area has been both under-evaluatedand mired in political debate about what kindof places we want.

Despite the government’s promotion ofinclusive urban places, often through theCommission for Architecture and the BuiltEnvironment (CABE) (see for exampleODPM 2002, CABE 2004a), on the groundthe default drift seems to be towardsclosure, fortification and exclusion.Theproliferation of gated spaces (see Atkinsonand Blandy 2006), CCTV and private securityare all evidence of this exclusive drift. Itshould be noted too that shopping arcadesand malls are the gated communities of

commerce, with all the pluses and minusesthat this implies (see Gold and Revill 2000).

And the designing out crime brigade are onthe offensive (see for example Town andO’Toole 2005).There has been someresearch into the effectiveness of designingout crime that claims positive outcomes (seefor example Armitage 2000) and obviously,all other things being equal, secured bydesign (SBD) developments will be lessvictimized than non-SBD ones but, in the realworld of urban polarization, all other thingsrarely are equal.

The alternative consists of the developmentof permeable environments with mixed useand plenty of public spaces, in a deliberateattempt (using concepts such as ‘the UrbanVillage’ and ‘place-making’) to build socialcapital and a sense of community (see Neal2003).The trouble is that the securitybenefits of such inclusive urban spaces havebeen hardly researched at all.We are mostlyrelying on gut feeling and faith.


Figure 14 Shopping mall, South Gloucestershire


Inclusive public space – why bother? Given the previous comments about theobvious security improvements achievedthrough fortification and enclosure, whyshould we trouble ourselves with creating ormaintaining public spaces and permeableneighbourhoods? Why not just sealeverything off and discourage people fromwandering around or hanging about in urbanareas? To some extent this is what ishappening in parts of the US and SouthAfrica, for example; and through the use ofdispersal orders and curfews in the UK, thepolice now have powers to exclude youngpeople in particular from streets and publicspaces. However, there is a strong and well-established argument to the contrary – thatthe safest places are well-populated withboth users and casual passers-by whoprovide more ‘eyes on the street’ toinformally police public spaces (Jacobs 1961,Gehl 2003). As Roger Evans recently stated(2006) ‘When a society stops policing itself, ithas failed. If everyone in a society can’t enjoy

all the public spaces within a town then itcan’t police itself. In order to achieve that, weneed a public realm … which is inclusive’(p33).

The argument in favour of inclusive publicspaces goes considerably beyond a narrowfocus on security to include health, wellbeingand even the very nature of ‘civilization’.Richard Sennett (1986) has argued that‘people grow only by the processes ofencountering the unknown’ (p295) and thebest places to encounter difference and theunfamiliar are public spaces, where allsegments of society can cross paths, mingleand be observed.Without this observationand engagement with ‘difference’, Sennettclaims in his book The Uses of Disorder(1973), we are in danger of becomingincreasingly prejudiced and narrow-minded,as we only choose the company of like-minded individuals in our increasinglycocooned daily routines.


Figure 15 Bristol


In a similar vein Louis Mumford (1964)asserted that the function of city publicspaces is ‘… to permit, indeed to encourage,the greatest possible number of meetings,encounters, challenges, between variouspersons and groups, providing as it were astage upon which the drama of social life canbe enacted, with the actors taking their turn,too, as spectators’ (p173).William Whyte(1988) claims that the increases in privatetravel and electronic communication, ratherthan turning us in on ourselves, have actuallystimulated a greater need for face-to-facecontact.We are, after all, a social and sociablespecies and we need affirmative interactionwith other humans for our health andwellbeing.

Finally, there is an economic argument infavour of reviving public space. More peopleon the streets and in squares means morefootfalls past and into shops and cafes.Because ‘people attract people’, cities with alively public realm are more likely to appealto tourists and other visitors.Thetransformation of Melbourne’s public spaces(see Gehl and Gemzoe 2001) is a case inpoint.

Convivial spaces versus hostile placesJan Gehl (2003), an eloquent supporter ofurban public spaces, argues that ‘thedisintegration of living public spaces and thegradual transformation of the street areasinto an area that is of no real interest toanyone is an important factor contributing tovandalism and crime in the streets’ (p78).TheCABE Manifesto for Better Public Spaces(2004a) claims that: ‘Many parks and streetsare so derelict and run down that peoplefeel scared to use them. In contrast, placesthat are well designed and cared for feelsafer and people tend to use them more.’ Sohow do we stop the disintegration of publicspaces and design or ‘grow’ new ones? Morefundamentally, can ‘design’ (in the physicallayout sense) determine or influence thedegree to which a particular urban space isinclusive or exclusive?

Much current policy and practice emanatingfrom the British Government’s crimereduction mandate seems to regard publicspace as a mere arena where various controlmeasures are imposed.The outcome of thisis a series of exclusionary initiativesencouraged by the Home Office (rangingfrom legal controls, such as alcohol bans anddispersal orders, to increased surveillancethrough CCTV and police communitysupport officers) which sometimes seem tobe at odds with the more inclusive ‘urbanrenaissance’ policies espoused by theDepartment for Communities and LocalGovernment (formerly the ODPM). It is



intriguing (and perhaps significant) that thisdichotomy is a mirror of the conflictingdebate in academic and practitioner circlesabout inclusion or exclusion in urban designand security. It could be argued that this is arealistic response, whereby control measuresusing deployment of personnel, formalsurveillance and legal sanctions have to beused to compensate for ‘bad’ physicalinfrastructures that would be too costly toameliorate. Such an argument has been usedin the past to legitimize intense housingmanagement of poorly designed high-risecouncil estates (DoE 1993), but it is notclear whether it is a justifiable argument formore oppressive control of the public realm.

The extent to which we have gone down apath of exclusion and formal control, asopposed to designing in good behaviour, iselaborated below.

Deployment of personnel

The traditional way of keeping ‘undesirables’out of public space, whether these bepotential criminals, vagrants, people who are‘different’, or just other people’s children, isto put someone in a uniform and send themout on patrol.This was done even before thepolice were formed and has seen a recentrevival with the increasing use of privatesecurity firms, street wardens and police


Figure 16 Brent, North London:Chalkhill Estate, now demolished


community support officers. In some affluentareas, standard police patrolling has beenaugmented by private security personnel,paid for by residents’ subscriptions and someshopping malls pay a supplement to the localpolice force to pay for extra patrolling.Thereis now a better understanding, in somequarters, that merely ‘moving people on’ isnot really solving anything. Cities such asCoventry and Sheffield have employeduniformed ‘ambassadors’ whose job is toprovide a welcome and reassurance tovisitors as much as it is to deter offending.

Uniformed patrolling is, at best, a reassurerand a fear-reducer and may act as adeterrent to the would-be offender,assuming that the perceived surveillance iscomprehensive enough. At worst, uniformedpatrolling is a purely repressive measurewhere anyone lingering in public space isregarded as a suspicious person andundesirables are hounded out of sight.

Electronic surveillance

Electronic security surveillance could betermed ‘armchair patrolling’. Instead of havingdistinctively clothed people walking aroundan area, there are distinctively boxedelectronics surveying an area, while thecontrol person reclines in their televisualeyrie.The users of public spaces are madeaware (through signs on poles and lamp-posts) that their every move is beingvideotaped to be used as potential evidenceagainst them, so they (supposedly) refrainfrom doing anything that could render themliable to prosecution.

An approach to security based on electronicsurveillance attracts exactly the same caveatsas those mentioned above for uniformedpatrolling. Furthermore, because of itstechnological intricacy, it is vulnerable tobreakdown, malfunction or maliciousdamage. Overall CCTV schemes haveproduced mixed results in terms of crimereduction (Welsh and Farrington 2002,Shaftoe 2002).


Figure 17 City-centre ambassadors, Sheffield


At best CCTV can extend the reach of theguardians of communal public spaces andcan offer a protective ring of security until aproblem can be sorted out by appropriatepersonnel. At worst it can become anintrusive, humiliating and repressive meansfor controlling excluded populations. (SeeLyon 1993, Fyfe and Bannister 1998,Williamset al 2000.)

Legal controls

For surveillance and security personnel to beable to sweep offenders and undesirables offthe streets, they will need to call on legalsanctions. At one end of the legal spectrumthere are police powers to stop and searchpeople suspected of behaving offensively,move on loiterers, and arrest people forcausing an obstruction. At the other endthere are civil remedies (e.g. for noisecontrol), by-laws and licensing restrictionswhich can be invoked by local authorities to‘clean up’ the streets. Coventry was the siteof the first by-law banning the consumptionof alcohol in town-centre streets and publicspaces (Ramsay 1989, 1990) and since thensuch street drinking bans have spreadexponentially, particularly in response tomoral panics about street beggars, loutishbehaviour and binge drinking. Such legal andlicensing measures do appear to have had aneffect in reducing crime and particularlyantisocial behaviour in town centres, but onehas to ask if the problem has not beenmoved elsewhere, to sites such as parks justoutside the city centre, as appears to havebeen the case with Coventry.

Another approach to stamping outundesirable behaviour in public spaces wasto rigorously enforce the law right down tothe most minor infraction, in the belief thatintolerance of small delinquencies wouldprevent the commission of bigger offences.This zero tolerance approach gained hugepopulist support for a short time in the late1990s, but its effectiveness as a sustainableapproach to controlling antisocial behaviourand nuisance in the streets was soonchallenged. For example, Morgan andNewburn (1997) questioned the approachon the grounds of practicality – a lack ofpolice resources and competing demands totackle serious crime.The approach was alsochallenged by Young (1998), who suggested anumber of other circumstances and factorsthat might have influenced crime reductions.

Physical barriers

Along with surveillance and legal controls ofthe types mentioned above, the main way ofcontrolling space in order to minimize theopportunities for crime has been theinstallation of actual barriers to separatepotential offenders from potential victims ortheir property.The appropriate use ofsecurity doors, locking systems, walls, fences,grilles and shutters can all contribute to asafer built environment (Crouch et al, 1999).

If you keep criminals away from their targets(by deterrence or fortification), of courseyou will reduce some types of crime(notably burglary, vandalism and vehiclecrime), but at what expense to the liberty



and freedom of movement of law-abidingindividuals? Do we want to scuttle from ourfortified domestic enclaves to intensivelypatrolled shopping malls in our centrallylocked cars? (see Davis 1992, Ellin 1997).Some people seem to prefer this exclusivekind of security (particularly in NorthAmerica), but of course you need a certainlevel of wealth to be able to enjoy it.

Management

Most of the measures described above haveattempted to deal with the problem ofcrime and insecurity through a greater orlesser degree of exclusion and repression. Inother words the potential offender has beenmade unwelcome and the offence has beenmade more difficult to commit. As alreadyindicated, the risk with these measures is thatthe problem will move to a different place orchange to a different type of crime, as noattempt has been made to deal with themotivation to commit crime or to engagewith those likely to offend.

In reality, there are very few career criminals;people who commit offences often do soout of boredom, frustration, desperation oras a by-product of a personal problem suchas addiction, psychopathology orhomelessness. For even the most hardenedrecidivist, the criminal act is only a veryoccasional part of their daily life. Many‘offenders’ are bored young people whowould engage in more legitimate pursuits ifthey were given the chance (Graham andSmith 1994).

Instead of excluding undesirables and creating,in the process, an environment that isundesirable to everyone, there is a currentmove towards making our streets and towncentres more attractive, in the hope thatcrime and antisocial behaviour will be‘crowded out’ by the range of legitimateactivities and the behavioural norms of themajority of law-abiding citizens (Bianchini1994).At the same time, it is important toengage with the minority who are displayingunwelcome or desperate behaviour – theymay need help, diversion or intensive support.

Enlightened strategic management of towncentres and public spaces can make themmore attractive, livable and vital, at the sametime reducing the density (if not the actualnumber of incidents) of crime and antisocialbehaviour. Programmes that only focus oncrime reduction may be too narrow most ofthe time and there is the risk that theyimpoverish the urban realm.Thisrevitalization of streets and public areas inBritain is being spearheaded by Town CentreManagers (see www.atcm.org). Althoughtheir primary focus is to improve theeconomic fortunes of town centres, thesemanagers are aware that crime andinsecurity are big disincentives to potentialusers (KPMG/SNU 1990, Coventry SaferCities 1992).

It should be pointed out that managementstrategies can also be devised to excludepeople, or certain categories of people, byeither discouragement or actual prohibition,using by-laws or other social controls.



Integration and absorption

The notion of inclusion and neutralization ofcrime and insecurity described in themanagement approach above can be takenone step further.As intimated before,‘criminals’ are usually people with needs ordifficulties who happen to be hanging aroundin public spaces because they have nowhereelse in particular to go.Therefore it is quitepossible to engage with such people to helpthem meet their underlying needs or resolvetheir difficulties, thus diverting them fromcrime and antisocial behaviour. In Britain thisapproach has offered some promisinginnovations, although they have generallybeen piecemeal, relying on charitable initiativeand local goodwill. Often their primary aim ishumanitarian, but with crime prevention ordisorder reduction as an added bonus.Examples include the alcohol-free bar run bythe Salvation Army in central Swindon, theCentrepoint Shelter for homeless runawaysin Soho, London, and even the Big Issuemagazine sold by the homeless as analternative to begging. In some continentalEuropean countries this integrative approachto crime and disorder reduction holdsgreater sway. For example, in Lille, France, agroup of delinquents who used the entranceto a metro station as their operating basewere contacted by a team of detached youthworkers.As a result, they made a video aboutyouth problems in the city centre and mostof them were helped by social workers toreintegrate into normal community life (King1988).A project in Rotterdam, Holland,recruited young people who were loiteringand intimidating shoppers in a central street

and offered them a meeting place, supportand activities in an adjacent building (SafeNeighbourhoods Unit 1993). In the USA, theTravelers and Immigrants Aid of Chicagooperated the Neon Street Clinic, wherehomeless and runaway young people couldreceive comprehensive advice and assistancefrom a range of professionals, or just ‘hangout’ somewhere warm and dry until theywere ready to use the services available(Dryfoos 1990).

Animation

By ‘animation’ I mean anything that bringspublic spaces to life in a positive way. Busking,pavement cafes, street festivals and so on allbring more people into the public arena withthe belief that they will be extra ‘eyes on thestreet’ to improve the feeling of safety andsecurity for other users.Another majorattempt at animating our public spaces is totemporally extend their use round the clockand for all sections of the urban community.The ‘24 Hour City’ concept is a relatively newapproach to revitalizing streets and towncentres (Montgomery 1994, Comedia 1991,Bianchini 1994).A review of British initiatives(Stickland 1996) showed that improvingnight-time safety was the principal reason forintroducing the 24 Hour City concept.Increased safety is seen to derive fromimproved natural surveillance provided byincreases in the numbers and range of peopleusing the streets, including older people whoare otherwise less in evidence after dark.The24 Hour City initiatives adopted by localauthorities include licensing initiatives, such as



staggering closing times to avoidconcentrations of people and increasing thenumber of late-night licences; bridging the gapbetween offices closing and the start ofentertainment activities through, for example,shops closing later ; the stimulation of cafe andrestaurant activity; the promotion of streetentertainment and festivals.

Mixed use

Ever since Jane Jacobs published herlandmark polemical essay in 1961, there hasbeen support for mixed occupancy and useof urban areas, in contrast to a planningorthodoxy in the post-war years that hadencouraged segregation and zoning. Morerecently, problematic domination of certainpublic spaces by monocultures (for exampleyoung drinkers in town centres at night) hashighlighted the importance of achieving amore balanced and varied use of publicspace. ‘Living over the shop’ has been anincreasingly favoured approach to get morepeople back into British town centres; thiswas pioneered in Norwich and is nowincreasingly part of planning policythroughout the country. City-centre residentsadd extra informal surveillance to publicspaces and, as they have a vested interest inthe neighbourhood, are more likely to reportor act on problems.

Inclusive designs

Most of these interventions don’t seem tohave much to do with design, but eventhings like CCTV need good design (to allow

clear lines of sight), security personnel don’twant hidden corners and entrapment spots,and managers and animators need physicalfacilities and spaces in which to organizeservices and activities. All this points to anindirect role for good urban design. However,some commentators suggest that the waywe design or redesign streets and publicspaces can directly contribute to theirsociable and law-abiding use by all citizens(Billingham and Cole 2002, CABE 2004a andb, Gehl 2003).

Accommodating deviance and unpredictabilityEfforts to sanitize and control every inch ofpublic space risk that we eliminate all the‘shadowed’ (Wood 1981) or ‘slack’(Worpole and Knox 2007) places that allowfor activities that the participants don’t wantto be seen or heard by others. Clearly,some of these deviant activities will beillegal and intolerable, but as Denis Woodpersuasively argues, if we clear thesescreened places, we also remove thepossibilities of deviant activities that areharmless or positively valuable asarticulations of resistance to the status quo:‘it would be a dead world indeed withoutthe shadowed spaces’ (Wood p95).Worpole and Knox also argue that ‘Slackspaces are needed (or should beacknowledged where they already exist)where minor infringements of local by-laws,such as skateboarding, den-building, informalball games, hanging out and drinking, areregulated with a light touch’ (Worpole and



Knox 2007 p14). Depending on one’sdegree of tolerance one could also add tothis list (as does Denis Wood): nose-picking,heavy petting, premarital or extramarital sexand nude swimming. Worpole and Knoxpoint out that citizens are very good at self-regulation and that this is the best way tohandle such grey areas. It is alsoimportant to remember that in ademocratic and civilized society,homeless people, alcoholics, thosereceiving ‘care in the community’and ‘tribes’ of young people arecitizens just like anyone else and

therefore should be allowed to occupypublic space, so long as their presence isnot causing a real threat to the safety ofothers. In fact, such marginalized groups areusually very good at finding their own ‘slack’or shadowed spaces where they can get onwith their own lives out the way of others.


Figure 19 Bristol

Figure 18 Fort Worth,Texas


Caroline Holland and her fellow researchers,who studied social interactions in publicspaces in Aylesbury, England (2007),concluded that: ‘The vitality of the urbanscene requires some degree of humanunpredictability. Indeed it is often the offer ofchaos, chance or coincidence that makesmany want to celebrate the potential ofpublic space’ (Findings summary p4).

Examples of this might be children who playwith the flooring materials and puddles inplaygrounds (rather than the swings andclimbing frames); stunt bikers who make useof walls and different levels in plazas; orlanguage exchange students who colonize aparticular city-centre space as a meetingplace.


Figure 20Torquay, Devon

Figure 21Krakow, Poland


Some lessons from two case studies

Birmingham

The shopping mall built above Birmingham’smain railway station is a curious hybrid ofpublic/private space. It is used as a pedestrianroute into and out of the subterraneanstation platforms and, as with many suchcentral locations, was a warm and coveredgathering spot for people with nowhere elseto go (and not necessarily any money tospend).The centre management respondedto this by removing the communal seating, sothat there is now no other reason to bethere other than to shop or purchaserefreshments in a cafe (Figure 22).

There is some limited communal seating inthe Convention Quarter, part of Birmingham’smixed use inner-city revitalization but, in aneven more draconian response than that atthe shopping mall above the station,

unauthorized users are completely excludedfrom the residential areas by access-controlledgates.The developers and property managerswould undoubtedly justify this extremeversion of exclusion by asserting that it wasthe best way to attract higher-incomeresidents back into the inner city, but it doesmean that substantial tracts of open space incentral Birmingham are inaccessible toordinary citizens.


Figure 22 Seatless shopping mall, Birmingham

Figure 23 Birmingham Convention Quarterresidential area

3287 Earthscan Convivial (2col) 2/5/08 12:03 PM Page 29

Toronto

As mentioned earlier, shopping malls have, insome ways, become the new version of the‘village pump’, where citizens gather in allweathers to use services but also to minglewith others and possibly socialize.Thetrouble is that, because malls are privatelyowned, what the public is allowed to do ornot to do is at the whim and under thecontrol of the landlords. Unlike real publicspaces, the primary purpose of a shoppingmall is to generate profits for the businessesthat operate there.This does not inevitablylead to the exclusion of ‘non-consumption’activities, but usually they will have to bejustified in terms of business benefits.Twovery different approaches to this have beentaken in shopping malls in Toronto, asdescribed below.

An exclusionary approach to peoplemanagement was taken at the Eaton Centre,the huge mall that dominates the centre of

Toronto.The Centre had a large team ofsecurity guards who among other thingswere tasked with enforcing the exclusion ofseveral thousand Toronto residents whowere deemed to be ‘undesirable’(presumably the homeless, alcoholics, drugaddicts and problematic young people)(Poole 1994). It may or may not have been acoincidence that the mall’s owners filed forbankruptcy in 1999 and were taken over bythe Sears group.

By way of complete contrast, only a fewmiles to the west, the management of theDufferin Mall adopted a completely differentapproach. Set in one of Toronto’s lesssalubrious but most cosmopolitanneighbourhoods, Dufferin Mall is the mainlocal retail centre and thus attracts a cross-section of the local population. In the early1990s, the Mall was experiencing seriouscrime problems, as a result of theft andviolent and threatening behaviour by gangs


Figure 24 Dufferin Mall food court,Toronto


of young people who were using the Mall,and particularly the food court, as a place to‘hang out’. Many local people, particularlywomen, were avoiding the Mall because theyregarded it as a dangerous place. Rather thanfiltering out all those but serious shoppers,the management of Dufferin Mall made aconscious and successful effort to engagesocially as well as commercially with all itsusers and the surrounding community.Theirphilosophy, as explained by David Hall, themanager at the time of these changes, is that‘The better the quality of neighbourhood life,the better the business environment – areciprocal relationship placing an onus onbusiness to assume its full share ofresponsibility for ameliorating socialproblems – business giving back to thecommunity that supports it.’The practicaloutcome of this commitment was a hugerange of integrative and involving activitiescentred on the Mall, including a communitynewspaper, youth work, play facilities, aliteracy programme, educational outreachwork with school truants and excludees anddrop-in centres in some shop units fordifferent advice and counselling services.TheMall achieved significant reductions in crimeand disorder – a 38 per cent drop inreported crime over a five-year period(Wekerle 1999), and is now hugely popularwith local people, showing the soundcommercial sense of such an inclusiveapproach to the whole population.

For a more detailed account of the Dufferin Mall social intervention programme go to:www.phac-aspc.gc.ca/ph-sp/phdd/implement/dufferin-mall-story.html

Summary

As with so many areas of study that involvereal people in real environments, it is difficultto untangle the various strands (coveredearlier) that might influence humanbehaviour either for better or worse inpublic spaces. Given the complexity andadaptability of the human species it wouldbe far too simplistic to say that the way wedesign the urban realm has a direct influenceon how everyone will behave in it, apart fromsuch things as impregnable physical barriers.It seems more likely that design and physicallayout will have a softer type of influencethat will interact with other factors such aslocation, management, ‘animation’ and culture.Layered on top of all this complex series ofinteractions is the whole political frame ofsocial aspiration, i.e. what kind of society dowe want? To complicate matters still further,we may say we want one thing (say ‘anurban renaissance’) yet our desire for otherthings (such as ‘security’ and ‘control’) mayactually lead to practices that achieve thelatter and deny us the former.

There appear to be two issues thattranscend the ‘designing out crime versusdesigning in good behaviour’ debate. First,there is the important business ofcommunity control, which seems to be oneof the most important differentiatorsbetween safe and unsafe neighbourhoods.Generally one can say that the morecommunity control and social cohesion thereis in a neighbourhood, the safer thatneighbourhood is. See for exampleHirschfield and Bowers 1997, Sampson et al



1997. Interestingly, both sides of the saferenvironments debate claim that theirmethods generate informal social control,but through different means and on adifferent scale. Supporters of gatedcommunities (see Figure 25) would arguethat such neighbourhoods encourage socialcohesion and on the other hand, many newurbanist developments (particularly in theUS) have turned out to be quite exclusive(for example ‘Seaside’ and ‘Celebration’ inFlorida).

Second, and most importantly, we need todecide what quality of urban life we want. Dowe want a mostly privatized existence,centred on our well-defended homes and

exclusive clubs, where we interact only with afew like-minded friends and colleagues? Inwhich case we should go for ‘defended space’.Or do we want a more open quality of life inwhich we can wander where we please,encounter lots of different people, but take afew more risks in the process? In theory, ‘newurbanism’ delivers this more zestful way of lifebut, as Town and O’Toole’s article points out,many new urbanism developments areturning out to be monocultural and riddledwith regulations. So it may be that neitherdefensible space nor new urbanism canprovide us with the kind of vibrantneighbourhoods that could be stimulating tolive and work in. Maybe we should adoptpolicies and practices in regeneration thatboth adopt reasonable levels of security andencourage designs that allow for interactionand integration, as traditional small towns didthroughout history!

Ultimately, levels of crime and safety aremore likely to be determined by biggersocio-economic, cultural, socialization andgeographical factors than they are by thedesign of our urban spaces, which takes usback to the original two images in thischapter.

Finally, however, I wouldn’t want to suggestthat the built environment is irrelevant as abackdrop to human behaviour. I believe thatarchitects, planners and urban designers havean important role to play in designing orredesigning safe and secure neighbourhoods,but their contribution is part of a muchbigger whole.


Figure 25 Backwell, Somerset


Children and Public Space Outdoor space is hugely important forchildren’s development (Moore 1986). It isimportant for their health, both mental andphysical, and is potentially one of the mostexciting places for them to play. I saypotentially because we often provide themwith stultifying environments which offervery little delight, adventure or scope forthem to exercise their imaginations (seeFigures 26 and 27).

Healthy outdoor play has been emasculatedin many areas by adult preoccupations withhealth and safety, potential litigation, strangerdanger, poor maintenance, economies inpublic services and even aesthetics. Despitevarious media-fuelled panics, children are inno more danger in public spaces than 30years ago (see Goodchild and Owen 2007).In fact, as some commentators have noted,as mollycoddling parents keep their kidsindoors and local authorities remove anytrace of adventurous opportunities from thepublic realm, children are more likely to dieof boredom than from any outdoor publicdanger.

The general trend for outdoor play provisionin the UK for the last 50 years has been toprovide robust fixed equipment in fenced-offdesignated areas (usually in a corner of arecreation field).


Figure 26 Charente Maritime, France

Figure 27 Dornoch, Scotland


Undoubtedly, some of these ‘ghettos ofswings and springy chickens’ have beenreasonably successful, but even a cursoryobservation of the multitude of these spacesscattered around our towns and villages willreveal underuse if not abandonment.However, a different approach in parts ofcontinental Europe, now being graduallyincorporated in the UK (following the leadof Stirling in Scotland), is resulting in morevibrant play provision for children.Threefeatures of this different approach areintegration into the townscape, mixed useand loose materials.


Figure 29 Paris

Figure 28 Backwell, Somerset


Integration into the townscape

Children and their accompanying carersprefer short journeys to play areas andtherefore it is likely that spaces will be betterused if they are part of the neighbourhood.This can also create livelier places for all.

The example in Krakow (Figure 30) benefitsboth parents and children, as well as creatinga lively scene for passers-by.

In the Amsterdam example (Figure 31), partof the street has been reclaimed as adedicated play space, with only emergencyor special access being allowed for vehicles.

Mixed use

The Krakow example also highlights thevalue of having facilities for adults as well as children.This will usually consist of seatingwith a cafe or picnic tables (Figures 32 and 33).


Figure 30 Krakow, Poland

Figure 31 Amsterdam



Figure 32 Radstock, Somerset

Figure 33 Copenhagen


Loose materials

When they have the choice, children aremore inclined to play with natural elements,such as water, sand and wood.This seems toallow them to be much more creative,which, after all, should be a valuable outcomeof play.

In Germany (most notably in Freiburg andBerlin) play-space providers havewholeheartedly embraced this looser, morenaturalistic approach, with the resultingplaygrounds looking very different from theshiny metal and rubber-matted surfaces thatcharacterize many British playgrounds.

In Edinburgh, a new play area created in theinner-city green space known as ‘TheMeadows’ (Figure 36 overleaf) has combinedthe more traditional fixed play attractionswith copious quantities of sand, wood barkchippings and water channels.The play spacehas proved to be hugely popular withchildren, adolescents and their parents.


Figure 34 Combe Dingle, Bristol

Figure 35 Gropiusstadt, Berlin


Risk and adventure

As mentioned previously, many play andrecreation areas in the UK have becomeincreasingly sterile and useless as a result ofadult and statutory authorities’ fears aboutsafety.There is an increasing recognition that

this ‘risk-averse’ culture has gone too far andindeed both the British Health and SafetyExecutive (HSE) and the Royal Society forthe Prevention of Accidents (RoSPA) haveissued guidance to play providers that areasonable amount of risk in play is perfectlyacceptable as long as the benefits outweighthe risks.The main inhibitors to moreadventurous play for our children remainparents, along with local authority lawyersand insurance companies.

Unpredictable use

It has been noted by some play experts thatchildren will often get the most out of playfacilities when they use what is there in waysother than intended.This should beencouraged, or at least be allowed for, as itcan lead to more creativity. An example


Figure 36 Play space,The Meadows, Edinburgh

Figure 37 Central Bristol


might be children playing with the sand orloose bark that has been provided as a softsurface material. Furthermore, children willseize play opportunities even inenvironments that are not explicitlydesignated as play spaces.This may be oneway to partly get round the legal liabilitydilemma that some local authorities fear –designate a public structure as art or a waterfeature, rather than as a playful space.This leads to a further point – some of themost exciting spaces for children and youngpeople to play in are shadowy or spare bitsof the urban fabric: patches of wastelandwhere you can make ‘dens’, banks of streamsand rivers where you can get muddy. As wegradually clean up and control every nookand cranny of the urban realm, we are indanger of losing such ‘loose’ places.

Addressing the Use of Public Space by Young PeopleThe segment of the population most likely tobe found in, and to benefit from, public spaceis young people.Yet, for adults at least, thepresence of some young people, particularlyteenagers, in public spaces is seen as mostdemanding and potentially problematic.Young people and particularly adolescentsare at a very vulnerable and influentialdevelopmental stage in their lives.Whathappens to them during these transitionalyears will influence their long-term physicaland mental health. Repressing their natural

inclinations to get out of their homes andlearn to playfully socialize risks displacingtheir energies into the very things thatconcerned parents are trying to avoid – drugmisuse, self-harm and delinquency. It is ironicthat parents who are trying to protect theirchildren by not allowing them to go out andplay or socialize on their own may in manycases be doing more harm than good.Theymay be able to temporarily repress theiroffsprings’ inclination to engage in risky,antisocial or illegal outdoor activity, but, in sodoing, they may turn them into unhealthy‘bedroom recluses’, cramping both theirphysical and psychological development inthe process.

In the United Kingdom we mostly dislikeyoung people.We call them derogatorynames (e.g. yobbos, vandals, thugs, tearaways)


Figure 38 Hanging out and skating, Barcelona


that we wouldn’t dare use for any othersegment of the population.They are oftenseen as being ‘guilty before proven innocent’,as in the case of ‘threatening gangs of youths’gathering in public spaces.

The standard strategic response to groups ofyoung people in public or communal areas isto try to force them out – either by movingthem on (using police, security guards orCCTV), threatening them with penalties (e.g.fines for skateboarding), or removing theopportunities for them to gather at all (e.g.the removal of seating in public spaceswhere young people have started to hangout).

But the phenomenon of young peoplesocializing in groups away from immediateadult supervision is an important

developmental stage – moving from thefamily nest to independent adulthood(Waiton 2001).We should be enabling thishealthy socialization process by ensuring thatthere are places and spaces whereyoungsters can gather and ‘hang out’. Andyoung people don’t want to be shunted into the margins of neighbourhoods – theyusually and rightly demand equal access tothe prime sites such as town centres, parks,high streets and malls.

Young people gather in what are seen byadults as inappropriate places because we donot provide appropriate places.Where arethey meant to gather? Homes have gotsmaller.Youth clubs have been cut back.Members of the public call the police ifyouths gather at bus shelters, in alleyways oroutside shops at night.


Figure 39 Hanging out in York


Adults often worry that if teenagers areallowed to gather with minimum supervisionand surveillance, they will engage in risky andillegal activities.This is used as a justificationto move young people on, impose curfewsand ban them from specific locations usingsanctions such as dispersal orders. It is truethat they will sometimes make fools ofthemselves, take a few risks, get tooboisterous and show off in front of theirpeers. However, it is better to let them dothese things in designated spaces out ofharm’s way, than to try and repress suchactivities altogether. At best this merelymoves the problem and it may well lead toother more serious difficulties that couldcost dearly in the long term.We can’t stopkids indulging in sex, drugs and rock’n’roll;indeed the more we try to ban these, themore attractive they appear to rebelliousyouth determined to kick against the tracesof adult censure.We therefore need to take

harm reduction and risk managementapproaches to such activities, to minimizepotential damage both to young people andthe adults affected by them.

Fortunately, not all our strategies for the useof spaces by young people are aimed atexcluding them. Some imaginative solutionsto the need for young people to gather and‘hang out’ include:

■ Youth shelters and sports systems.These consist of good quality structureswhere young people can gather withoutsupervision and without causingannoyance to adult residents (seeHampshire and Wilkinson 2002). Someshelters have been designed and evenbuilt by the target group of young peoplethemselves. If young people have beeninvolved in this or in other ways, they aremore likely to safeguard ‘their’ investment.


Figure 40 Youth shelter, Hayle Cornwall


The location of such shelters is critical –not so close to homes that adultsbecome irritated, but not so isolated thatyoung people are vulnerable touncontrolled victimization. It is alsoimportant that they are regularlymaintained, as if successful they are likelyto experience a lot of wear and tear.

■ Adventure playgrounds. Sadly, theserough, tough and tumble locations havemostly been emasculated by health andsafety worries, with the result that manyyoung people have fewer opportunitiesto experiment and take risks underbenign adult supervision. Enterprising as

they are, some young people havediscovered that the entire urban realm isa potential adventure playground and,from its start in France, the parcours or‘free-running’ movement has burgeonedin many cities.This involves the use ofwalls and other built features as daringstructures to jump over, between or from– a beautiful example of subverting theoriginal intentions of the builtenvironment to create a healthy (ifdangerous and potentially illegal) activity.A few proper adventure playgrounds dosurvive, including an inspiring one in themiddle of Ciaia Park,Wrexham – thelargest housing estate in North Wales.


Figure 41 Ciaia Park,Wrexham


■ Skateboarding, stunt bike androllerblading spaces. Such spaceswork best when young people have beeninvolved in their design and location. Aninspiring example can be found in centralBrussels, where a site over the mainrailway line that cuts through the centrehas been made into an urban space forall, with a built-in skateboarding bowl,designed according to the specification ofa group of local skaters.The space worksas an attraction for young and old alike.

Design and managementimplicationsWe need to ‘design in’ the facilities andlocations where children and young peoplecan meet, play and socialize in reasonablesafety, but without totally removing theexcitement and ‘buzz’ that young people need.On the other hand we must minimize thedanger and victimization that young people alltoo often experience inpublic spaces (Percy-Smithand Matthews 2001).Finding this balancebetween adventure andmollycoddling requires anapproach that includesdesign, management andsocial interventions.

One of the most important strategies is toinclude young people themselves in theplanning, design and management of publicspaces (White 1998). Grown-ups don’tnecessarily know best and even if they thinkthey do, the process of involvement is asimportant as the physical outcome. Forexample, where young people have beeninvolved in the choice and construction ofyouth shelters, there have been fewersubsequent problems with their use andmaintenance (Hampshire and Wilkinson2002).

We should remind ourselves that youngpeople are citizens just as much as adultsare; indeed they represent society’s future. Ifyou ask young people, they will tell you whatthey want and they will often be keen to getinvolved in providing services and facilities. Ithas been said that: ‘Young people these days– they’ll take anything, especiallyresponsibility.’


Figure 42 Central Brussels,Belgium


Young people are likely to want bothstructured and unstructured facilities andactivities. Different groups and individuals willwant different things. One size does not fit all(White 1998).You cannot just provide oneskateboard ramp and assume you havefulfilled your obligations to youth.Youngpeople want to hang out with their ownparticular clique or gang. Fourteen-year-oldswill not necessarily want to be in the sameplaces as 12-year-olds – a couple of yearsmake a huge difference at that age. If youjust provide one facility without providing foradaptable use or dedicated locations forother groups, you may find that there isconflict over space and the intended targetgroup is edged out.

Location and journey time to facilities foryoung people are crucial factors. Generallyspeaking, facilities for pre-teens need to bevery close to where they live and need tobe closely managed by adults or, in the caseof open play spaces, they need to be visiblefrom parents’ homes. Pocket parks in squares

or closes surrounded by housing are saferand likely to be better used than play spacesin the corner of more distant parks andopen spaces. By contrast, teenagers preferlocations with lower supervision that are notimmediately overlooked by parents’ homes.However they don’t want to be completelyisolated from the general public.Teenagersare concerned for their own safety andrightly so – they are at particularly high riskof being victimized (National Centre forSocial Research 1998). However, despite theprevailing moral panic about ‘strangerdanger’, it should be pointed out thatchildren and young people are much morelikely to be victims at the hands of theirpeers and family than they are by adultstrangers. Concerned parents who won’t lettheir children go out on their own for fearthat they might be abducted by paedophilesand psychopaths, while minimizing onestatistically low risk, increase the risk ofcramping the healthy and social developmentof their offspring.


Figure 43 Harlem,New York. Becausethere is nowhere elsefor them to meet, theseyoung men in Harlemhave colonized the areathat had been designedfor parents to sit inwhile they kept an eyeon their children in theadjacent playground.


Although dedicated locations sometimeswork, young people should be entitled toequal rights of access to general public space.As part of their development it is valuablethat they learn to interact with other citizens.Adults can provide informal social controland supervision and can call on specialistagencies if problems arise.Young peopleprobably feel safer in areas that are alsoaccessible to adults, such as town squares,public car parks, footpaths and parks.

Planners and urban designers may feeldeeply frustrated when the area theydesigned as an outdoor seating area foroffice workers becomes colonized byskateboarders (Figure 44). But is this adisaster, or should we regard public spaces asdynamic, organic and adaptable, rather thanfor a fixed single use? (Sennett 1973).


Figure 44 Central Cardiff

Conclusion

In the UK we mostly regard young people aspotential problems, preferably to be excludedfrom public space.This repressive approachdamages young people’s potential for healthy,prosocial development, and means that theyresort to more devious means to ‘hang out’,or even more worryingly, become neuroticbedroom recluses.

We need to respond positively, inclusivelyand creatively to the needs of youngpeople to socialize in public spaces byinvolving them in design and provision, andensuring that what is provided minimizesharm and victimization risk, withoutremoving the frisson that young peopleneed and enjoy.



47

CHAPTER THREE

What Makes a Space Convivial?

Principles andUnderpinnings

As a bridge between theory and practice,there are various aspects of the design

and management of public spaces that affecthow successful or problematic they may be.This section covers some of these ‘principlesand underpinnings’.

A number of people have attempted toestablish a set of ‘principles’ to inform thedesign and production of successful urbanspaces. Francis Tibbalds (1989 p467), forexample, suggested the following ‘TenCommandments’ of urban design, most ofwhich are directly applicable to public spaces:

1 Thou shalt consider places beforebuildings

2 Thou shalt have the humility to learnfrom the past and respect the context ofbuildings and sites

3 Thou shalt encourage the mixing of usesin towns and cities

4 Thou shalt design on a human scale5 Thou shalt encourage the freedom to

walk about6 Thou shalt cater for all sections of the

community and consult with them

7 Thou shalt build legible environments8 Thou shalt build to last and adapt9 Thou shalt avoid change on too great a

scale at any one time10 Thou shalt, with all the means available,

promote intricacy, joy and visual delight inthe built environment.

These principles are closely aligned to theurban design values espoused by Jacobs andAppleyard (1987) in their ‘urban designmanifesto’.This was a reaction to themodernist and mechanistic approach thathad been promoted by the CongrèsInternational d’Architecture Moderne(CIAM) in its famous Athens Charter of 1933,published in heavily edited form by LeCorbusier and colleagues in 1943.

Mixed use and new types of urbanism After the Second World War planning inEurope and North America was heavilyinfluenced by the thinking of the CIAM andfavoured a ‘zoning’ approach, where differenttypes of uses were allocated to differentareas of the city; so that all industry was inone place, residential in another and leisurefacilities in yet another, and so on.This wasfound, over time, to create a number of


adverse side effects and, in relation to thesubject of this book, it often resulted in theabandonment of central public areas forsignificant times of day or days of the week,as well as creating bland and indeterminateopen spaces around residential blocks. As areaction to this, there emerged the ‘urbanvillages’ movement in the UK (see Neal2003) and ‘new urbanism’ in the US (seeDuany and Plater-Zyberk 1991).Thefundamental idea underpinning this approachis to mix uses together to create moreintegrated neighbourhoods, which are moresustainable and capable of building ‘socialcapital’, as people are more likely to knoweach other and interact. Public spaces are acore part of this new urbanist or urbanvillage approach. By providing more ‘eyes onthe street’ and community cohesion, thesenew developments (or reworking of oldones) are also supposed to be safer and

more resistant to crime and antisocialbehaviour. However, they have come undersome criticism (see for example Town andO’Toole 2005) and some of the brand newflagship developments, such as Poundbury inEngland and Seaside in Florida, US, haveturned out to be worryingly monoculturalwith underused public space. Other morelow-key developments that are betterintegrated into the surrounding urban fabric(such as Bordesley urban village inBirmingham) seem to work better.

Legibility

This is a term originally coined, for urbandesign purposes, by Kevin Lynch (1960). Hedefines it as ‘the ease with which [thecityscape’s] parts can be recognised and canbe organised into a coherent pattern’ (p2).So, in terms of public space, it means


Figure 45 Poundbury, Dorset


knowing where you are, knowing how to getto where you want to be and feeling thatthe space has visual coherence.Yet, as aresult of accretions of street furniture andsigns, many of our public spaces areincoherent and confusing.

The problem of unacceptable stuff in thepublic realm can be categorized under sevenheadings:

1 Clutter – general uncoordinatedstreet equipment, signs and furniture.

2 Confusion and contradiction(including misdirection by signs thathave been knocked or turned in thewrong direction).

3 Duplication of equipment

4 Illegibility (literally) – signs that youcan’t read because they have not beencleaned or maintained, or are obscuredby vegetation.

5 Interruptions and obstructions –such as having waste bins, lamp posts,bike racks and so on. located in themiddle of footpaths.

6 Redundancy – old equipment orfittings that have not been removed.

7 Uncoordination – different thingsadded by different departments oragencies, with no overall consistency ofdesign or integration.

What Makes a Space Convivial? 49

Figure 46 Clifton, Bristol

Figure 47 Castle Park, Bristol

Figure 48 Harbourside, Bristol


The environmental psychologists Rachel andStephen Kaplan assert that the coherenceand legibility of the public realm is important,as ‘the struggle to pay attention in clutteredand confusing environments turns out to becentral to what is experienced as mentalfatigue’ (Kaplan and Kaplan 1989 p182).

Firmness or looseness?

In the UK in particular, the whole systemfrom planning through to detailed design andconstruction allows for very little flexibility –the very thing that the evolution of convivialspaces requires.The result is that we toooften end up with rigid designs that cannoteasily be changed, once it is found they arenot well adjusted for optimum use. A looser‘see what happens’ approach with money

held back for adjustments and modificationsis likely to deliver spaces much more attunedto user needs (see Brand 1994). AsAndersson (2002) observes: ‘… the designof a city must be regarded as an ongoingprocess, one that people need time tobecome acquainted with’ (p112). He goes onto give the example of Sergels Torg, a plazain central Stockholm which was built withstark modernist zeal in the early 1970s, butsoon declined into desolation and misuse.Modest, incremental changes begun in 1998(such as lighting, resurfacing and changedcirculation arrangements) have helped tomake it a more successful gathering place, asoriginally intended, although its fundamentaldesign as a sunken, hard space surroundedby traffic means that it will never be entirely‘convivial’.


Figure 49 Sergels Torg, Stockholm


Attempts to establish principles for whatmakes a successful public space, will beinfluenced by the values of the persondefining them and are thus ‘normative’ (touse the social science jargon). However,there are some more objectiveunderpinnings that can inform good designand management, based on the nature ofhuman behaviour and preference, many ofwhich have been clarified with the help ofenvironmental psychology.

The Psychology ofPublic Space Public spaces serve a number of practicalfunctions, being places for trading, meeting,conversing, resting and so on.Yet there is anadditional dimension to public space – it canfulfil certain psychological needs as well aspurely physical ones. By ‘psychology’ in thiscontext, I mean anything that affects ourbehaviour or feelings.

There has been substantial interest and studyover the years into the relationship betweenhuman behaviour and urban form (see forexample Canter 1974, 1977, Rapoport 1977,1990, plus the journals Environment andBehaviour and Journal of EnvironmentalPsychology). In some fields, most notablyurban security, this has had a substantialinfluence on the design and management ofurban spaces. An extreme position in thisrespect is the ‘design determinist’ one, wheretheoreticians such as Alice Coleman (1985)blamed badly designed built environmentsfor ‘causing’ the high levels of crime being

committed in them. At the other end of thiscontinuum of thinking about the degree towhich design of space can influencebehaviour are those who note the degree towhich people can adapt to theirsurroundings and ‘make the best of a badjob’. In truth it is likely that we both affectand are affectd by space. In terms ofdesigning good public spaces, it helps tounderstand how people are likely to respondand relate to the space available and howthey make spaces work for them. Some ofthis will relate to some basic humanbehavioural characteristics such asterritoriality, interpersonal distance,distribution and the need for different typesof observation and communication (Canter1974). Other responses are to do with suchpsychological effects as interpretation,coherence, legibility, sense of safety, intrigueand curiosity.

Territoriality

One of the most fundamental human traits(presumably from our tribal hunter-gathererorigins) is the need to mark and claimterritory.This is potentially problematic inpublic open space, because in theory itbelongs to everyone and no one. In extremecases public spaces will be colonized bycertain groups, perhaps youth gangs or streetdrinkers, but more often there is a kind ofaccommodation between various groups andinterests, which at best makes for lively,varied and intriguing occupation of space,allowing people to observe diversity anddifference without having to get directlyinvolved in it.



Interpersonal distance

Linked to the above points aboutterritoriality is the need to keep appropriatedistance or proximity according torelationship. In the photo above, taken inPadua, the couple intertwined in theforeground contrast with the strangers fromanother culture surrounding them, who aretrying to distance themselves in a tightsituation by turning away. If there is choice ofsitting and lingering places and some areunoccupied, it is normal to sit on or occupy

a vacant space some distance away from theothers already there, rather than sitting rightnext to a stranger. Indeed people who sitright next to strangers, when there isopportunity to do otherwise, are treatedwith suspicion and discomfort by thosealready occupying the space. As the spacebecomes more congested, people have toaccommodate themselves gradually moreclosely to each other, but always according tosome unwritten law about ‘reasonabledistance’.


Figure 50 Padua


Distribution

However, it has been noted (see forexample Canter 1974,Whyte 1980) thatpeople do not distribute themselves evenlyacross an entire public space.There arecertain preferred locations where peopletend to cluster and others that people try toavoid. Generally, locations where one canobserve others without being exposed fromall sides oneself are preferred.This mayexplain the enduring attraction of ledges(where one’s back is protected by the wallbehind) and the avoidance of backlessbenches in the centre of public spaces(unless there is no other choice).

The need for different types ofobservation and communicationInterpersonal distance will be determined (ifthere is any choice) by the activities peopleare engaged in, in public space. People who

are only there ‘to watch the world go by’ willwant to be further away from others thanthose who are hoping to have some kind ofcasual interaction, who in turn would befurther away than those who are interactingwith close friends. A good public space willoffer the chance for the whole range ofthese activities to occur and this hasimplications for the arrangement of places tosit or linger. If the space consists of an areaof closely cut grass then this range is easilyaccommodated (Figure 52), but if the area ishard landscaped then careful considerationwill have to be given to the location ofbenches, as well as informal seating andleaning opportunities such as ledges, stepsand low walls.The ideal is movable seating(see page 102), but this is not alwayspracticable.


Figure 51 Harbourside, Bristol


Interpretation, legibility and coherenceOur minds are skilled at ‘reading’ space – i.e.identifying where we are and the qualities itappears to offer. Again, this is probably aninheritance from our ancestors who had toidentify and memorize suitable hunting andgathering grounds.This is mostly donethrough visual interpretation of the cues aspace gives us, both in terms of its built formand the kind of activities (or lack of activities)going on there. A fair amount of researchhas been done into how we extract‘meaning’ from space (see for exampleCanter 1977, Rapoport 1977, Madanipour1996). For Kevin Lynch (1960) a good place

should be ‘legible’, by which he means ‘… theease with which its parts can be recognisedand can be organised into a coherentpattern’ (p2). How this coherence isachieved is the subject of some debate inurban design circles. In theory a coherentspace should be all of a piece, yet many ofthe spaces that people love contain varietyand diversity, both of built form and activity.

Sense of safety

One of the things that people are adept at‘reading’ (if not always accurately so) is thedegree to which an unfamiliar place appearsto be safe or unsafe.This is a crucial factorthat will significantly determine whether or


Figure 52 College Green, Bristol


not they choose to linger in that space.Theywill gauge how safe a place appears to be (interms of risk of personal victimization) bystudying the people occupying that space,but also by looking at physical attributes(such as the amount of light, potential hidingplaces and entrapment spots).Theassessment of risk will depend on who youare – generally people will feel more at easewhen they see people similar to themalready occupying that space in a relaxedway.This has particular implications for thefacilities and management of public space, asthere is a risk that certain demographicgroups (such as older people, women,disabled people and those from ethnicminorities) will feel nervous about usingcertain public spaces, even if their risk ofvictimization is quite low (see Shaftoe 2004).The design of public spaces should also allowfor clear views and the possibility of easyescape or refuge.

Intrigue and curiosity

People want coherence and a sense of safetyin public spaces, but they don’t wantblandness (Kaplan and Kaplan 1989, Marsh1990). One of the psychological attractionsof a good public space is the promise that itwill satisfy our innate curiosity.We like to beintrigued by the possibility that there is moreto a space than initially meets the eye andthat if we move through it there may befurther intriguing discoveries.This underpinsthe attraction of unfolding townscapes asespoused by Cullen (1961), where a seriesof linked but not immediately visible spacesare designed to gradually reveal themselvesas you move through them.This is also animportant factor in good park design – thereis nothing more boring than a park or greenspace where you can immediately seeeverything that is there.

Aesthetics

Woven into all this psychology of space areour aesthetic experiences, which arediscussed in the next section.


Figure 53 Bland green space, Dublin


Aesthetics – Sensing the Characterof an AreaConstricted, we understand and interpret thecity through the technical rather than thesensory, yet it is the sensory from which webuild feeling and emotion and through whichour personal psychological landscapes are built.These in turn determine how well or badly aplace works – even economically, let alonesocially or culturally – and how it feels to itsinhabitants and visitors. (Landry 2006 p40)

Sensuous requirements may coincide or conflictwith other demands but cannot be separatedfrom them in designing or judging, nor are they‘impractical’ or merely decorative, or evennobler than other concerns. Sensing isindispensable to being alive. (Lynch 1971p189)

As Westerners, we all spend most of ourtime in the built environment. If we are notin buildings, we are surrounded by themwhen we go out. If we are not surroundedby buildings – in the countryside – we arestill surrounded by people-made structures:walls, roads, paths, terracing, ponds, seadefences and so on. Nearly all these builtitems have a function and can therefore beregarded as existing for technical reasons –the house to keep us warm and dry, thestone wall to protect the crops, the road toget us from one place to another easily. Itcan be argued that even structures that arenot obviously functional, such as monuments,do actually serve a functional purpose, suchas marking a location or asserting power.However, as the quotations opening thissection highlight, in addition to all thistechnical function, places and spaces affect usaesthetically – they affect our minds andsenses.This is not just a trivial spin-off fromtheir true technical purpose, for by affectingour minds and senses these spaces andplaces can profoundly influence our healthand wellbeing, for better or worse. (See forexample Appleyard 1981, Halpern 1995,Guite et al 2006.) As Thomsen (1998)remarks, when talking about the ambiance ofcities: ‘Architecture without sense appealmakes people moody, grumpy, at firstemotionally unsatisfied and then physically ill’(p103).


Figure 54 Eastville Park, Bristol


Kaplan and Kaplan point out in their bookThe Experience of Nature (1989) that:‘Aesthetic reactions reflect neither a casualnor a trivial aspect of the human makeup.Rather, they appear to constitute a guide tohuman behaviour that is both ancient andfar-reaching. Underlying such reactions is anassessment of the environment in terms ofits compatibility with human needs andpurposes.Thus aesthetic reaction is anindication of an environment where effectivehuman functioning is likely to occur’ (p10).

This section will analyse the visual and non-visual aesthetic qualities of successful publicspaces in an attempt to arrive at somebroader aesthetic principles.There will besome emphasis on the non-visual senses, asurban design has, in the past, underplayedthese, preferring instead to concentratealmost exclusively on the look of places.

Despite the latter point, the visual impressionof place is likely to be the most powerfulsensory experience for people with goodsight. Furthermore, as Landry (2006) remindsus ‘sights are better articulated, because ingeneral we have a rich vocabulary aroundphysical appearance’ (p50). Not only can wedescribe visual qualities with words, but wecan augment them with maps, plans,drawings and photographs. But as Rasmussen(1959) notes: ‘It is not enough to seearchitecture; you must experience it’ (p33).

Although it could be argued that the mainaesthetic experience of most public spaces isa visual one, they affect the senses in otherways, most noticeably aurally.The sounds(mostly traffic) of the big city penetrate allbut the most secluded of urban spaces.Where there are water features, lakes,harbours or rivers, weirs and fountainsproduce relatively high levels of white noisein contrast to the silence of still water.


Figure 55 Zaragoza, Spain


The other sense that is noticeably affected,even in urban spaces, is the feeling ofwarmth or coolness caused by themicroclimate.Variations in shelter and shadecan affect wind chill and the degree towhich the warmth of the sun can penetrate.

In terms of smell, the usual urban pollutants(such as exhaust fumes) are likely to benoticeable and it may be that at certaintimes of the year the smell of vegetation(either flourishing or decaying) could be a

significant sensory factor. However, it couldalso be the absence of smell that couldmake somewhere an aesthetically pleasingenvironment, as in cities we can beoverwhelmed by too much olfactorystimulation.

Finally, urban spaces can have somenoticeable textural qualities, both in termsof the different types of surfacing underfootand the qualities of built features and foliage,which, even if not actually touched, can beexperienced.

If our understanding is limited to a visualunderstanding, we only concentrate on shapes.If, however, we go beyond appearances, westart a spatial understanding, a threedimensional experience.We can enter thisspace, rather than just see it.The same appliesto the design of spaces.We do not createmere appearances but spaces that we canuse for different purposes. (Madanipour1996 p99)


Figure 56 Frome Valley, Bristol

Figure 57 Parc Guell, Barcelona – powerfullytextural


Movement

As mentioned by Taylor (2008), movementthrough space (along with time of day andseasons) has to be factored into anyconsideration of aesthetic principles, and thisapplies just as much to non-visual as visualaspects. Unless we are sitting, lingering or

loitering, we generally experience theenvironment as we move between places. Inrelation to non-visual aesthetic experiencethis will include the feeling of surfacesunderfoot, the air or wind against our skin,and the effort of passing through a space,particularly if this entails climbing ordescending. All these factors shouldtherefore be considered as part of the urbandesign of a space, and assuming we wantpeople to have positive aesthetic experiences(Taylor 2008) we should optimize surfacetreatments, microclimates and gradients toprovide the best sensory experiences.

The photograph of a stepped path leadingup to an urban park in Bristol (Figure 58)encapsulates some of these points.Thepaving is smooth but uneven, giving it atactile effect, even when wearing sturdyshoes. As Lennard and Lennard (1995 p38)point out:

This type of thoughtfully constructed floorscapecan also be a work of art that increases thepedestrian’s enjoyment and awareness of theexperience of walking. Each step is special andunique, and the effect, as in a Zen garden, is tofocus attention on the present moment, theimmediate sensory experience, the feel of thepaving underfoot, the changing materials. …This intensification of one’s awareness of ‘beinghere’, in a pleasing environment intensifiesone’s sense of wellbeing.


Figure 58 Eastville Park, Bristol


The relatively gentle slope of the steppedpath also demonstrates the importance ofhandling gradients appropriately. Clearly thetopography of the site will be thefundamental determinant of levels andinclines, but it appears that, as long as thechanges are not too steep, people enjoy thethree-dimensionality created by slopes andtiers (for example the popularity of thesloping Piazza Del Campo in Siena and theSpanish Steps in Rome). Changes in level willinevitably be felt by the pedestrian (throughdifferential physical exertion), as well as seen.However, it should also be noted that, indense urban spaces, people prefer to be atstreet level rather than on raised decks orsunken plazas (see the research of Whyte1980 and Gehl 2003).

Finally, the microclimate, which affects ourfeeling of warmth or coolness can beconsiderately designed through the use ofenclosure versus exposure and planting.Generally in Northern Europe we need toprotect people from the wind and cold andmaximize access to daylight, whereas inother, hotter parts of the world, spacesmight be designed to encourage coolingbreezes to pass through and to provideshade from the baking sun. As well as usingwalls and buildings to create a protectivemicroclimate, shrubs and trees can beinvaluable. In terms of light and shadedeciduous trees have the huge advantage ofoffering light penetration during the darknessof winter and canopies of shade during theintensity of summer.

Comfort and reassurance

The two concerns of providing comfort andreassurance are founded in both physical andpsychological needs. It could be argued thatthey are not primarily about aestheticexperience, but (for example) the tactileexperience of a comfortable bench and thefeeling that one is in a safe environmentimply that there is a connection. Moreoverfeelings of comfort and reassurance in aplace are so fundamental to its use (orabandonment) that they must be consideredas a core principle of good urban design.

Reassurance, in an urban design context, ismostly about ensuring that the layout of aspace minimizes opportunities for crime andantisocial behaviour and maximizes thechances that help will be forthcoming fromothers in the case of victimization or anaccident. Fear is a related, but separate,condition from actual risk and spaces need tobe designed with fear reduction in mind.Thiscan be achieved, for example, by minimizingthe number of potential entrapment spotsand designing routes so as to encourageregular passers-by along footpaths (seeShaftoe 1998 and Shaftoe and Read 2005).

Comfort is primarily achieved by providingappropriate spots in which to linger, sit, eat,drink and converse. According to analysts ofeffective public space (see Whyte 1980, Gehl2003) these ‘comfort’ opportunities arecrucial to making a place work (see page92). Most of these activities centre aroundsitting spots, which may or may not beformal benches.



One of the non-visual aesthetic pleasuresthat can be enjoyed outdoors is taste, not somuch of the landscape(!), but through eatingand drinking in public spaces. Al fresco foodand drink offers great sensory pleasure,perhaps harking back to our heritage ashunter-gatherers.This should be encouragedin public spaces both by providing forpicnicking and liquid refreshment andthrough the provision of foodstalls and cafes.

Another non-visual aesthetic pleasure thatcan be provided for in a well-designed andmanaged public space is the auditory one.The delight of hearing the rustling of thewind through trees and the sound ofbirdsong is a welcome antidote to the urbancacophony dominated by traffic noise.However, there is also an active auditorydimension – that of conversation. BothWhyte (1980) and Gehl (2003) point outthat opportunities for conversation need to

be appropriately designed. People need to beable to speak and listen without voicesgetting drowned out by other noises, but italso should not be so quiet that otherpeople passing by or sitting close by canoverhear the conversation.


Figure 59 El Hospitalet neighbourhood, Barcelona

Figure 60 Kiosk cafe, Lisbon


Natural elements

The feel of the warm breeze, or a sudden chilldraft, the sound of wind through the trees, orgusts of blown autumn leaves waken thepasserby to the present moment.These intenseexperiences of change or difference in nature– especially those that are particularlyenjoyable – may provoke shared expressions ofdelight and pleasure. (Lennard and Lennard1995 p39)

We generally feel comforted by experiencingnatural elements in the landscape (Guite etal 2006). Some of this is sensed visually, butnatural elements are also experiencedthrough hearing and touch.Trees rustle andbirds sing in the bushes, but perhaps themost vivid and popular sensual experiencefor humans is that of water (see Whyte1980). Maybe this is to do with ourevolutionary heritage from water creatures,perhaps it is the fact that our bodies consistof over 80 per cent water, or perhaps it ismore symbolic.Water can offer a hugesoundscape, from drips to babbling brooksto the roar of full-scale waterfalls.Furthermore, water making contact with theskin is one of the most fundamental sensorypleasures, which presumably explains theperennial popularity of splashing andpaddling.

The final set of principles could beconsidered to be at the borderline betweenaesthetics and environmental psychology.These are to do with designing spaces andplaces that create a sense of mystery,intrigue, appropriate scale; and enclosuresthat are neither claustrophobic noragoraphobic. Many of these factors interactin a synergistic manner, so although the scaleand intrigue of a space may be experiencedprimarily visually, it will be the sound and feelof it that will reinforce that experience.Enclosure may be observed but it will alsobe felt through the microclimate it creates;likewise a place may look mysterious, but thesounds and smells may be subliminallyaffecting our perception of it.


Figure 61 Millennium Square, Bristol


Conclusion

Visual aesthetics dominate urban designthinking and guidance, presumably because(for those of us with good sight) what isseen in the environment is often thestrongest sensual stimulation. But there isalso a tautological factor that limits ourincorporation of non-visual aspects – theterm design comes from the same root asthe French word dessin, meaning drawing.Urban designers’ skills are therefore muchmore likely to be used within a visualaesthetic where they can come up withdrawn solutions.We thus risk losing anotherwhole palette of aesthetic experiences in thebuilt environment – those that enhance thepossibilities of delighting our senses ofhearing, touch and smell. A classic example ofthis is the new centre promenade in Bristol,where, for reasons presumably of visualaesthetics, a faux cobbled surface has beenincorporated into the vehicular highway. As aresult traffic tyre noise is higher than usual, tothe detriment of those trying to haveconversations on the adjacent seating areas.The fountains lining the centre of thepromenade, although visually intriguing, canhardly be heard because of the traffic noiseand people are not encouraged to splashabout or paddle in them. By contrast thecentral square of Rochefort in south-westFrance is almost completely pedestrianized,with consequent reduced traffic noise, andthe water features are designed to positivelyencourage playful interaction.

Finally, it should be pointed out that ourexperience of a place is usually based on acombination of several senses.We may think,as we wander through an ancient southernEuropean cityscape, that we are beingenthralled by what we see, but the warmbreeze against our skin and the smells ofmarble and roasted coffee along with thesound of conversations in exotic tongues arealso contributing to our sense of place.

Maybe, if we want urban designers to paymore attention to non-visual aesthetics, weshould change the name of their discipline tosomething that is less visually biased in itsterminology!


Figure 62 Rochefort, France


Important Influenceson the Use of Public Space

The rise and fall of the car

During the mid to late 20th century themotor car became a dominant feature inurban space.

Most North American cities and British citiessuch as Birmingham gave vehicles priorityover pedestrians and most public spacesbecame polluted through-routes or parkingareas. Starting in Copenhagen in 1962(where the first conversion of a vehicularroute into a pedestrian street occurred),

there has been a rolling backlash against thedominance of the motor vehicle in ourtowns and cities. Even Birmingham, previouslyone of the most car-friendly cities in Europe,is gradually reclaiming urban space forpedestrians, now that it is generallyunderstood that the presence of internalcombustion engines is not conducive toconviviality.This is nicely illustrated whenstreets are briefly reclaimed for other uses,as may be the case for a festival, celebrationor demonstration.

Once a street has been permanentlyreclaimed from vehicular traffic, cafes andstalls can spill out on to it and new surfacetreatments can be installed.


Figure 63 Chicago



Figure 64 Streets Alive Festival, Bristol

Figure 65 Street Party, Bristol


People attracting people

As a species we are sociable animals wholike to gather in groups or packs.Thus, whenwe see people like us lingering in a space, weare attracted to it, over and above anyphysical or environmental attractions that theplace may have. An example of this is shownin Figure 66. Bereft of people sitting on thegrass this site would look dreary andunappealing, but as people are already there(taking advantage of one of the few areas ofgrass in a city centre), we are attracted to it,in a self-reinforcing cycle. Significantly, thespace is large enough to allow a variety ofusers to share it comfortably (young peoplein the back ground and older people froman ethnic minority in the foreground).

Thus it becomes tautological that convivialspaces tend to be full of people looking atease. It should therefore not be surprisingthat nearly all the convivial spaces portrayedin this book are well populated.

Wanting to be in the presence of otherpeople appears to be based on severalpsychological needs. As mentioned earlier, weare a sociable species (on the whole!) andtherefore feel at home with other peoplearound (Whyte 1988). As Lennard andLennard (1995) observe: ‘Human beingsrequire and depend on contact with otherhuman beings. It is self-evident that to be inthe presence of other human beings isreassuring! Perceiving their presence –




through looking, hearing and touching –enables all to experience themselves as lessalone’ (p84). If we do need to escape thecrowds, we can do this in our privatedwellings or by going to the countryside.Some people, most notably extremeintroverts and agoraphobics, feeluncomfortable in crowds, but this is aminority in any population. And indeedintroverts generally enjoy observing others,even if they feel awkward being too visiblethemselves, which brings us on to the nextpsychological need – people-watching. Forvarious reasons, including social learning,mate-seeking and simple voyeurism (in thepositive sense), we enjoy observing otherpeople going about their business and

leisure.This is exemplified by the popularityof reality television shows, but the bestreality show is that found in well-used publicspaces with provision for endlessly watchingthe world go by at no cost.This people-watching phenomenon is formalized insouthern Europe in the slow masspromenading along certain city streets andsquares in the evening (known in Italian as lapasseggiata and in Spanish as el paseo) oreven in the daytime, as down La Rambla inBarcelona.

Another example of this people-watchingenthusiasm is the popularity of pavementcafes (see Figure 68).


Figure 67 La Rambla: one of the great places for experiencing the theatre of public life (including streetentertainment and real-life crime!)


Another reason why people attract people isthe need to herd together for safety.There islittle more scary than a deserted city centreat night; people tend to congregate in spacesor use streets that already have other peoplein them as an assurance that there are‘capable guardians’ (Felson and Clarke 1998).The exception would be when the citystreets are dominated by groups of peoplebehaving aggressively or threateningly, whichis partly why there is such a strong argumentfor encouraging mixed (bothdemographically and activity-wise) use ofpublic spaces (Worpole and Greenhalgh1996).This need to feel safe in public spacesis particularly salient for young people, whoare demographically most at risk ofbecoming victims of street crime (Shaftoe2004).

Climate

When the enlightened planners ofCopenhagen started closing off traffic-clogged streets and encouraged bars andcafes to put tables and chairs out on thestreets, cynics told them that ‘we are Danes,not Italians’. However, as more and morestreets and squares were returned topedestrian-only use, outdoor cafe seating andoccupancy increased proportionately (seeGehl and Gemzoe 1996). It is easy to lingeroutside in southern Europe and the tropics(Figure 69) – although it can sometimes gettoo hot (Figure 70)!

Despite the less favourable weatherconditions, alfresco sitting has become moreand more popular in northern Europe. And


Figure 68 Amsterdam



Figure 69 Alfama, Lisbon

Figure 70 Havana, Cuba


it is telling that when southern Europeanlanguage students come to the UK they stillhappily gather outdoors (Figure 71).

Many convivial spaces have goodmicroclimates engendered by the enclosureeffect of low-rise buildings and even whenthe temperature drops, people can keepwarm in suitable clothing and with thesupport of outdoor heaters. If the worstcomes to the worst, convivial spaces can betotally or partially roofed.

Cities closer to the equator also needprotection from the harshness of theclimate, from the searing heat rather thanthe bitter cold. Shade and ventilation canachieve a cooling effect, removing the needto resort to air-conditioning.

What attracts us

Significantly, nearly all our initial cues aboutwhether we find a place convivial will bebased on visual perception (although smelland noise could be lesser factors).

However, these initial visual cues (resultingfrom the design, management and usage ofthe space in question) trigger variouspsychological reactions ranging along acontinuum from fear and unease (leading toa desire to escape from the space) to delightand comfort (leading to a desire to lingerand enjoy the space).


Figure 71 Torquay, Devon

Figure 72 Souk, Marrakech, Morocco

Source: Kathryn Smith


Most literature and guidance about goodpublic spaces comes from a designperspective, although the authors of suchpublications usually accept that good designof the urban fabric is not an end in itself, buta means to engendering feelings of wellbeingand delight in the citizens who use squaresand piazzas. Francis Tibbalds, in his seminalwork Making People-friendly Towns, suggeststhat such places should consist of ‘a rich,vibrant, mixed-use environment, that doesnot die at night or at weekends and isvisually stimulating and attractive to residentsand visitors alike’. John Billingham andRichard Cole, in their Good Place Guide,chose case studies that answeredaffirmatively to the following questions; ‘is the

place enjoyable – is it safe, human in scale,with a variety of uses?; is it environmentallyfriendly – sunlit, wind- and pollution-free?;is it memorable and identifiable – distinctive?;is it appropriate – does it relate to itscontext?; is access freely available?’ (p0.11).

Location

The other key factor that determineswhether people are drawn to use certainpublic spaces is their location. Geographicalfactors can often override design and otherconsiderations, as is the case with CollegeGreen in Bristol (see Bristol case study).Thistriangular public space, wedged between thecathedral, the town hall and an arterial road


Figure 73 Amsterdam


could not be regarded as a particularlyattractive place from a design point of viewand the management positively discouragescertain uses, most notably skateboarding.Yetthe green is hugely popular with a primarily,but not exclusively, young population, byvirtue, I believe, of its location close to thecentre of the city where most publictransport converges.

If a public space is in an isolated,underpopulated or difficult-to-accesslocation, however well-designed andmanaged it may be, it will not thrive. AsWilliam Whyte (1988) points out, ‘The realestate people are right about location,location, location. For a space to functiontruly well it must be central to theconstituency it is to serve – and if not inphysical distance, in visual accessibility’(p128).

Ken Worpole (in Gallacher 2005) suggeststhat public spaces work best in urban areasthat have mixed use. It is much more difficultto create convivial spaces in primarilyresidential areas, as was found in the ‘FiveSpaces for Glasgow’ project (described inGallacher 2005).The exception might be apocket park, combined with an imaginativeplay space.

Attempts to create public spaces in newlow-density suburbs may look good onmaster plans but may well becomemeaningless and underused in reality.



Figure 75 Earswick,York – new covered watertrough as a rather pointless public space feature


Size, Shapes and Typesof Public Space

Does size matter?

In terms of overall surface area, there doseem to be some key dimensions that makea public space feel convivial. If the space isvery large (such as the Plaza de laRevolución in Havana, Red Square inMoscow or even Trafalgar Square inLondon), the place may inspire awe, but itwill not feel cosy. Most big squares, such as

these, were built by rulers as politicalstatements of their power and influence,rather than being intended as friendly placesfor people to meet in. Such places do havetheir useful functions as places of massassembly and demonstration. On the otherhand, if a space is too small, it can feelclaustrophobic and not have enough surfacearea to allow for convivial activities andencounters. In my view, the most convivialspaces in Central London, for example, arerelatively small, but do ‘breathe out’ throughtheir surrounding linking spaces.


Figure 76 St Christopher’s Place, off Oxford Street, London


Several writers on urban design havesuggested optimum dimensions (Lynch 1971,Alexander 1977, Gehl 2003). Kevin Lynchsuggests between 12 and 24m along eachside as the ideal size for a small space, goingup to about 100m for large squares; Jan Gehlsuggests a similar maximum and points outthat the maximum distance for being able todistinguish facial expressions is about 25m.Christopher Alexander suggests that a smallpublic square should never be more than22m across. Steve Abley (Abley and Hill2004) notes that the maximum distance forseeing any human movement is 135m:‘Medieval squares had average dimensions of57 x 140 metres which indicates that wepreviously designed public spaces based on“social distances” but have lost these designskills over time’ (p9.5).

Shape

People seem to like a bit of intrigue in theirsurroundings – repetition and bland facades

do not stimulate the eye (Cooper Marcusand Francis 1998).Yet we also seekcoherence and sense, beautifully expressedin a slogan seen in the window of a shopextolling the virtues of their custom-madefitted kitchens: ‘harmony without symmetry’.

Rob Krier in his book Urban Space (1979)spends a considerable amount of timedetailing many options and variations in theshape of public space. By studying numerousexisting public spaces, he attempts tocategorize the various types of shape thathave come into existence.

Although many public spaces in British townsare called ‘squares’ they very rarely are, oftenas an incremental result of their medievalorigins. Even fine symmetrical squares inContinental Europe (such as Place desVosges in Paris and Plaza Mayor in Madrid)often feel less sterile as a result of treeplanting and intriguing links to thesurrounding neighbourhood.


Figure 77 Madrid: corner leading out of Plaza Mayor


Curves and bends in public spaces offerintrigue and the prospect of somethinginteresting round the corner.This was thebasis for Gordon Cullen’s (1961) thinkingabout successful townscapes that revealedthemselves sequentially rather than being allthere at once. And as Hundertwasser (seeKliczkowski 2003), the delightfully eccentricremodeller of some of Vienna’s dourbuildings, claimed, ‘straight lines are utterlyalien to human beings, to life and the wholeof creation’. Christopher Alexander (2004a),in his work on morphogenesis, also notesthat natural forms are hardly everrectangular, let alone square. It must also beof significance that many of the most popularpieces of architecture (such as Gaudi’s inBarcelona, the Sydney Opera House, theGuggenheim Museum in Bilbao and the‘Gherkin’ in London) are curvaceous.

Types of public space

A broad definition of public space wouldcover anywhere that is universally accessibleto citizens and could therefore includeeverything from national parks to town hallfoyers. Mean and Tims (2005) take a radicalapproach to identifying public space andinclude such things as car-boot sales and artscentres under this banner. However, asmentioned earlier, this book focuses on themiddle range of urban spaces that are usedas general gathering and breathing places.Although there is some overlap, in thefollowing paragraphs I identify the types ofspace that can perform these functions in aconvivial way.


Figure 78 Smaller square leading off the mainmarket square, Krakow, Poland


Open squares

These are the classical places where peoplehave gathered throughout history and theystill epitomize most people’s stereotype ofpublic space. Even within this typology, thereis a huge range of sizes, shapes and functions(see Krier 1979).

Enclosed and/or covered spaces

Primarily for reasons of the vagaries of theclimate, some successful public spaces arepartially or totally covered. Some of theseare truly public (as with the Winter Gardens

in Sheffield); others have another primaryfunction – often as a transport interchangeor marketplace, but are still accessible to andusable by any members of the public.Thehuge covered foyer area of Madrid’srevamped Atocha Station is a fine exampleof this.

Rather more contentious are the huge‘private’ public spaces that have burgeoned inmany North American and European citiesover the last few decades. Although thesemalls have some characteristics of urbanpublic space, they are usually privately owned


Figure 79 Plaça Reial, Barcelona – a classic open square, but with arcading for shade and protection


and are primarily targeted for use byconsumers.The owners don’t want peopleto just hang around there – they want themto spend money and everything is designedexplicitly or subtly to facilitate this.They aretherefore much more controlled than a truepublic space, with restrictions on activitiesthat are not purely consumptive – buskingand demonstrating, for example.They arealso likely to be heavily monitored by dayand sealed off at night.They offer then a kindof sanitized version of public space, withoutany of the rough edges or unpredictabilitythat make true public space so vital anddemocratic.


Figure 80 Atocha Station concourse, Madrid

Figure 81 Privately owned space:The Bullring,Birmingham


Pocket parks and green spaces

Quite apart from the aesthetic and amenityaspect of small areas of soft landscaping intowns, greenery helps to cut down noiseand pollution and also has benefits for healthand wellbeing (Kellert and Wilson 1993,Guite et al 2006).The classic urban greenspace in the UK is the Georgian communalor public garden, surrounded by terracedhouses (see Figure 82). Such spaces need ahigher level of maintenance than hardlandscaped areas but can prove to be verypopular oases in densely built-up areas,particularly those with a high concentrationof apartments.

Boulevards and linear parks

Public space may run parallel to trafficarteries or be a pedestrian route in its ownright (see Jacobs 1993).The importantfactors are that it should give priority topedestrian use and lingering and that thereshould be sufficient softening and separationfrom vehicular movement (usually byproviding broad footpaths set back from theroad with trees and other forms oflandscaping). Sometimes these are built intothe townscape, as with the Parisianboulevards; at others they are reclaimedfrom former uses, such as the green ringround the centre of Krakow which is the


Figure 82 Victoria Square, Clifton, Bristol


route of the former city walls. Manymaritime and riverine cities have created orreinstated waterfront promenades.Waterford in Ireland, Bideford in Devon (seeCABE Space 2007) and the South Bank ofthe Thames in London are all examples ofthe rediscovery of the delights of lingering bythe waterside.

One of the most inspiring and successfulexamples of a reclaimed linear park is the‘Promenade Plantée’ in Paris, which runsalong the route of an abandoned urbanrailway line, some of it a viaduct with newshops and workshops underneath.


Figure 83 Waterford, Ireland: reclaimed public spaceby the river, but rather isolated by the adjacent busytraffic artery

Figure 84 Promenade Plantée, Paris


Reclaimed streets

As the motor vehicle is gradually beingpushed back from the centre of cities, streetscan once more become fully public spaceswhere people feel comfortable to linger, eatand drink, rather than scuttle along, divinginto the occasional shop or cafe. Denmarkwas the trailblazer in this (see Gehl andGemzoe 1996), closely followed by theFrench and then the rest of Europe. Noweven the remotest European towns havetheir traffic-free streets reclaimed for thepedestrian.

Linked spaces

Some of the most enjoyable public spacesare those that consist of a series of squaresconnected by short pedestrian routes, sothat one can wander through a series ofunfurling tableaux. Sarlat Le Canéda insouthern France, Algajola in Corsica, Padua innorthern Italy and York (the last two arefeatured as case studies in this book) containfine examples of such linked urban spaces.


Figure 85 Monção, Northern Portugal


81

CHAPTER FOUR

How Can One Create and Sustain Successful Public Spaces?

Designed or Evolved?

Given that many convivial spaces seem tohave grown organically through an

accumulation of adaptations and additions,can we design such places at the drawingboard? Critics of formal architecture andplanning such as Bernard Rudofsky(Architecture without Architects) andChristopher Alexander (The Timeless Way ofBuilding, A Pattern Language) suggest that weare better off ‘growing’ good places andspaces, rather than trying to build them froma blueprint. I think we have a lot to learnabout how plants and natural environmentsgrow, evolve and adapt to localcircumstances and then to mirror this in thedevelopment of the built environment.Christopher Alexander has done somefascinating research in this direction(described in The Nature of Order) and usesthe term ‘morphogenesis’ to describe thismore natural approach to building anddevelopment.There are some ancient andmodern examples to suggest that it ispossible to design convivial places as a

whole, but they tend to be relatively small inscale (see for example the Barcelona casestudy on page 81).The post-1947 culture ofmaster-planning whole urban areas is lesslikely to accommodate the fine grain, localnuance and adaptability which seem to be atthe root of convivial places.

Gradual organic growth of townscapes is oftenbest. Some architects and planners like a blankslate.They usually do their best work, however,when they don’t have one. (Abley and Hill2006 p8.7)

The city is discussed in barren evisceratedterms and in technical jargon by urbanprofessionals as if it were a lifeless, detachedbeing. In fact it is a sensory, emotional, livedexperience. (Landry 2006 p2)

Many of the theories and principles ofurban design assume that it is a mechanistic,fixed discipline that can lead to a definitive‘master plan’, arrived at through asystematic series of assessments based onland use, circulation, topography and so on.


As a result, a rigid design is produced that isimplemented and then left, as the plannersand designers move on to their nextproject. However, as the quotes aboveindicate, there is an alternative approachthat is much more messy and incrementaland thus not to the taste of the urbanistprofessionals who generally seem to preferpurity and finality. Sennett (1973)highlighted this unhelpful professionalobsession with order when he describedmaster plans as an attempt to produceperfect ‘machines’ which would (inevitably)break down because they were so rigid andcould not accommodate the evolvinghistory of human and social development:‘… they have failed, not for lack of technicalexpertise, but because they have not hadthe power to be adaptive over the courseof time’ (p100). ‘In the shaping of cities, thetechnological metaphor is not practical; itsimply doesn’t work’ (p101).

In their abstruse treatise on ‘space syntax’(mapping how urban spaces are used bypeople) Hillier and Hanson (1984 p140) domake the clear assertion that:

. . . it is extraordinary that unplanned growthshould produce a better global order thanplanned redevelopment, but it seemsundeniable.The inference seems unavoidablethat traditional systems work because theyproduce a global order that responds to therequirements of a dual (inhabitants andstrangers) interface, while modern systems donot work because they fail to produce it.

Rudofsky (1964) was one of the firsttheorists to challenge the view that a goodbuilt environment required specialists todesign it in a complete way. He referred to‘the exasperatingly complicated organismthat is a town’, suggesting, mostly byillustrative material, that good architecture isnot necessarily produced by designspecialists but by the spontaneous andcontinuous activity of a whole people.Thisconcept of urban design as a continuous andadaptive process, rather than a fixed science,was developed by Brand (1994) in hisaccount of How Buildings Learn. In this bookhe is particularly critical of design as a rigidproduction of buildings and fixed spaces andgives, as an alternative approach, examples ofwhat he terms ‘low road’ environmentswhich are much more amenable toadaptation to the messiness of life andinevitable social evolution.

Lennard and Lennard (1995) liken a well-designed city to a healthy organism whereindividual cells modify and adapt themselvesin response to continuous feedback loopswith other parts of the organism: ‘ … ahealthy city is one in which finely tunedmechanisms exist for recognising the needsof every individual, and group, and forresponding appropriately to those needs’(p22). Clearly, if you believe this, a rigidmaster-planning approach to urban design isnot going cope with the need for constantadaptation and adjustment, with the resultthat the built environment will rapidlybecome unhealthy for most of its inhabitants.



The principal proselytizer of good urbandesign as an organic growth process isChristopher Alexander, commencing with hisbook New Theory of Urban Design (1987)and subsequently developed in his series TheNature of Order (2004a). Alexander asks whyour modern cities so often lack a sense ofnatural growth, and goes on to suggest a setof rules and guidelines by which we caninject that organic character back into ourhigh streets, buildings and squares.

In the light of this discussion, it is telling thatone of the most successful urban designinitiatives in Europe – the reclaiming of thehistoric heart of Copenhagen throughpedestrianization of streets and the creationof a series of linked squares, was achievedincrementally, with no overall master plan(Gehl and Gemzoe 1996).

How Can One Create and Sustain Successful Public Spaces? 83

Figure 86 Copenhagen city centre


The contrast between a master-planned,fixed urban design approach and a moreincremental organic one is not just aquestion of two different styles of treatment;it is more fundamental than that. It is thedifference between a top-down, controllingsystem of dealing with the built environmentand a bottom-up, democratic one.Furthermore it will affect whether peoplehave to adapt to a predeterminedenvironment or whether the environmentcan be adapted to best meet people’s needs.Sennett (1973) points out that the origins ofmaster-planning can be traced back toHausmann’s redesign of Paris, which wasexplicitly aimed at giving the ruling class abetter means of controlling the seethingmasses, by creating broad and straight routesthat would facilitate the speedy deploymentof armed forces. As Sennett also relates inFlesh and Stone (1994), Nash’s designs forRegent Street and Regent’s Park were alsointended to allow the upper classes tospeedily pass by the lower orders hangingaround on street corners. One of Sennett’stheses is that this separation and control of‘other’ populations is actually dangerous inthe longer term as it generates prejudice andcan lead to ‘big’ violence (such as revolutionsand riots) rather than the small everydayconflicts that are actually a healthy way ofpeople getting to know, understand andaccommodate each other. He thereforeargues that a certain amount of disorder isactually a good thing and that the planners’desire to order and predestine humanfunction is doomed to failure or worse –violence.

The very term master-planning is telling initself, implying as it does a masculine,dominating system, where an elite who haveallegedly ‘mastered’ the science of creating aneffective built environment impose theirworldview on the ordinary citizenry. Landry(2006) asserts that city-making is not ascience, it is an art, preferably created by ‘…the people who populate the city.Theymould the physical into shape and frame itsuse and how it feels’ (p5).

It is no coincidence that much of theliterature on this alternative approach tourban design regards a good builtenvironment as an organism rather than amachine. Historically, with the exception of afew planned defensive or militarysettlements (such as Richelieu’s in France),most towns and cities just grew organically.Undoubtedly this led to problems such ascongestion and strained infrastructure, butthe reaction in the 19th and 20th centurieswas arguably too extreme.

On the one hand was the planned citymovement led by visionaries such asEbenezer Howard, complemented later bythe modernist urbanist movementspearheaded by Le Corbusier.These peoplehad the best intentions to provide peoplewith hygienic, purified environments forwork, rest and play but in their moreextreme forms their plans led to sterile,alienating, mechanistic environments fromwhich we still reap negative socialconsequences (see for example Hartcliffe inBristol or Bijlmermeer in Amsterdam).



Even when these environments have notbecome places of misery and last resort,they are still soulless locations with very littlehuman stimulation (consider the CoventryCity Centre Precinct before its recent costlyredevelopment, Les Halles and La Défense inParis or central Milton Keynes).Theseexamples were master-planned to within aninch of their life; allowing for very little easyadjustment once their dysfunctions becameapparent.

There are a few examples of new master-planned urban spaces that do seem to workas vibrant locations to hang out in (see forexample the new Potsdamer Platz describedin the Berlin case study). One Americandesign practice, the Jerde PartnershipInternational, has made its reputation by‘creating places to be’.Tellingly John Jerdeasserts that ‘what we seek to create areinviting, evocative places where people feelsafe, comfortable and happy; unique places


Figure 87 Horton Plaza, San Diego, designed by Jerde Partnership International


that speak to a site’s climate, context andculture; genial places where variegatedpopulations gather to have a fantastic time’(Jerde 1998 p69). It is not casually that heuses the adjective ‘fantastic’, as the definingfeature of Jerde’s urban spaces is a high levelof fantasy; in fact critics of his approachdescribe his work as ‘Disney-like’ and one ofhis most famous places is CityWalk at theUniversal Studios in Los Angeles – a kind ofrecreated urban street encrusted with colourand variety. It is this use of colour and analmost overwhelming variety of styles andspatial treatments that gives his new spaces afeeling of incremental accretion, rather thanthe master-planned uniformity that makes somany new urban spaces look sterile.

The ‘organic’ urban designs, as espoused byAlexander and others, can ‘bend with thewind’, be ‘pruned and grafted’, will ‘adapt tothe prevailing conditions’ and many otherplant-like analogies. In his Schumacher lectureof 2004 (partial transcript available fromwww.livingneighbourhoods.org), Alexanderargued that what he calls the morphogeneticapproach to urban design is the only trueform of built-environment sustainability,because it produces a wholeness for thefuture that is the physical manifestation ofour social and cultural aspirations.Theconcept of morphogenesis is a biologicalone, to explain that any living organism is anevolving system in which what is changing inthe organism is always drawn from the formof what was in the moment just before. Hepoints out that traditional societies alwaystook a morphogenetic approach to the

development of the built environment:‘Whatever it was, it was shaped, modified,shaped again, and adjusted and so on and soforth. As a result of the morphogenesis andthe complex adaptation that was possibleunder these conditions, the places peoplemade had life’ (Alexander 2004b p6). Hethen goes on to give an example of themorphogenetic evolution of St Mark’sSquare in Venice, one of the most beautifulpublic spaces in the world.

So if this organic, incremental approach tourban design appears to lead to so muchmore ‘people-friendly’ environments, why dowe do so little of it? Part of the answer liesin the way we have set up the suite of built-environment professions and the legislationthat supports (or inhibits) them. As Brand(1994) points out, very few architects andplanners revisit the developments theyhelped to form to see how they have faredover the years.The cynic would argue thatthey don’t want to have their noses rubbedin the mess they have created, but there is amore sober interpretation, which is thatthere is just no incentive for them to goback and see how their buildings and spaceshave ‘learnt’. Even if they could be persuadedto go back there is the likelihood that intheir arrogance they will blame the users fornot treating their creations correctly(according to the instructions and ideology)or, if they are humble enough to admit theirmistakes, there will be no money left tomodify things, as the snagging period willhave long since expired. On top of this is allthe suffocating legislation, from planning



through to building codes and regulations,which create a very rigid system ofpredetermined strategies and designs.As Alexander (2004b p6) comments:

The idea that we have inherited from thethinking of the last years is that when youbuild something, you make a plan which is sodetailed that it can become a specification fora contractor and protect you in a court of lawif something goes wrong with a particular lineof bolts.This legal reasoning began to dominatearchitecture and construction – and as a resultof accepting it, we slipped into a fiction whichwas that it is actually possible to make ablueprint of a piece of the environment, or thecompleted environment, and have it work. Nowthis is a fiction.

People who use the built environmentscreated by the professionals are usuallydesperate to modify and personalize theirsurroundings.The most obviousmanifestation of this is the imprinting of‘desire lines’ along circulation routes notpredetermined by the urban designers – thetrampled flower bed on the shortest routeto the main entrance of a public building orthe muddy corner short cut on the way outof a landscaped car park (see Brand 1994p187). Boudon (1969), a social researcher,visited a Le Courbusier-designed housingestate 40 years after it had been completed,to find a whole range of adaptations to thebuildings and spaces, nearly all of whichwould be regarded as ‘impurities’ by theoriginal designer.

Given that human beings are eager to adaptand personalize their environmentsincrementally and that the results have somuch more character, usability and ‘soul’,surely we should be encouraging this more‘organic’ approach to urban design. Suchplaces are likely to be better used and caredfor (just think of St Mark’s Square in Venice,which evolved over hundreds of years), yetwe are still producing too many sterile placesresulting from top-down, blueprint thinking.Most European countries have abandonedthe wholesale clearance and rebuildapproach that characterized the immediatepost-war period, but we are still not verygood at developing healthy and tastefulplaces.Through education, modifiedlegislation and more post-occupancyevaluation, aligned with a different resourcingsystem, it should be possible to operate amore organic regime to produce urbandesigns capable of adaptation, rather thanrigid schemes that cost dearly when they arefound to be defective.



In the last 25 years, Barcelona has moved from a place deliberately held back by the Francodictatorship to become one of the most progressive cities in Europe. Of particular interest,from an urban space point of view, are the improvements to the ancient central area, theCiutat Vella, and especially El Raval, the area immediately to the west of La Rambla.The CiutatVella is a densely populated part of the city, consisting mostly of old apartment buildingsrising up to five storeys above stores and workshops, built along very narrow streets.To theeast of the famous Rambla (an iconic public space in its own right) lies the Barri Gotic, anancient neighbourhood punctuated with a number of convivial spaces, such as Plaça del Pi.

Further down La Rambla, Plaça Reial is a formal, arcaded square that despite its pleasantappearance had a reputation for crime and antisocial activities. As a result of somerefurbishment and a constant police presence, it is now a much safer place, lined with cafesand public seating.


Case Study: Ciutat Vella, Barcelona


The whole of El Raval, on the other side of La Rambla, was considered a no-go area for manyyears. Despite its historic status, the neighbourhood was dominated by drug dealers andusers, prostitutes and petty criminals. Since the 1980s the municipality has interveneddrastically to ‘normalize’ the area, with some considerable success – at least in the northernhalf of the neighbourhood.Theintervention has mostly consisted ofselective demolition and rebuilding ofsome parts to create new urban spaces,workplaces (such as new universitybuildings, publishing offices and galleries)and new homes for residents of thecleared buildings who wanted to stay inthe area.The most striking change is thecreation of several new public squares(usually with car parking underneath),formed by the removal of entire blocksof problematic tenements.


Figure 88 Plaça del Pi.This square is regularly filled with market stalls, cafe tables and buskers

Figure 89 Plaça Reial: police presence, but a pitythey feel they have to sit in their cars!



Thanks to its close working relationship with community organizations and its commitment toaccommodating the existing resident population, the programme of improvement in El Ravalseems to be succeeding in upgrading the area without the wholesale gentrification processthat occurs in many other high-value inner urban areas in Europe.

Figure 91 Rambla del Raval: a new square created by the demolition of a complete city block of old buildings

Figure 90 Plaça Reial: New streetfurniture has offered both formaland informal sitting opportunities



Figure 93 Plaça de les Caramelles: a new square primarily for the residents of the new social housing blocksthat surround it

Figure 92 Plaça dels Angels.This square, created next to the new Contemporary Art Museum in the heart ofEl Raval, has proved to be a popular gathering place for young people


Comfort

Seating

Probably the single most important provisionto ensure a successful public space is asufficient range of opportunities for sitting.William Whyte’s (1988) groundbreakingresearch into successful public spaces testedvarious possibilities, such as location and size,to establish what were the key factors thatdifferentiated successful (i.e. well-used) publicspaces from unsuccessful ones. Heconcluded: ‘No matter how many othervariables we checked, one basic point keptcoming through.We at last recognized that itwas the major one: People tend to sit mostwhere there are places to sit’ (p110).

But despite the willingness of people toapparently sit almost anywhere (Figure 94),the built environment is littered with seatingof the wrong type, in the wrong place, withthe result that it is rarely used (Figure 95):The main problem seems to be that publicspace designers and providers not onlyprovide the wrong type of sittingopportunities, but, crucially, they put fixedseating in the wrong places (Figures 96, 97).


Figure 95 Sheffield

Figure 94 Central Bristol



Figure 96 Birmingham

Figure 97 Budapest


Generally people sitting down like toobserve rather than be observed(particularly from behind), so seats without awall or other barrier behind them are likelyto be underused (Figure 98).

As with shoes, for seating there is no ‘onesize fits all’. Different people require differentseating types and locations according tocircumstances.Therefore it is important toprovide a range of seating opportunities inany public space and for seating to beflexible and adaptable.

In many cases, the best seating does notactually consist of custom-designed benchesor chairs, rather horizontal surfaces that

serve multiple functions. Broad steps are aclassic example of this (Figures 99, 100).

Orientation is a crucial factor as to whethersteps (and other horizontal sitting surfaces)will become popular. In northern climatesthey should be south-facing to catch the sun;in southern climates the converse is true.They should also offer some kind ofspectacle – usually a street scene – as stepsin particular make an ideal grandstand.

Conventional seating arrangements, withsuitable protection behind, may appeal toolder people (Figure 101).


Figure 98 Temple Quarter, Bristol



Figure 99 Budapest

Figure 100 Bristol

Figure 101 Barcelona


Vantage points

As mentioned earlier, one of the things thatpeople enjoy about public space is to beable to ‘watch the world go by’ or morespecifically to observe other people. For thisreason, good vantage points are cherished,even if it means subverting the conventionalarrangements for seating and use.

This seems to be a universal phenomenon,as Figures 102–108 demonstrate. It istherefore important that seats and theirsurroundings should be designed to allowthis, rather than assume that people will onlysit in the obvious place.


Figure 102 Barcelona



Figure 103 Bristol

Figure 104 Vietnam

Source:Vietnam photo: Kathy Sykes

Figure 105 Krakow



Figure 106 Padua

Figure 107 Padua

Figure 108 Bristol


Shelter and protection

The vagaries of the climate mean that inmany areas seating will need to be at leastpartially protected from cold winds or brightsunshine. As Figures 109–112 show, thereare various innovative approaches, frompartial screening right up to total enclosureand creation of a winter garden.


Figure 109 Glass-fronted seating area, Bristol



Figure 110 Canopy over seating, Budapest

Figure 111 Traditional shelter, Minehead, Somerset



Figure 112 Winter Garden, Sheffield


Movable seating

One of the most exciting possibilities withseating is to provide chairs that users canmove about and group as they wish (Whyte1988). At a stroke this overcomes thedifficulty that urban designers have oflocating seating appropriately. Differentpeople will want to sit in different waysaccording to who they are with and theweather conditions, for example. Generally itis thought that movable seating can only beprovided in areas that can be secured atnight (for example the Jardin duLuxembourg, Paris, and Parade Gardens,Bath, Figures 113 and 114).

However there are examples wheremovable seating has been provided incompletely permeable public areas, such asthe River Danube waterfront walk inBudapest, where cast-iron seats, which canbe dragged into new positions but would bedifficult to run away with, have beenprovided (Figure 115).

Lennard and Lennard (1995 p46) describehow the city of Munich took the ‘bold andimaginative step’ of providing movable chairsin a couple of its central squares: ‘Critics whowarned that the chairs would be stolen orvandalised have, happily, been proved wrong.The chairs are enormously popular and havecontributed significantly to the success ofMunich’s pedestrian zone.’


Figure 113 Jardin du Luxembourg, Paris



Figure 114 Parade Gardens, Bath

Figure 115 Budapest, Hungary


Leaning

Sometimes people don’t want to go as far asto sit down, either because they want tosurvey the scene from a standing position orbecause they are only intending to pausebriefly. Leaning places are therefore a smallbut valued part of the public realm (seeWhyte 1980).These leaning opportunitiesusually are a by-product of their corefunction, which may be a piece of public art,plinth, bollard or suitable wall.


Figure 116 Venice

Figure 117 Padua


Comfort breaks

It is hardly the most glamorous of subjectsfor urban designers and policy makers todeal with, but adequate provision of suitablepublic toilets is part of the fundamentalinfrastructure for successful public spaces(see Greed 2003). Many local authoritiesseem to regard public toilets as a liability(and drain on their resources), rather thanan asset and there has been a worryingtrend of closure over the last few decades.Inadequate toilet provision has a particularly

discriminatory effect against older people,those with children and people withdisabilities (Holland et al 2007).

Eating and drinking

Food and drink outlets can attract people toa public space.These can range from cafesand bars with outside tables to portablerefreshment kiosks where people can gettakeaways to be consumed in adjacent sittingareas.


Figure 118 Park Güell, Barcelona


There could also be suitable places forpicnics, even if not specifically designated assuch. Such spaces either need grass orsuitable perching places, some shelter (fromsun or wind) and a reasonable aspect.Sometimes the mere addition of a foodoutlet and a few tables can transformsomewhere into a convivial space, as thephotograph of a vacant building lot in Berlindemonstrates (Figure 120).

One important factor to be considered isthe provision of suitable litter bins and theirregular emptying. Public spaces can rapidlyappear unappealing if they are strewn withdiscarded food and drink containers oroverflowing bins.

A disturbing trend in the UK has been theimposition of by-laws to prohibit theconsumption of alcohol in designated publicspaces.This is a blunt instrument aimed atbanning street drinking alcoholics from thepublic realm, but it potentially affects all of us.And as Ken Worpole (2007) points out,street-drinkers are citizens too and, as longas they are causing no harm to others, theyshould have a legitimate right to frequentpublic space. He goes on to suggest that byderegulating some public spaces or parts ofthem, this ‘looseness’ or ‘slackness’ couldperform a necessary and useful socialfunction.This could also apply to groups ofyoung people who just want to hang out orskateboard.


Figure 119 Picnickers, Lisbon, Portugal

Figure 120 Impromptu food court, East Berlin


Potsdamer Platz

The Potsdamer Platz, not far from theBrandenburg Gate (and therefore at theheart of reunified Berlin), has beencompletely remodelled as a primarilycommercial area (offices, retail andleisure) but with a significant public spacecomponent.

The most intriguing of these quasi-publicspaces is the Sony Centre, which hasbeen constructed from scratch as a huge,semi-enclosed town square (see Flierl2002, Leier 2004). Although this centre isan open access space, with places wherepeople can just hang out, Flierl (2002p24) is critical of its primarilyconsumption-based and controlledfunction, describing it as being conceivedalong the lines of Disneyland, as a themepark – ‘its theme was city and downtown,but it is not a real city and downtown,only a virtual one.’


Case Study: Berlin

Since German reunification in 1990, Berlin has been the subject of a huge amountof reconstruction, particularly in the former east zone where the following twoexamples of remodelled public space are situated.

Figure 121 A winning combination of public art,water and eating opportunities



Figure 122 Huge all-age see-saws

Figure 123 Sony Centre


Marzahn

A very different location is Marzahn, aformer East German housing estate atthe easternmost fringe of the Berlinconurbation. A concerted attempt wasmade by the Berlin municipality to bringcolour, variety and vitality to this drearyperipheral neighbourhood, in order toprevent its slide into undesirability anddecline. As well as work on remodellingthe housing, considerable effort was putinto creating lively and intriguing publicspaces.

The whole regeneration project wassubtitled ‘der Stadtteil mit Farbe’ (theneighbourhood with colour), toemphasize the principle of bringingcolour and delight into people’s lives byadding actual colour to the built fabric –such a simple but effective approach.


Figure 124 Seating and public art rolled into one

Figure 125 Mosaic mural and flower planting



Figure 126 Sandpit and colourful housing as a backdrop

Figure 127 Play space enlivened by murals


JoyOne of the characteristics that differentiatessuccessful from avoided public spaces (andindeed is at the heart of the notion ofconviviality) is the range of opportunitiesthey provide for the experience of joy ordelight. Some of this pleasure is achieved bywatching or interacting with other people,but this can be enhanced by providing focalpoints to draw people in and encouragethem to linger.This can be achieved broadlyin three ways – through the provision ofgood hard and soft landscaping, public artand entertainment. As well as being ends inthemselves, they often provide the catalystfor an impromptu conversation betweenstrangers.

Hard and soft landscaping

The selection of the right kind of surfacingand cladding materials can have a substantialeffect on the success of a public space.Vastareas of concrete and tarmac do not offermuch delight, yet these are the principlesurfacing materials in too many public spaces.Materials need to look good, yet be durable,as a successful public space will get a lot ofusage. High quality materials such as marbleand granite, although expensive, may proveto be economical in the long term, as theyare more resistant to wear and weathering.

Soft landscaping (in the form of plants,shrubs and trees), can be a great source ofdelight, as well as offering health and


Figure 128 Zurich, Switzerland


practical benefits (see for example Kaplanand Kaplan 1989, Hough 1989).Well-considered planting can: soften the hardnessof surrounding buildings, frame views andvistas, provide boundary treatments,moderate pollution, have a calming effect onusers, introduce variety and seasonaldifference and offer a more comfortablemicroclimate.This latter point is a particularbonus of deciduous trees; in the summer

they offer shade from bright sunlight and inthe winter they shed their leaves tomaximize the availability of natural light.

Colour

It should also be remembered that colourbrings joy, particularly in northern climateswhere grey skies and low light predominatefor much of the year (Mahnke 1987).


Figure 129 Neal’s Yard, Covent Garden, London



Figure 131Tirana,Albania

Source:Tobias Woldendorp

When asked, people prefer colourfulenvironments (see Duttmann et al 1981).Yetmost architecture and urban design isdrearily monochromatic. It seems as thoughdesigners have enough to think aboutwithout the added complication of colour,when for a remarkably small capital outlay,buildings and spaces can be transformedthrough the imaginative use of colour (seeMarzahn, Berlin case study).

When Albania, the poorest country inEurope, became liberated from Sovietcontrol, the mayor of the capital city wantedto brighten up people’s lives, so he did itliterally – by the cheap but highly visibletransformation of the existing builtenvironment through colourful painting ofexterior surfaces.

When people are left to their own devicesin the built environment, one of the firstthings they will do is brighten up theirsurroundings with paint and murals. One of

the most famous examples of this is Buranoin the Venetian lagoon, where local fishermenhave competed with each other to painttheir houses brightly.

In Vienna, renegade artist FriedensreichHundertwasser was encouraged by anenlightened mayor to remodel buildings andstructures using colour and soft landscaping,with spectacular results (see Figure 132overleaf; also Kliczkowski 2003).

Figure 130 Burano,Veneto region



Figure 132 Hundertwasser House,Vienna

Source: Angela Hull


Public art

Public art is a well-established presence inpublic space. Historically, this has been of themonumental kind, usually to commemoratesome great event or famous person.Thistriumphalist approach has, in the last fewdecades, been increasingly replaced by amore populist and often witty type of art(see Lennard and Lennard 1995). Usually thiswill consist of a sturdy sculpture or mural.


Figure 133 Grafton Street, Dublin

Figure 134 Millennium Square, Bristol


In Brussels the city administration has aproactive policy of commissioning murals tobrighten up drab gable end walls throughoutthe city centre (Figure 135).

Rather more contentious is the notion ofinformal public art, which usually takes theform of graffiti or stencilling.There are mixedviews about whether such works constitutevandalism or art and this will vary accordingto the quality of the result. However, there isa danger that authorities take a blanket standagainst any form of guerrilla art, when someof it actually enhances the public realm, ascan be seen in Figures 136–138.


Figure 135 Rue du Midi, Brussels Figure 136 This mural by the artist Banksy appearedwithout permission in central Bristol and hassubsequently become a visitor attraction



Figure 138 This huge mural in Zaragoza was painted on a partially demolished structure that was to beredeveloped

Figure 137 This graffiti in a Paris street has brightened up a drab concrete end wall


Public art fixtures (such as murals andsculptures) need to be robust and resilientand should not offer invitations todefacement.The rather brutal sculpture in aLisbon street (Figure 139) has been madeeven less attractive by graffiti and fly-posting.

Public art should have an immediate appealand not be so esoteric that citizens do notknow what it is.

The rather miserable-looking ‘seatingsculpture’ in Edinburgh reminded me of theimportance of context when furnishing thebuilt environment. Concrete is not much funto lie on in Scotland – it is too cold anddamp, whereas an almost identical structure Icame across in Barcelona was hugely popular– presumably the weather made it morecomfortable to lounge on.


Figure 139 Lisbon, Portugal



Figure 140 Is it a seat? Is it a sculpture? Holyrood, Edinburgh

Figure 141 Sculptural ‘recliner’: Barcelona waterfront, with Frank Gehry’s big fish sculpture in the background


Entertainment

As with public art, there has been a longhistory of street entertainment.This canconsist of formal events such as festivals andbandstand concerts, or through the enablingof busking and informal events such as bric-a-brac stalls and demonstrations. Such eventsoften make city administrators nervous asthey are not predictable and can be messy.However, they are a low-cost way to bringpublic spaces to life with the minimum ofregulation, they can offer substantial socialand democratic benefits.


Figure 142 La Rambla, Barcelona

Figure 143 Street band, Krakow, Poland


A number of municipal administrations haveset up licensing (e.g. Covent Garden, London,and Bath) or simple regulatory contracts(e.g. Berne in Switzerland) to ensure thequality and benignity of street entertainment.However, except in areas of high demand,street entertainment is usually self-regulatory,insofar as people will soon lose interest inpoor quality acts and any behaviour whichcauses substantial offence can always bedealt with by existing laws.

It is therefore surprising that more streetentertainment is not encouraged, whetherproactively by organizing events or simply bydesignating spaces for buskers and so on, asit is an almost no-cost way to bring colour,joy and delight to public spaces and thereseems to be an endless potential supply ofartists and performers eager to exercisetheir talents in public. Perhaps this is a caseof nobody in most municipalities actuallyhaving the responsibility or inclination toencourage this kind of animation.


Figure 144 Folk dancing, Budapest


Queen Square was completedin Georgian times and is alarge formal square. Althoughvisually impressive, it isunderused for much of thetime. Additional seating hasbeen put in, but it only reallycomes alive when specialevents are mounted there.Part of the problem is that it isprobably too large to be aconvivial space; the otherproblem is that nearly all theterraced buildings surroundingthe square are used as offices,


Case Study: Bristol

Figure 145 Queen Square

Bristol, in south-west England, has apopulation of 400,000.The central area isparticularly well endowed with public spaces,both old and new.


so there is very little life tospill out on to the open spaceexcept at lunchtimes.The St Nicholas Markets areais a partially covered Victorianspace, which benefits from awide variety of activities,including cafes and stalls, withthe result that during daylighthours it is always buzzing withactivity.

College Green is sandwichedbetween the Council House(Town Hall), the cathedral andone of Bristol’s main shoppingstreets. Despite its relativelybland design, its centrallocation and degree ofgreenery makes it one ofBristol’s most successfulgathering places, particularlyfor young people, but also forall ages.The Green was vastlyimproved by the removal of athrough road that passedbetween the Council Houseand the cathedral (along theleft-hand side of Figure 147).

Until 2000, the CentrePromenade was essentially thecentre of a huge trafficcirculation system.The spacewas extensively remodelledwith new seating, planting anda water feature (the latter


Figure 146 St Nicholas Markets

Figure 147 College Green

Figure 148 Centre Promenade



being rather ironic insofar asthe space is a huge concreteslab spanning part of theancient harbour). Attemptswere made to downgrade andslow the traffic but this hasnot been entirely successful,with the result that this is stilla noisy and somewhatexposed place to be.

Millennium Square and itslinked neighbour, AnchorSquare, are recent additions toBristol’s cityscape.The Squarestraddles a large undergroundcar-park and this has limitedthe amount of feasible softlandscaping.The result is a bigshiny space that has a ratherclinical feel to it. Its savinggrace is a number of waterfeatures which are popularcooling-off and paddling placeswhen the weather is warm.

Figure 150 Millennium Square

Figure 149 Millennium Square


Managing andMaintaining PublicSpacesArguably, the way public spaces are managed(and animated) is as crucial to their successas their physical attributes. As suggested inthe section on inclusion versus exclusion(page 16), places can be managed with aheavy or light touch. Some commentators(see for example Wood 1981, Holland et al2007) note that if places are over-regulatedin an oppressive manner they become lessconvivial and, indeed, quite intimidating, evenfor people who are there perfectly legally.The widespread use of CCTV in the UK hascome under some criticism, not only fromcivil liberties groups, but also from thosewho have questioned its value as a crimeprevention tool (see Shaftoe 2002,Welshand Farrington 2002).

Similarly, heavy formal policing of publicspaces can make them feel uncomfortablefor certain users.


Figure 152 South-west England

Figure 151 CCTV monitoring centre, southernEngland


Of course, in places notorious for illegal orintimidating activity, it may be necessary, atleast for a while, to resort to formal socialcontrol, as for example in Barcelona’s PlaçaReial – see case study on page 88.

In response to the perceived need to have‘more eyes on the streets’ the DutchGovernment supported municipalities in thetraining and appointment of ‘city guards’(stadswachten).These were people, oftenfrom the long-term unemployed register,who were trained, put in uniforms and thengiven the task of advising and reassuringmembers of the public, while patrollingstreets, public spaces and public transport.This approach spread to other Europeanstates and arrived in the UK under the guiseof ‘street wardens’, eventually taking the roleof ‘Police Community Support Officers’ inmany British towns.

As mentioned earlier (see page 21), anumber of British cities have taken otherinnovative approaches to managing andpolicing their public spaces by employingstreet wardens or ‘ambassadors’ – uniformedstaff who can provide advice andreassurance to users of public spaces, whilealso dealing with day-to-day managementissues.

In some Italian cities, even more innovativeapproaches have been taken in terms ofstaffing public space.The city of Paduaemploys retired people on a part-time basisto keep an eye on their urban parks, while inBologna volunteers are recruited fromimmigrant groups to act as park keepers.Thislatter approach achieves a double benefit ofboth providing a reassuring official presencein public spaces and altering indigenouscitizens’ stereotypical view of immigrants asbeing potentially problematic.


Figure 154 Park keepers, Bologna

Figure 153 Park keepers, Padua


Worpole and Knox (2007) note that citizens have a remarkable capacity for self-regulation. As long as a public space isnot totally out of control or completelydominated by one faction, members of thepublic normally find ways of accommodatingtheir different needs and informally enforcingacceptable behaviour.

Another successful UK management initiativein recent years has been the appointment of town-centre managers. Although theyoften have a remit to improve the economicprospects of town centres, obviously this can include improving the quality andattractiveness of the public realm. In somecases (Bristol being an example) councilsemploy people specifically to strategicallymanage the city-centre public spaces. Publicart officers could also potentially improvethe quality of life in public space, particularlyif their remit could extend to the promotionof street entertainment and impromptucultural activities rather than just visual art.

Good public space management is aboutmore than making places safe and crime-free; it should also be proactive in severalways, encouraging or initiating interestingactivities, ensuring adequate maintenance and repair of the physical fabric and initiating micro-adjustments in the light ofobservable use.

Taking the latter point first, town-centremanagers and others responsible for theongoing management of public space, unlikearchitects, urban designers and planners

(who produce their designs and then walkaway), have an interest in the day-to-day andlong-term viability of spaces.They aretherefore well placed to make or requestthe necessary adjustments and modificationsthat are inevitably necessary during thelifespan of any public space. Examples mightbe realignment of footpaths to reflect ‘desirelines’, provision of extra litter bins andbenches in certain locations, adjusting signageor incorporating new planting. In fact publicspaces can fail, or fail to meet their fullpotential, because nobody takes a holisticview of how they can be modified accordingto use and needs. It is highly unlikely that, inthe case of new public spaces, the designerswill have got every detail right at first, yetthere is rarely any budget or allowance madefor post-occupancy evaluation andsubsequent modifications.

However durable the fabric of a public spaceis, it will inevitably deteriorate over time as aresult of wear and tear and vandalism, unlessit is regularly and consistently maintained.Quick repairs not only show that a place iscared for, but will often thwart furtherdeterioration (Kelling and Coles 1996). Oneexample is offensive graffiti and tagging –speedy removal (possibly with theapplication of anti-graffiti coatings) has beenshown to deter further spraying, as offendersdo not have the time to celebrate theirmarkings. If damaged street furniture is notfixed, further damage will escalate, as theenvironment deteriorates into a free-for-alltarget for destruction (see Zimbardo 1973).Even something as relatively simple (yet so



often neglected) as regularly emptying litterbins and clearing up strewn rubbish can havea crucial effect on the quality and perceptionof public spaces.The problem here is oftenthat, in the absence of people such as parkkeepers, no one is actually monitoring andthen reacting to the overall condition ofpublic spaces on a daily basis.

In Denmark, Germany and other continentalEuropean countries, there is a continuingtraditional trade of ‘streetbuilder’(Strassenbauer in German) – someone skilledin all the interconnected elements ofmaintaining public outdoor space. In the UK

there is generally no such urban caretakerwho has overall responsibility for the upkeepof the urban realm, with the result thatmaintenance and upgrading is fragmentedand incoherent, with some aspects, such asthe removal of redundant signs andequipment, being neglected altogether(CABE Space 2007).This is compounded bythe UK custom of providing funding forcapital expenditure, such as water features,fancy lighting and public artworks, with verylittle provision for long-term ongoingmaintenance, resulting in the deterioration ofmany promising features (Brand 1994,Gallacher 2005).


Figure 155 St Mark’s Square,Venice


The final point about management (alsomentioned earlier, page 120) is the potentialof public space managers to create orfacilitate lively and intriguing activity –sometimes known as ‘animation’ of spaces.This can be as simple as licensing or allowingstreet entertainers and vendors, or ascomplex as organizing large public eventssuch as fairs and festivals.

Although free festivals in public spaces needsubsidizing, this can often be justified andachieved as a result of the extra economicbenefits they bring to the town (throughmore visitors staying and spending).However, many of these animations neednot cost very much and may indeed be self-funding. For example, a soup festival inKrakow, Poland, fills the squares and streetsof the Jewish Quarter simply as a result of allthe local cafes and restaurants offering freesoup.They make up any losses by thesubstantially increased sale of drinks andother food. Free music from buskers andlocal bands adds to the ambience. Anotherexample is the ‘Streets Alive’ event heldannually in Bristol, where environmentalgroups are allowed to reclaim selectedstreets and turn them into ‘living rooms’ forthe day.

All in all, the way public spaces are managedand animated is as important as design andlocation in the creation and maintenance ofconviviality in the public realm.


Figure 156 Folklore festival in central square,Vianade Castelo, northern Portugal

Figure 157 Streets Alive festival, Bristol



Padua (Padova in Italian) is a typicalmedium-sized city (about 400,000population in the greater urban area) inthe Veneto region of Northern Italy. It hasa series of classic Italian piazza in thehistoric central area and an extensiveprogramme of pedestrianization that hasmade it into a very people-friendly city.However, enlightened urban space planninghas not reached out to the suburbs wheresome of the new public spaces are asdismal as anywhere in Europe.

Case Study: Padua

Figure 158 Piazza dei Signori: one of a series oflinked central squares



Figures 159 and 160 Prato della Valle,one of Europe’s largest urban squares, was a place better known inPadua for drug dealing and other antisocial activities until overgrown vegetation was removed and tree crownswere raised. It is now a safe and successful gathering place both by day and night


Figures 161 and 162 Many central streets have been pedestrianized, with cafes and bookstalls taking overthe spaces formerly occupied by vehicles (Via Soncin, above;Via Roma, below)



Outside the central area, public spacesrapidly lose their conviviality.

Figure 163 This plaza in front of a newdevelopment on the edge of the historic centrecould be anywhere and is used by no one

Figures 164 and 165 Public space in theSelvazzano suburb of Padua has been virtuallyabandoned – not surprising when the localauthority has erected a sign forbidding almostevery kind of playful activity



York has a population of 180,000 and is ahistoric city – where the Viking andRoman settlements were overlaid by amedieval street pattern that forms thebasis of the current layout within the citywalls. As an ancient market andadministrative centre it has an abundanceof central public spaces. Most of thesespaces have been in situ for hundreds ofyears, but one new space, St Mary’s

Square, has been created and appears tobe successful, nestling as it does among amixture of old buildings and somereasonably sympathetic new ones.Yorkhas the benefit of being a touristdestination and thus can sustain a highlevel of street animation, although itshould be pointed out that all but one ofits central squares predate the touristinflux.


Case Study:York



Figures 166 and 167 Trampolining and busking in Parliament Square



Figures 168 and 169 King Square


As with so many other historic cities,public spaces in the areas of newdevelopment (see, for example, Figure 75 on page 72) have been much lesssuccessful than in the historic core.It may be that, as illustrated in theGlasgow experiment described byGallacher (2005), public space can onlybe truly successful in dense, mixed-useurban cores.This is borne out in York,where the new St Mary’s Square in theheart of the old town has proved to be a convivial space.


Figure 170 St Mary’s Square: a new space andpart of the Coppergate redevelopment



139

CONCLUSION

The Constituents ofConviviality

This section aims to pull together andsummarize many of the points raised

earlier in the book.

I suggest that there is no single blueprint fora convivial space, but successful spaces doseem to share some common elements.These may be broadly categorized under theheadings of physical (including design andpractical issues), geographical, managerial andpsychological and sensual (how the spaceaffects our mind, spirit and senses). As withmost attempts at categorization, there issome overlap as some elements may belisted under more than one category; so inorder to create some order out of anotherwise random list, the elements arecategorized as follows:

Physical

■ Plenty of sitting places (notnecessarily formal fixed benches)

■ Good quality and robust – successfulpublic spaces will get a lot of wear andtear. Investing in high quality, durablematerials will save money in the longterm

■ Adaptable (both for different uses andover time) – organic, incremental, fine-grained development copes with the

inevitable changes affecting public spaceand allows it to go on thriving

■ Asymmetrical, yet wellproportioned (balance withoutsymmetry) – most successful publicspaces are not completely rectilinear,often because they have grown andevolved in response to the topographyand dynamics of the surrounding area

■ Variety and intriguing details (i.e.not monolithic) – this should compriseinteresting landscaping, including plants,shrubs and trees, and intriguing use ofcolour and/or texture on built verticalsurfaces

■ Carefully considered andappropriate horizontal surfacetreatments – for both practical andaesthetic reasons; these are particularlyimportant where there are changes inlevel, in order that no one should bedisadvantaged by their physical ability orneeds

■ Not too large – or too small!

Geographical

■ Location (urban core, neighbourhoodor suburb) – generally public spaceswork best when they are reasonablycentral, either in a town or


neighbourhood, and are at theconvergence of routes that people usefor other purposes.They also workbetter when they are surrounded bymixed uses rather than monoculturessuch as offices or housing

■ Type of neighbourhood andsurrounding areas – new publicspaces are sometimes used to attemptto regenerate downtown or formerlyproblematic areas. However, if theimmediate surroundings are stillperceived as unsafe or neglected, peopleare unlikely to go there or run the risk oflingering there

■ Clusters, sequences and strings ofspaces – as the case studies show, manyof the most successful urban cores havemore than one public space, allowing forvariety of use and the pleasure ofmoving through a cityscape

■ Relation to transport (motorizedand pedestrian routes) – unless they arejust for people living in the immediatesurroundings, good public spaces willneed to be easily accessible by all meansof transport, but should not bedominated by their presence

Managerial

■ Diversity of use – people need avariety of reasons to gather and linger

■ Promotion of a relaxed, round-the-clock culture – there is a fine balanceto attain between ensuring security andimposing excessive surveillance thatmakes people feel uncomfortable – on

the whole people are good at policingthemselves, so the best managementencourages a variety of people to beusing the space at all times.There needsto be sufficient but not oppressivesupervision so that crime risk andincivilities are kept under control

■ Inclusiveness – ideally everyoneshould feel welcome in a good publicspace, even if parts of it have dedicatedgroup activities (such as play spaces orskateboarding opportunities)

■ Well maintained and clean – a placethat is obviously cared for will be muchmore popular than one that looksneglected. Lack of adequate maintenancealso leads to ‘tipping’: an escalation ofdamage and deterioration (e.g. graffititagging that is not swiftly removed willencourage more; if rubbish is not clearedup promptly, users will not hesitate todump more)

■ Vehicular circulation banned ortightly controlled

■ Adequately lit■ Animation – there should be

opportunities for plenty of humanactivity, such as stalls, busking,skateboarding, picnicking, as peopleattract people.These mixed activitiesshould be encouraged rather thandeterred



Psychological and sensual

■ Human scale – people seem to enjoya sense of enclosure without feelingclaustrophobic. Huge structures(whether they be walls or buildings) andvast open spaces may be awe-inspiring,but they are unlikely to facilitate a feelingof conviviality

■ Individuality and uniqueness –places with distinctive character andidentity become positively memorableand may attract repeat visits. People willhave the sense that they are in a uniqueplace.This will result in a space that iscomplex, but coherent

■ Feeling of safety (unthreatening) –this can be achieved through design andthe management of the space, and is alsoperceived by observing the behaviour ofothers

■ Comfortable microclimate – bothsun and shade and protection from coldwinds (but encouragement of coolingbreezes in hot climates!)

■ Visually satisfactory – not toodazzling or gloomy

■ Incorporation of natural elements(e.g. plants, trees, water)

■ Acoustically pleasant – not toomuch mechanical noise (so you can talk),but not so quiet that you can beoverheard

■ No bad smells – preferably pleasantaromas (such as coffee, fresh baking orflowers)

■ Opportunities to eat and drink –self-catering and purchasable

I am not suggesting that to qualify as acompletely convivial space all the aboveelements should be present, but a highproportion of them contribute to the spaces I have observed as working well.Furthermore, the way in which thesequalities combine to please the humanconsciousness is not an exact science.Thereare clearly some objective considerations,such as even paved surfaces, seating or‘loitering’ locations, adequate lighting,amenable microclimate and safety frommotor traffic. However, beyond these aremany subjective effects that the design, layoutand animation of a place may have on thedegree of personal comfort and delight.

Different people will be affected by differentcombinations of elements to some extent,but there appears to be a core set ofattributes that will please more or lessanyone.The nearest analogy might be theexperience of a good novel, movie or pieceof music – everybody has different tastes,but there is wide agreement about whichare the classics. Indeed, many of the bulletpoints above could, metaphorically, beapplied to quality literature, cinema or music.

Conclusion:The Constituents of Conviviality 141


Finally, here are some very practical andspecific things that the designers andmaintainers of public spaces can do andavoid doing, in order to achieve the bestpossible spaces:

Do:■ design the open spaces at the same time

as you design or redesign the buildingsand other structures, rather thanregarding the space as what’s left overafter the buildings have gone up

■ design with safety and security in mind■ consider the effect of the space on all

the senses (and not just visually)■ consult residents or potential users (all

age groups).What do they like anddislike? What problems do they perceive?What do they want? What would theylike to change?

■ follow ‘desire lines’ for footpaths (it maybe necessary to do this retrospectively)

■ provide a variety of sitting opportunities(not just fixed benches)

■ think about the microclimate andprovide protection and shelter asappropriate

■ provide opportunities and facilities forpeople to eat and drink

■ encourage ‘animation’ of the spacethrough activities, formal or informal

■ define open spaces with trees clearstemmed up to 3.5m. Plant speciallyprepared trees of suitable species(Advance Nursery Stock) at a minimumsize of 14–16cm girth. Use supportstakes and metal bar or grille protectorsin vulnerable locations

■ minimize the use of shrubs, but ifnecessary use species with a maximummature height of 1.0m

■ use see-through metal bar fencing (ifbarriers are needed)

■ apply anti-graffiti coatings to accessiblevertical surfaces in vulnerable locations

■ consider having ‘graffiti walls’ andcommunity noticeboards

■ consider having a range of designatedspaces for different age groups (e.g. playspaces, sports equipment, youth shelters,benches and picnic or barbequefacilities), but make sure that they arelinked and oversee each other

■ install pedestrian-friendly lighting(mounted not too high and incorporatingfull colour spectrum luminaries)

■ have litter bins adjacent to benches,picnic tables and shelters, and ensurethey are emptied regularly

■ have a rapid response system to clear updumping, graffiti, fly-posting and vandalism

■ put in place systems for regular greenerymaintenance and rubbish removal

■ have public toilet facilities on site oraccessible nearby

■ use the highest quality materials, fittingsand plants that the budget can afford(they will save money in the long term)

Don’t:■ put public spaces in isolated or low-

density locations■ design spaces that result in entrapment

spots or poor surveillance■ put too many restrictions on the use of

public space



■ use low-cost or high-maintenancematerials

■ add features (such as public art) that willrapidly deteriorate or break down

■ install hardware that invites vandalism(e.g. flimsy street furniture or light fittingsand any kind of slatted or plank timberfencing)

■ use raised planters for shrubs or trees(they tend to get damaged and don’tcollect enough surface rainwater)

■ use mass planting of grey or dull, darkgreen leafy shrubs (they’re depressing)

■ plant clusters of shrubs or plants that traplitter and make litter difficult to remove

■ plant trees with a mature height of lessthan 10m, where casual surveillance isrequired

■ plant flimsy trees (e.g. mountain ash orsmall cherries) – they either won’tsurvive or won’t thrive

■ apply textured pebble-dash-type finishesto walls and accessible vertical surfaces(people can still spray graffiti on to them,which is then a nightmare to remove)

■ plant protruding pebbles or stones intohorizontal concrete surfaces (what’s thepoint? – yet you find them in many urbanlocations as a cheap way to discouragefoot passage)

■ use single-leaf brickwork or blockworkfor walls and external divisions (they willeventually get pulled down)

■ put public benches too close tooccupied buildings (they will provokenoise complaints from residents) or inlocations where they are exposed frombehind

There is no standard formula for creatingconvivial spaces, but many of the above dosand don’ts will help. It is important toremember that although design is important,the size and location of the space along withthe way it is managed and animated areequally important factors.We have much tolearn from the successful places of the past.Although we have many new technologiesand the world has changed spectacularly inthe last 100 years, the basic human need forconviviality has endured. It is no coincidencethat most of the world’s most popular publicspaces have been there for hundreds ofyears (with some adaptation over time) –see, for example, Figures 5, 155 and 171.

With our current knowledge it should bepossible to create new convivial urbanspaces for our expanding cities, as well asimproving those which haven’t quite worked,by respecting the experience of history, yetnot slavishly imitating what has gone before.

Conclusion:The Constituents of Conviviality 143

Figure 171 Grande Place, Brussels



145

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Internet ResourcesThree websites relating to this topic (the firstBritish, the second European, the third American):

■ www.cabespace.org.uk –the Commissionfor Architecture and the Built Environment(CABE) is a British quango charged with thetask of improving the quality of design,primarily through advice and guidance.

■ www.spaceforpublic.org – The EuropeanCentre on Public Space, modelled loosely onPPS (see below).

■ www.pps.org –The Project for PublicSpaces (PPS) is an independent Americanadvisory and campaigning organization, thatargues for the improved quality of life thataccrues from good quality public spaces.



151

Index

24 Hour City 16, 25–26

adventure playgrounds 42, 42aesthetics 33, 56–63, 56–59, 61–63, 141Albania 113, 113alcohol bans 20, 23, 106Alexander, Christopher 6, 74, 75, 81, 83, 86, 87Algajola (Corsica) 80‘ambassadors’ 22, 126Amsterdam (The Netherlands) 35, 68, 71, 84animation 25–26, 120–121, 120–121, 129, 129, 140, 142

York (England) 134, 135architects 11, 32, 86Aylesbury (Buckinghamshire, England) 28

Backwell (Somerset, England) 32, 34Barcelona (Spain) 13, 39, 58, 61, 76, 95, 96, 105

Ciutat Vella 88–91, 88–91La Rambla 67, 67, 88, 120public art 118, 119

barriers 23–24, 142Bath (Somerset, England) 103, 121behaviour, environment and 51–55, 52–55Beijing (China) 15Berlin (Germany) 27, 37, 85, 106, 106–110, 107–109Berne (Switzerland) 121Bideford (Devon, England) 79Birmingham 29, 29, 64, 77, 93Bologna (Italy) 126, 126Bordesley (Birmingham, England) 48Bristol 7, 8, 63, 78, 122–124, 122–124, 127

aesthetics 56, 58, 59, 62College Green 54, 66, 71–72, 72, 123, 123Hartcliffe 84Knowle West 17, 17public art 115, 116Streets Alive festival 65, 129, 129

Brussels (Belgium) 43, 116, 116, 143Budapest (Hungary) 93, 95, 100, 102, 103, 121Burano (Italy) 113, 113busking 25, 77, 120, 121, 129, 135, 140by-laws 23, 26, 106

CABE (Commission for Architecture in the BuiltEnvironment) 4, 14, 16, 18, 20

cafes 61, 64, 105, 105, 123, 123

pavement cafes 25, 61, 67, 68, 68, 71, 132Cardiff (Wales) 9, 45cars 64, 64, 80CCTV 17, 20, 22–23, 26, 125, 125Chicago (Illinois, US) 25, 64children 33–39, 33–38‘city guards’ (stadswachten) 126Ciutat Vella (Barcelona, Spain) 88–91, 88–91civilized life 6, 12, 15, 19, 27climate 68–70, 68–70coherence 48, 54, 55, 141College Green (Bristol, England) 54, 66, 71–72, 72, 123, 123colour 85, 86, 109, 109–110, 112–113, 113–114, 121, 139comfort 60–61, 62, 70, 92–106, 92–106, 141

see also comfort breaks; eating; leaning places; seating;shelter ; vantage points

comfort breaks 105, 142Commission for Architecture in the Built Environment see

CABEcommunal gardens 78, 78communities 1, 18, 31–32, 48, 90conflict resolution 12, 13, 84context 17, 17, 18control 6, 15, 20–24, 77, 84, 125–126convivial spaces 3, 4–5, 6–7, 8, 66

common elements 6, 139–141human need for 7–8, 143organic growth 6–7, 50, 81, 86, 87, 139

conviviality 1, 9, 139–141, 143Copenhagen (Denmark) 4–5, 15, 36, 64, 68, 83, 83Covent Garden (London, England) 112, 121Coventry (West Midlands, England) 22, 23, 85covered spaces 76–77, 76–77, 123, 123CPTED (crime prevention through environmental design) 17crime 15, 16, 24, 32, 60, 88, 89

‘designing out’ 16, 17, 18crime reduction 17, 20–21, 22–23criminals 24, 25curfews 15, 19, 41curiosity 55, 62curves 75

Dallas (Texas, US) 6delight 111, 121, 141democracy 5, 12, 15, 77, 84, 120demonstrations 13, 15, 64, 73, 77, 120


Denmark 80, 128Copenhagen 4–5, 15, 36, 64, 68, 83, 83

deployment of personnel 21, 21–22, 126see also policing

design see urban designdesignated spaces 33, 33, 39, 41, 106, 142designers 4, 11, 81, 82, 86, 87, 113

visual aesthetic 63‘designing out crime’ 16, 17, 18‘desire lines’ 87, 127, 142deviance, accommodating 26–27, 27difference 5, 13, 13–14, 19, 51, 84Dijon (France) 17, 17dispersal orders 19, 20distribution of people 53, 53drinking 61, 61, 105–106, 105–106, 141, 142

see also alcohol bansDublin (Ireland) 2, 55, 115Dufferin Mall (Toronto, Canada) 30–31, 30

eating 61, 61, 105–106, 105–106, 107, 141, 142economic benefits 14, 20, 129Edinburgh (Scotland) 2, 37, 38, 118, 119electronic surveillance 17, 20, 22–23, 26, 125, 125enclosed spaces 76–77, 77, 107, 107entrapment spots 26, 55, 60, 142environment and behaviour 51–55, 52–55evaluation, post-occupancy 86, 87, 127events 13, 122, 129, 129exclusion 15, 16, 18, 20–24, 24, 32

from shopping malls 29, 30‘eyes on the street’ 15, 19, 126

fantasy 85–86fencing 142, 143festivals 25, 26, 64, 65, 120, 129, 129floorscapes 58, 59–60, 59, 63

see also surface treatmentsFort Worth (Texas, US) 27Freiburg (Germany) 3

gardens, communal 78, 78gated spaces 6, 18, 29, 29, 32, 32gathering places for young people 40–45, 70, 70, 91, 123, 123Gehl, Jan 20, 61, 74gentrification 90Germany 37, 37, 128

see also BerlinGlasgow (Scotland) 14, 14, 72, 137governments 12, 15, 73gradients 59, 60graffiti 116, 116–118, 118, 127, 140, 142, 143grass 53, 54, 66, 66green spaces 55, 55, 78, 78greenery 12, 78, 78, 123, 123

hanging out 39–43, 39–42, 44, 44, 106happiness 12

hard landscaping 53, 78, 111see also surface treatments

Havana (Cuba) 15, 69, 73Hayle (Cornwall, England) 41health 12, 19, 20, 78, 111homeless people 25housing estates 21, 21, 109, 109–110Hundertwasser, Friedensreich 75, 113, 114

‘incentive zoning system’ 15inclusion 16, 18, 19–20, 19, 24, 25, 30–31, 140

design and 20, 26of young people 43–45

integrationof people 25, 32of play areas 35, 35

interactions 5, 7, 13, 19–20, 32, 53interpersonal distance 52, 52, 53intrigue 55, 62, 75, 139

Jacobs, Jane 2, 15, 19, 26Jerde, John 85–86, 85joy 111–121

Knowle West (Bristol, England) 17, 17Krakow (Poland) 28, 35, 75, 78–79, 97, 120, 129

La Rambla (Barcelona, Spain) 67, 67, 88, 120Le Corbusier 47, 84, 87leaning places 53, 104, 104learning 12, 12–13, 67legal controls 20, 21, 23legibility 48–50, 49, 54legislation 15, 86, 86–87, 87lighting 140, 141, 142Lille (France) 25linear parks 78–79, 79lingering places 52, 53, 60, 66, 78, 79, 79linked spaces 73, 75, 80, 83, 130, 130–133, 140, 183Lisbon (Portugal) 61, 69, 106, 118litigation 6, 32litter 106, 127–128, 140, 142litter bins 49, 106, 127, 127–128, 142location of public spaces 71–72, 72, 139–140, 142, 143London 3, 5, 15, 21, 25, 79, 84, 112

small spaces 73, 73loose materials 37, 37–38, 38–39Lynch, Kevin 48–49, 54, 56, 74

Madrid (Spain) 74, 74, 76, 77maintenance 33, 78, 127–128, 140, 142, 142–143management of public spaces 7, 24–25, 43–45, 125–129,

125–126, 128–129, 140, 142–143Marrakech (Morocco) 8, 70Marzahn (Berlin, Germany) 109, 109–110master-planning 81–84, 84–85materials, quality 111, 139, 142, 143Melbourne (Australia) 14, 20



microclimates 58, 59, 60, 70, 112, 141, 142Milton Keynes (Buckinghamshire, England) 85Minehead (Somerset, England) 100mixed use 26, 48, 68, 71, 72, 140modernism 47, 50, 84Monção (Portugal) 80morphogenesis 75, 81, 86Moscow (Russia) 15, 73movable seating 53, 102, 102–103movement through spaces 59–60, 59Munich (Germany) 102murals 109, 110, 113, 115–116, 116, 117mystery 55, 62, 75

natural elements 62, 62, 141natural surveillance 17, 25–26, 143The Netherlands 126

see also Amsterdamnew developments 48, 48, 72, 137new urbanism 16, 17, 32New York (US) 11, 15, 44noise 57, 61, 63, 70, 78, 124, 141Norwich (Norfolk, England) 26

observing 53, 67, 67, 68, 94, 96, 96–97, 111older people 25, 55, 94, 95, 105open squares 76, 76organic growth 6–7, 50, 81, 82, 83, 86, 87, 139outdoor space, children 33–39, 33–38over-regulation 125, 133, 142

Padua (Italy) 52, 80, 98, 104, 126, 126, 130, 130–133, 133Paris 7, 34, 74, 78, 84, 85, 102, 117

Promenade Plantée 79, 79park keepers 126, 126, 128participation 43–45, 45, 142pavement cafes 25, 61, 67, 68, 68, 71, 132pedestrianization 35, 35, 63, 64, 80, 80

Copenhagen (Denmark) 83, 83Padua (Italy) 130, 132

people attracting people 66–68, 66–68people-watching 53, 67, 67–68, 94, 96, 96–97, 111‘personality’ 1, 7physical barriers 23–24, 142picnicking 61, 106, 106, 140, 142planned city movement 84planners 32, 86planning permission 15planting 60, 109, 112, 112, 127, 139

see also shrubs; treesplay 28, 28, 33–39, 33–38play areas 5, 33–39, 33–38, 109, 110, 133, 142polarization 5, 18police community support officers 20, 21–22, 126policing 15, 19, 20, 20–21, 88, 89, 125, 125political statements, spaces as 15, 73pollution 6, 58, 64, 71, 78, 112post-occupancy evaluation 86, 87, 127

Potsdamer Platz (Berlin, Germany) 85, 107, 107–108Poundbury (Dorset, England) 48, 48private ownership 30, 76–77, 77private security 18, 18, 21, 22privatization 5, 6, 12, 32psychology of public space 7, 51–55, 52–55, 66–67, 70, 141public art 107, 109, 111, 115–118, 115–119, 127, 143public spaces 1, 7–8, 11, 15, 73, 143

benefits 12–15location 71–72, 72, 139–140, 142, 143shape 74–75, 74–75, 139size 73–74, 73, 122, 122, 139, 141, 143types 75–80, 75–80

public toilets 105, 142

quality of life 17, 32quality of materials 111, 139, 142, 143

reassurance 22, 60, 66–67reclaiming streets 35, 35, 80, 80, 83, 83, 129, 129

see also pedestrianizationrecommendations 142–143regeneration 109, 109–110, 140repression 22, 23risk 38, 45, 54–55, 140Rochefort (France) 63, 63Rome (Italy) 60Rotterdam (The Netherlands) 25

safety 15, 16, 19, 68, 140, 141, 142community control and 31–32sense of 54–55, 141see also security

St Mark’s Square (Venice, Italy) 86, 87, 128San Diego (California, US) 85Sarlat Le Canéda (France) 80Seaside (Florida, US) 32, 48seating 92–95, 92–97, 96, 109, 118, 119, 123, 123, 127, 141

location 53, 92, 93, 94, 94, 143movable 53, 102, 102–103removal of 29, 29, 40sheltered 99, 99–101see also sitting places

security 6, 15, 16–26, 18, 140, 142see also control; safety; surveillance

self-regulation 127, 140sense of community 18sense of place 63sense of safety 54–55, 141senses 7, 56–63, 56–59, 61–63, 141, 142separation of populations 84Sergels Torg (Stockholm, Sweden) 50, 50shade 60, 68, 69, 70, 70, 76, 112, 141‘shadowed’ spaces 26–27, 27, 39shape of public spaces 74–75, 74–75, 139Sheffield (England) 22, 22, 76, 92, 101shelter 99, 99–101, 106, 142shopping malls 7, 18, 18, 22, 77

Index 153


private ownership 30, 76–77seatless 29, 29Toronto (Canada) 30–31, 30

shrubs 60, 139, 142, 143Siena (Italy) 4, 60signs 49, 49, 127sitting places 51, 53, 66, 66, 90, 92, 111, 139, 142

and climate 68, 68–70and comfort 60, 61, 92orientation 94see also seating

size of public spaces 73–74, 73, 122, 122, 139, 141, 143skateboarding 26, 39, 40, 45, 45, 72, 106

facilities for 43, 43, 140‘slack’ spaces 26–27, 27, 39SLOAP (space left over after planning) 6smells 58, 63, 70, 141sociability of humans 66–68, 66–68social aspiration 31social capital 48social cohesion 31–32social contact, human need for 12soft landscaping 111, 111–112, 112

see also grass; planting; shrubs; treessolidarity 12, 13sounds 57, 61, 62, 63, 70, 141South Africa 19space left over after planning (SLOAP) 6stadswachten (city guards) 126steps 53, 59–60, 59, 94, 95Stirling (Scotland) 34Stockholm (Sweden) 50straight lines 75‘stranger danger’ 6, 33, 44street entertainment 14, 25, 26, 111, 120–121, 120–121, 127

busking 25, 77, 120, 121, 129, 135, 140street furniture 49, 49, 90, 127, 143street parties 65street play 35, 35street wardens 21, 126‘streetbuilders’ 128streets, reclaiming 35, 35, 64, 65, 80, 129, 129Streets Alive (Bristol, England) 65, 129, 129sunlight 60, 112, 141surface treatments 63, 64, 111, 139, 141, 143

sensory effect 58, 59–60, 59surveillance 15, 20, 21, 140, 142

CCTV 17, 20, 22–23, 26, 125, 125natural 17, 25–26, 143

sustainability 2, 5, 12, 48, 86Swindon (Wiltshire, England) 25

territoriality 51–52texture 58, 58, 139Tibbalds, Francis 6, 47, 71

Tirana (Albania) 113toilets, public 105, 142tolerance 5, 12, 13top-down design 84, 87Toronto (Canada) 30–31, 30Torquay (Devon, England) 28, 70town-centre managers 24, 127traffic 57, 61, 63, 64, 124, 141transport 72, 140trees 60, 111, 131, 139, 142, 143types of public spaces 75–80, 75–80

unconvivial spaces 2, 5–6, 8, 133unfolding townscapes 55, 75, 80, 140uniqueness 85–86, 141unpredictability 28, 28, 38–39urban design 6–7, 18, 26, 31, 32, 81–87

for children and young people 43–45principles 47–51professionals 4, 11, 32, 81, 82, 86, 87recommendations 142–143

urban village approach 16, 18, 48US (United States) 15, 19, 25, 32, 48

vandalism 20, 23, 102, 116, 127, 142, 143vantage points 96, 96–98Venice (Italy) 8, 104

St Mark’s Square 86, 87, 128Viana de Castelo (Portugal) 129victimization 42, 43, 44, 45, 55, 68Vienna (Austria) 75, 113, 114Vietnam 97virtual realities 11

water 57, 62, 62–63, 79water features 38, 39, 57, 57, 63, 107, 123–124, 124Waterford (Ireland) 79, 79wellbeing 12, 19, 20, 78Whyte,William 11, 20, 61, 72, 92Winter Garden (Sheffield, England) 76, 101Worpole, Ken 1, 11, 12, 26–27, 72, 106Wrexham (Clwyd,Wales) 42, 42

York (England) 40, 72, 80, 134, 134–137, 137young people 19, 25, 39–45, 39–45, 106

gathering places 40–45, 70, 70, 91, 123, 123socialization 39, 40, 41, 45victimization of 42, 43, 44, 45, 68

youth shelters 41–42, 41

Zaragoza (Spain) 57, 117zero tolerance 23‘zoning’ of use 47–48Zurich (Switzerland) 111



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