“THEORIES OF PUBLIC SPACES”

REPORTER: MARIE CRIS G. MADRID

"The measure of any great civilization is its cities and a measure of a city's greatness is to
be found in the quality of its public spaces, its parks and squares." -John Ruskin
DIFFERENT TYPES OF PUBLIC SPACE
BLUE SPACE is an urban design
term for visible water. Attractive blue
spaces such as waterfront, parks,
harbors, ports, marinas, rivers, open
air stream, canals, lakes, ponds and
fountains are thought to improve
quality of life and to moderate urban
heat islands. Blue space is a
valuable resources. Waterfront,
riverside and canal-front areas are
typically considered a city’s most
attractive feature when they are well
designed and managed.
GHOST SPACES are underutilized
public spaces in an urban area. The
primary cause of ghost spaces is a
poor design that lacks interesting
features or a unpleasant
atmosphere that draws people.
Secondary factors in some cities are
safety, perceived safety, pollution
and inadequate transportation. In
some cases, committees of experts
such as architects, artists and
sociologist design public spaces to
have academic appeal that has little
value to neighborhood. For
example, simple concrete public
squares that stem from academic
ideas such as minimalism and truth
to materials may fail to attract public
appreciation or use.
LIVING STREET is a mixed
use-use pedestrians street
that may provide social
space, greenspace and play
areas. In many cases, living
street allow low speed of
vehicle access with the clear
rule that pedestrians have
absolutely priority. Traffic
calming is often implemented
that pedestrian friendly.
VOID DECK is the practice of
leaving the first floor of a
residential building as an open
community space. It is used by
children as a play space that can
be used rain or shine. Many are
quite large with enough room for
sports like soccer. They are also
used by the residents of the
building as a place to socialize
and for and for recreation such as
board games. Some have
evolved to have food vendors and
other unofficial features such as
bicycle parking. Voids decks are
commonly used for events and
ceremonies that include wedding
and funeral.
CLEAR AIR ZONE is a
district or region that has
regulations to limit
emissions of gasses such
as nitrogen dioxide and
particulate matter. Such
regulations typically target
cities areas that have a
high population or areas
that historically had
dangerously poor air
quality
LINEAR PARK is anurban
park that s considerably
longer than it s wide. They
typically result from
historical features of a city
such as roads that were
replaced with green space.
Linear parks are often ideal
for activities such as
walking and jogging. They
also allow a large number
of people to live within
close proximity to a green
space as they stretch
through a city.
SUPERBLOCK is a city block
that is much larger than a
traditional city block. They occur
incidentally in areas with extreme
large buildings, they can also be
pursued as an urban design
strategy to reduce the impacts of
cars on cities. A superblock can
be created by disallowing cars on
a small roads in a neighborhood.
The roads instantly become
broad sidewalks. This provide
opportunities to use land for
bicycle paths, community
projects and appealing
commercial ventures such as
leasing land to cafes to build café
terraces.
Importance and Role of Public Space
■ Public spaces (including high
streets, street markets, shopping
precincts, community centres, parks,
playgrounds, and neighbourhood
spaces in residential areas) play a vital
role in the social life of communities.
They act as a ‘self-organising public
service’, a shared resource in which
experiences and value are created
(Mean and Tims, 2005). These social
advantages may not be obvious to
outsiders or public policy-makers.
■ Public spaces offer many benefits:
the ‘feel-good’ buzz from being part
of a busy street scene; the
therapeutic benefits of quiet time
spent on a park bench; places
where people can display their
culture and identities and learn
awareness of diversity and
difference; opportunities for children
and young people to meet, play or
simply ‘hang out’. All have important
benefits and help to create local
attachments, which are at the heart
of a sense of community.
■ The success of a particular public space
is not solely in the hands of the architect,
urban designer or town planner; it relies
also on people adopting, using and
managing the space – people make
places, more than places make people.
■ The use of public spaces varies
according to the time of day and day of
the week, and is affected by what is on
offer in a particular place at a particular
time. In one town centre studied there
was a clear rhythm to the day, with older
people shopping in the central market
early on, children and young people out at
the end of the school day, and young
adults dominating the town centre at
night.
■ Retailing and commercial leisure
activities dominate town centres, and
though public space can act as a ‘social
glue’ the research found that in some
places ‘the society that is being held
together is a stratified one, in which
some groups are routinely privileged
over others’ (Holland et al, 2006). So,
for instance, young and older people
are discouraged from frequenting
shopping areas by lack of seating or
(for groups of younger people) by being
‘moved on’.
Theories
• The theory of place in public place emerged from Barker’s 1950’s research on
behaviour settings in the field of ecological psychology.
“While place meanings are rooted in the physical setting and its activities, they
are not a property of them but a property of human interaction and experiences of
those places”- (Relph 1976:47).
Canter referred to place meanings as conceptions, stressing the importance of
experience and choice in identity of place. “We have not fully identified the place until
we know a) what behaviour is associated with, or it is anticipated will be housed in, a
given locus, b) what the physical parameters of that setting are, and c) the
description, or conception, which people hold of that behaviour in that physical
environment.”- (Canter, 1977:58-59)
• Cresswell (2009) saw place as a combination of materiality, meaning and practice.
“The material topography of place is made by people doing things according to the
meaning they might wish a place to evoke. Meanings gain a measure of persistence
when they are inscribed into the material landscape but are open to contestation by
practices that do not conform to the expectations that come with place.”- (Cresswell,
2009:170)
• Public spaces have been found to be consistently well used when they are “…
responsive to needs of users, democratic in their accessibility, and meaningful for
the larger community and society” (Francis, 2003:1). To achieve popularity with new
designs, participatory place-making identifies elements of interest for the target user
population and incorporates them into the design. User participation during the design
process validates the design and ensures success of place-making in a competition to
sell urban environments (Carmona, 2010; Strydom & Puren, 2013).
• Underlying this issue is that neither place-making nor theory of place describe how
physical settings are defined and redefined by users. Place is not a bounded territory
described by the intersection of three discrete entities at a point in time, but a niche of
experiences including social and cultural aspects of occurring activities in ongoing
contexts (Canter, 1997).
• In The Meaning of the Built Environment, Rapoport (1982) describes initial
perception of environments as an affective image and that this initial feeling
frames subsequent analysis, evaluation and decisions about the space. While
Kaplan’s (1987; 1995) argues perception is related to mental representation, a
gradual process comparing past experiences with the present, and Motloch (2000)
describes a process of setting appraisal followed by a second inter-related process
of evaluation, research indicates that affect is not preceded by a cognitive process
but is precognitive and constitutes the initial level of response (Dixon, 1981).
• The primacy of affect is consistent with experimental research which has
demonstrated that stimuli are preferred if they have previously been experienced,
even though the individual may not be consciously aware of that experience.
Public spaces should be a
valued asset where cities
embrace the concept of
creating more vibrant and
welcoming spaces for everyone
to use. This can also be a
powerful way to create more
positive environments for
people to assimilate and come
together as a society as
described above.
THANK YOU!