What makes a Social Space

This is the second part of the literature review, the first explained what a social space actually is why they are important to urban life, this part will seek to find the how a social space is made, and what characteristics and design principles are used to.

A Social Space Should Have Meeting & Greeting Places

Carmona et al (2010) argues

"that more space a city devotes to movement, the more exchange space is diluted..the more diluted and scattered the exhange opportunities, the more a city begins to lose the very thing that makes it a city".

A street and places and spaces within it should be designed for all the users in it, not just motorists. William Whyte explores this idea heavily in the masterpiece that is "A Social Life of Small Urban Spaces", arguing how streets and spaces should be designed in such a way to allow people to pause, to stay and linger, to sit and watch other people. Whyte proposes that one of the greatest issues in cities is the under use of public space and the over provision of badly designed mediocre public space. In Manhatten where his examples come from, there are plenty of office plazas, some were bustling with life and full of activity but others lay devoid of life. The reason people were drawn to a space were other people, contrary to a popular belief that people prefer to be in a quiet place by themselves. The most successful plazas and spaces were the ones with the most sittable space, as Whyte put it "people tend to sit most where there are places to sit". This is hardly an intellectual bombshell as he put it but was suprised at how long it took to stumble upon it, it is amazing when you see so many streets and public spaces intentionally designed to deter people from actually lingering in them and using them as an actual place to stay.

There are many forms of seating, and its best for a space to include as many varieties as humanly possible, but perhaps the best two types of seating are, firstly, movable seating in the form of chairs, and secondly, informal seating in the form of ledges, low walls and steps. Movable chairs are excellent as it allows the user a sense that they are in control of their environment as they can physically move it around to suit their needs, they might only move it a couple of inches but its the face that they can.

Benches Whyte argues are often counterproductive, there are far too few of them, they are badly designed as they are often made to be "undesirable proof" e.g. made so homeless people cannot use them and are actually made deliberately uncomfortable, too short to lie down on and often with numerous armrests. Fig shows an example on CornMarket Street in Oxford, one side of the seating are lean tos, and the other is a three person bench broken into induvidual seating.

Whyte continues arguing that the street itself is vital to the success of a space, good places begin at corners, emphasize them and don't wall them off, a key element of this is shops and shop fronts providing activity and interest to passerbys instead of blank walls. This is why corner units on high streets are worth significantly more than a unit in the middle of a street, they attract much more activity as they are a node

Food is another vital element, if you want to seed a place with activity then out out food, if a vendor is on a street corner a knot of people will surround him. Vendors and places to sit and eat should be actively encouraged, to some this is dreadful as it enocourages unhealthy eating, litter and bad smells.

A Social Space Should be Enjoyable & Playful:

Many are often mistkaen in thinking that streets are a functional space, but instead streets and spaces make up an important part of a persons enjoyment of public space and should be considered as and designed to encourage enjoyment, fun and playfulness, Whyte (1980) points out that often many people think children play in the street because there is no playground available, this isn't the case, children (including myself) played in the street because it was fun and we liked to. In an urban environment active frontages and informal ledges allow parents to unobstrusivley observe their children without interfering.

Manual for Streets also takes this line saying that different streets will have different uses, and so need to be designed accordingly when considering play spaces, resting places and shelter. Different pavement widths and setbacks allow for different elements to take place.

A Social Space Sould be Watchable:

Jacobs (2007:85) asserts that streets should provide oppor-tunity for an ‘accidental social life’; people should be able to watch streets at their leisure, observe human life without nec-essarily choosing to be involved, because of these a social spaces location needs to be considered.

Gehl calls this the edge effect, and is why informal ledges as seating are important, it allows you to sit on the edge of a place and view the whole scene with the security of knowing your back is covered and ledges and steps act as a magnet which draw people in, Whyte continues this idea by arguing that these spaces need to designed in such a way for people to sit there in comfort.

One important factor of this is light, the more sun in an area the better, it allows freedom of choice as people can choose to sit in the shade or out in the sun, Whyte explains his satisfaction of wathcing a time lapse film of a plaza being , with sitters following this narrow wedge of sunlight slowly moving across the square with shaded areas being deserted.

So if there is a southern exposure in a space then use it to its full opprtunity, its not the end of the world though if an area lacks direct sunlight as tall buildings, criticised for overshadowing be designed for light to reflect off it and onto the street through the use of materials.

A further factor are trees, aside from the numerous health benefits etc, they also liven peoples mood when they present in spaces. The most popular spaces to sit are often under tree canopies as it offers people enclosure.

Whyte finishes with a concept called "triangulation", essentially an object or person that draws people together, a street artist or character , a band, public art that you can touch. A crowd gathers and people interact with each other over the performance, whether with jovial talk about how good a performance is or rolling eyes at how corny another one is. Streets and space should be ecnouraged and designed to faciliate these improvised performances as they give a street character and life.

A Social Space Should Safe:

A space will not be active or widely used if the user does not feel safe there.

Gehl (2010) argues quite simply that the more people who are walking through and using a street then the safer it is, as there are more people and thus more eyes on the street.

Today we often see enormous bland shop fronts with minimal facade detailing and inactive edges where shops are often designed for the car rather than the pedestrian, shop units become enourmas because cars travel at faster speeds, and thus have a larger sense of scale. The lower number of facades means less activity on a street as there is simply less there to see and do and streets become more boring.

Gehl (2010) highlights various cities arcross the world with successful facade policies which overcame the afore mentioned issue. In Copenhagen it was found that interesting facades attract people towards them and encourage the user to slow down and linger in the place, an interesting facade may have seven times more activity than a black passive facade. A study in Madrid showed the importance of transparency in facades, allowing the user to see what is going on inside. Transparancy refers to the % of glass to solid sufaces on a facade.

These are generic principles Gehl suggests for future designs to allow for active street fronts.

Respect facade lines
establish ground floor functions that invite the public
Ensure a minimum of 10 doorways per 100 metres of facade (ideally more, 7-9 metres )
Ensure a minimum ground floor height of 4 metres for public activities and adaptability for future uses
Ensure a minimum shop edge of 0.7 to 2 metres to allow browsing without interupting pedestrian flow
Reduction of ground floor rents to secure smaller units

Jane Jacobs (1961) tells a story of a man struggling to get a young girl to come with him, one by one residents and shop keepers emerged from buildings and watched,, they didn't intervene but made sure that nothing untoward actually happened, in the end it turns out that the man was infact the father and the girl was having a minor tantrum.

The fact that this street was made up of smaller units closer to oneanother made sure that the street was and above all felt active, a street must have active edges and passive surveillance which face onto the street in order for people to feel face.

A Social Space Should be Comfortable:

People naturally prefer things at a human scale, this is known as enclosure, the user feels comfortable because they're surroundings are at a human scale due to street length, width and sightlines. Streets that have these elements in the wrong proportions will not encourage human interaction as they are simply unpleasant spaces to be in. More often than not streets tend to be too long and too wide, the actual length of a the street isn't the issue though, it is the distance between blocks and how far ahead the user can see i.e. sightlines.

This can be rectified with height to width ratios for ideal street enclosure

Regular grids typically suffer from this as they are made up of straight lines, you can often see too far ahead which turns a walk down the road into an arduous slog as you can see how far you have come and how far you have left to travel, a more traditional deformed grid which most European cities use is friendlier to the pedestrian as it encourages elements such as townscape to be used which makes a journey more exciting and reduces repitition.

Urban Design Issues

Milton Keynes, Thomas Smith-Keary, 14045700

"How can retrofitted transport infrastructre create innovative & vibrant social spaces for people that impacts positevley on local identity?"

What makes a Social Space

This is the second part of the literature review, the first explained what a social space actually is why they are important to urban life, this part will seek to find the how a social space is made, and what characteristics and design principles are used to.

A Social Space Should Have Meeting & Greeting Places

Carmona et al (2010) argues

"that more space a city devotes to movement, the more exchange space is diluted..the more diluted and scattered the exhange opportunities, the more a city begins to lose the very thing that makes it a city".

A Social Space Should be Enjoyable & Playful:

Manual for Streets also takes this line saying that different streets will have different uses, and so need to be designed accordingly when considering play spaces, resting places and shelter. Different pavement widths and setbacks allow for different elements to take place.

A Social Space Sould be Watchable:

Jacobs (2007:85) asserts that streets should provide oppor-tunity for an ‘accidental social life’; people should be able to watch streets at their leisure, observe human life without nec-essarily choosing to be involved, because of these a social spaces location needs to be considered.

So if there is a southern exposure in a space then use it to its full opprtunity, its not the end of the world though if an area lacks direct sunlight as tall buildings, criticised for overshadowing be designed for light to reflect off it and onto the street through the use of materials.

A further factor are trees, aside from the numerous health benefits etc, they also liven peoples mood when they present in spaces. The most popular spaces to sit are often under tree canopies as it offers people enclosure.

A Social Space Should Safe:

A space will not be active or widely used if the user does not feel safe there.

Gehl (2010) argues quite simply that the more people who are walking through and using a street then the safer it is, as there are more people and thus more eyes on the street.

These are generic principles Gehl suggests for future designs to allow for active street fronts.

Respect facade lines

establish ground floor functions that invite the public

Ensure a minimum of 10 doorways per 100 metres of facade (ideally more, 7-9 metres )

Ensure a minimum ground floor height of 4 metres for public activities and adaptability for future uses

Ensure a minimum shop edge of 0.7 to 2 metres to allow browsing without interupting pedestrian flow

Reduction of ground floor rents to secure smaller units

The fact that this street was made up of smaller units closer to oneanother made sure that the street was and above all felt active, a street must have active edges and passive surveillance which face onto the street in order for people to feel face.

A Social Space Should be Comfortable:

This can be rectified with height to width ratios for ideal street enclosure

fig 14 (top), fig 15 (bottom) . Unsittable spaces to deter undesirables (Whyte, 1980)

fig 16, Seating intentionally designed to deter undesirables on CornMarket Street, Oxford. (source author)

fig 17, Buildings providing activie frontages and passive surveillance onto a street. (Gehl, 2010)

fig 18, The edge effect and informal sitting (Gehl, 2010)

fig 20, Space to encourage "play" (Manual For Streets, 2007)

fig 21, Assessment of facade activity (Gehl, 2010)

fig 23, Jan Gehl's 12 point assessment of a public space, what makes a social space (2010)

fig 22, What makes a good and bad place (Gehl, 2010)

fig 19, Retrofitting an inactive corner in New York (Gehl, 2010)