discussion

PUP 420: Theory of Urban Design

This final unit builds on the previous two units, insofar as it is not about the aesthetics of design—not the buildings and plazas and streets. But rather, this unit continues our discussion about how our physical environment—the built environment—influences people’s behavior.

According to Jan Gehl (a famous planner and architect) in his well- known book Life Between Buildings, there are three types of outdoor activities.

Necessary activities, things like going to school, are things we have to do regardless of the quality of the built environment. Optional activities are things like taking a walk or reading a book outside on a bench, etc, and these are highly influenced by the environment. Social activities are any kind of social interaction, usually as a result of one of the other kinds of activities. Public spaces in cities become meaningful and attractive when activities of all types occur in combination and feed off each other.

Three Types of Outdoor Activities

Social Activities Social activities vary tremendously. This is everything from sitting on your front steps as you watch people walk by… to stopping and chatting with someone you already know… to asking directions from or maybe commenting on the weather to some stranger at the bus stop. These kinds of social activities, including the passive ones, are important for the quality of our public spaces. As planners, architects, and landscape architects, we can help shape the environment to encourage social activities, to encourage those optional activities, and to make the necessary activities more enjoyable.

Need for Contact

High intensity Close friendships Friends Acquaintances Chance contacts Low intensity Passive contacts

Jan Gehl makes the argument that the low end of the intensity scale, where we find passive contacts, is really important. These are the situations where you’re observing people and being observed, but not talking to people or otherwise interacting with them. So this is when you do your homework in a coffee shop, at a table by yourself, but there are other people around. This is a basic need of people—to have these passive contacts—although our individual need will vary, as some of us are more introverted or extroverted.

Contact with Neighbors The proper built environment can also lead us to have more contact with people who live near us. These might be minor, incidental contacts—commenting on the weather or whatnot. But it can also lead to a growing trust, where people look out for one another and observe their environments, much like Jane Jacobs’ concept of “eyes on the street.” These contacts can also lead to more significant, less superficial relationships.

Need for Stimulation The argument here is that we don’t need dramatic architectural detail if we simply design places where people want to be. That is, it can be the people who are the attraction, not the buildings.

The experience of people provides stimulation to our senses—looking at people, talking to people, hearing others talk, whistle, laugh. Even smelling people, for better or worse, is part of the sensory experience. Jan Gehl mentions how good cities are places where people linger, take their time getting home after work, school, or an errand, whereas bad cities are places where people rush to get through the environment.

People as the Attraction This is something that we’ve addressed before, but it bears repeating. People like being able to see people. People themselves can be the attraction. More than anything else, people in public space like to watch other people. They’ll take the cafe chairs and rearrange them to point out onto the sidewalk unless you bolt them to the ground.

People go where people are. This includes, but isn’t limited to, what we call third places (sometimes called third spaces). This is a term from the book The Great Good Place (Ray Oldenburg, 1989).

It’s referring to places that aren’t home, and aren’t work, but other places where you go and interact with people. These are socially inclusive places. So, these are coffee shops and bars, bookstores and hair salons—where there’s some other reason to be there, but you reap the social benefits of being there.

People as the Attraction

Key West, Florida Cadiz, Spain

People as an attraction can be something more organized, such as street performers or festivals, or it can just be the everyday people walking by, or even something mundane like watching as parking enforcement writes tickets for cars that haven’t fed the meter.

Conditions for Lively or Lifeless Cities

Oklahoma City Boston

These two pictures are both taken from downtowns. So what does Jan Gehl say makes for a lively city? Reasonably close buildings, good areas for sitting or standing, places to see people, where people actually walk. And lifeless cities? These are places where it’s difficult or unpleasant to walk, where the buildings are spread out, and there is nothing to experience outdoors.

What about the weather?

State Street, Madison, Wisconsin

We do have certain limitations posed by the weather. We all know that summers in Phoenix are scorching, for example. But we also know that winters in Wisconsin are brutally cold and snowy. This might discourage some people from being outside, but it doesn’t mean that you can’t have successful places—lively places—in harsher climates. This eight-block segment of State Street between the University of Wisconsin and the Capitol Building is closed to most cars but is open to buses, taxis, emergency vehicles, bikes, and pedestrians—and is well used in all seasons.

Are pedestrian malls the answer? This isn’t to say that we should turn all our streets into pedestrian malls. Cars aren’t the problem.

Washington, DC, near “H” St. and Pennsylvania Ave.

However, when we start to devote too much space to the car—when we have large and frequent parking lots, wide streets with fast speeds—then it creates an unpleasant environment. But if we can put parking underground and have narrow streets with a variety of transportation modes being supported, then we can have a lively city even without pedestrian malls.

Is it an American problem?

Edinburgh, Scotland

We know that older cities, particularly European cities, have the kind of scale that’s desirable for making cities lively. They have narrow streets with close buildings, and many of them were extensively built up before cars came into existence. Instead of being built for cars, they’ve instead had to figure out how to accommodate cars.

So you might be tempted to say that this problem of sprawling, lifeless cities, is an American problem.

Or was the problem functionalism?

Adelaide, Australia

It’s actually a bit more complicated than being an American problem. Functionalism, which took root around 1930 and lasted through the 1960s and ’70s, was a movement in architecture and planning that didn’t really take into account the social aspect of cities. In fact, functionalism didn’t really care about public spaces at all. Instead, there was some thinking that the front lawns of suburban homes would be superior to having public parks, because that healthy green space would be just outside your own door.

But this also resulted in huge towers of apartments and spread-out buildings, and contributed to dependence on the automobile. And this didn’t just happen in the U.S., but it happened in Australia, and in parts of Scandinavia, and parts of other places, like Germany, too.

Is technology the new problem? We know that we have a problem with lifeless cities, and as planners we want to help reform them to make them into lively cities. But now we have the argument that our technological conveniences—and specifically our TVs and computers—have stolen something from our cities. That is, they’re stealing us away from our cities, and instead planting us on our couches at home. Or when we’re out in public, we’re on our phones.

Others argue that technology is simply changing the ways that we interact—that we have virtual communities instead of physical communities. But even if we have virtual communities, how does that help our lifeless cities? Have we grown beyond people watching, needing to be around others?

Or is technology part of the solution?

Copenhagen, Denmark

Jan Gehl makes a different argument. He believes there’s a pushback where we’re wanting our lively cities again. And he says that with smaller families and better technological develo pments, people are working fewer hours in the week and have more free time. He mentions how Scandinavian workers, who on average work shorter hours than Americans do, are the most frequent users of city spaces. If we have free time, partially thanks to technology, and we have good city spaces, we should be likely to use those spaces. But it’s a matter of making sure we have those desirable conditions for the kinds of outdoor activities we’ve been discussing to be able to take place.

End of Unit 8.