Download or read book How to Study Public Life written by Jan Gehl and published by Island Press. This book was released on 2013-10-15 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How do we accommodate a growing urban population in a way that is sustainable, equitable, and inviting? This question is becoming increasingly urgent to answer as we face diminishing fossil-fuel resources and the effects of a changing climate while global cities continue to compete to be the most vibrant centers of culture, knowledge, and finance. Jan Gehl has been examining this question since the 1960s, when few urban designers or planners were thinking about designing cities for people. But given the unpredictable, complex and ephemeral nature of life in cities, how can we best design public infrastructure—vital to cities for getting from place to place, or staying in place—for human use? Studying city life and understanding the factors that encourage or discourage use is the key to designing inviting public space. In How to Study Public Life Jan Gehl and Birgitte Svarre draw from their combined experience of over 50 years to provide a history of public-life study as well as methods and tools necessary to recapture city life as an important planning dimension. This type of systematic study began in earnest in the 1960s, when several researchers and journalists on different continents criticized urban planning for having forgotten life in the city. City life studies provide knowledge about human behavior in the built environment in an attempt to put it on an equal footing with knowledge about urban elements such as buildings and transport systems. Studies can be used as input in the decision-making process, as part of overall planning, or in designing individual projects such as streets, squares or parks. The original goal is still the goal today: to recapture city life as an important planning dimension. Anyone interested in improving city life will find inspiration, tools, and examples in this invaluable guide.
Download or read book Public Spaces Public Life written by Jan Gehl and published by . This book was released on 1996 with total page 96 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Great Neighborhood Book written by Jay Walljasper and published by New Society Publishers. This book was released on 2007-06-01 with total page 191 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Abandoned lots and litter-strewn pathways, or rows of green beans and pockets of wildflowers? Graffiti-marked walls and desolate bus stops, or shady refuges and comfortable seating? What transforms a dingy, inhospitable area into a dynamic gathering place? How do individuals take back their neighborhood? Neighborhoods decline when the people who live there lose their connection and no longer feel part of their community. Recapturing that sense of belonging and pride of place can be as simple as planting a civic garden or placing some benches in a park. The Great Neighborhood Book explains how most struggling communities can be revived, not by vast infusions of cash, not by government, but by the people who live there. The author addresses such challenges as traffic control, crime, comfort and safety, and developing economic vitality. Using a technique called "placemaking"-- the process of transforming public space -- this exciting guide offers inspiring real-life examples that show the magic that happens when individuals take small steps, and motivate others to make change. This book will motivate not only neighborhood activists and concerned citizens but also urban planners, developers and policy-makers.
Download or read book Designs on the Public written by Kristine F. Miller and published by U of Minnesota Press. This book was released on with total page 205 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: New York City is home to some of the most recognizable places in the world. As familiar as the sight of New Year’s Eve in Times Square or a protest in front of City Hall may be to us, do we understand who controls what happens there? Kristine Miller delves into six of New York’s most important public spaces to trace how design influences their complicated lives. Miller chronicles controversies in the histories of New York locations including Times Square, Trump Tower, the IBM Atrium, and Sony Plaza. The story of each location reveals that public space is not a concrete or fixed reality, but rather a constantly changing situation open to the forces of law, corporations, bureaucracy, and government. The qualities of public spaces we consider essential, including accessibility, public ownership, and ties to democratic life, are, at best, temporary conditions and often completely absent. Design is, in Miller’s view, complicit in regulation of public spaces in New York City to exclude undesirables, restrict activities, and privilege commercial interests, and in this work she shows how design can reactivate public space and public life. Kristine F. Miller is associate professor of landscape architecture at the University of Minnesota.
Download or read book Life Between Buildings written by Jan Gehl and published by . This book was released on 2011-01-17 with total page 220 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first Danish language version of this book, published in 1971, was very much a protest against the functionalistic principles for planning cities and residential areas that prevailed during that period. The book carried an appeal to show concern for the people who were to move about between buildings, and it urged an understanding of the subtle, almost indefinable - but definite - qualities, which have always related to the interaction of people in public spaces, and it pointed to the life between buildings as a dimension of architecture that needs to be carefully treated. Now 40 years later, many architectural trends and ideologies have passed by over the years. These intervening years have also shown that the liveliness and liveability of cities and residential areas continues to be a important issue. The intensity in which fine public spaces are used at this point in time, as well as the greatly increased general interest in the quality of cities and their public spaces emphasises this point. The character of life between buildings changes with changes in any given social context, but the essential principles and quality criteria to be employed when working with life between buildings has proven to be remarkably constant. Though this work over the years has been updated and revised several times, this version bears little resemblance with the very early versions, however there was no reason to change the basic message: Take good care of the life between your buildings.
Download or read book Public Space written by Stephen Carr and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1992 with total page 420 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The authors offer a perspective of how to integrate public space and public life. They contend that three critical human dimensions should guide the process of design and management of public space: the users' essential needs, their spatial rights, and the meanings they seek.
Download or read book Public Spaces Marketplaces and the Constitution written by Anthony Maniscalco and published by SUNY Press. This book was released on 2015-10-15 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Examines how the Supreme Court has banished free expression from shopping malls and other public spaces. In spite of their public attractions and millions of visitors, most shopping malls are now off-limits to free speech and expressive activity. The same may be said about many other public spaces and marketplaces in American cities and suburbs, leaving scholars and other observers to wonder where civic engagement is lawfully permitted in the United States. In Public Spaces, Marketplaces, and the Constitution, Anthony Maniscalco draws on key legal decisions, social theory, and urban history to demonstrate that public spaces have been split apart from First Amendment protections, while the expression of political ideas has been excluded from privately owned, publicly accessible malls. Today, the traditional indoor suburban shopping mall, that icon of modern American capitalism and culture, is being replaced by outdoor retail centers. Yet the law and courts have been slow to catch up. Maniscalco argues that scholars, students, and the public must confront these innovations in commercial design and consumer practices, as well as what they portend for contemporary metropolitan America and its civic spaces.
Download or read book Convivial Urban Spaces written by Henry Shaftoe and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2012-05-04 with total page 162 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Despite developments in urban design during the last few decades, architects, urban planners and designers often continue to produce areas of bland, commercially led urban fabric that deliver the basic functional requirements of shelter, work and leisure but are socially unsustainable and likely generators of future problems. Convivial Urban Spaces demonstrates that successful urban public spaces are an essential part of a sustainable built environment. Without them we are likely to drift into an increasingly private and polarized society, with all the problems that would imply. Taking a multidisciplinary approach, this book draws on research, and the literature and theory of environmental psychology and urban design, to advance our understanding of what makes effective public spaces. Practical guidance is illustrated with case studies from the UK, Spain, Germany and Italy. The result is a practical and clearly presented guide to urban public space for planners, architects and students of the urban environment.
Download or read book The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces written by William Hollingsworth Whyte and published by Ingram. This book was released on 2001 with total page 125 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Social Life Of Small Urban Spaces.
Download or read book Sidewalks written by Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2009 with total page 344 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Urban sidewalks, critical but undervalued public spaces, have been sites for political demonstrations and urban greening, promenades for the wealthy and the well-dressed, and shelterless shelters for the homeless. On sidewalks, decade after decade, urbanites have socialized, paraded and played, sold their wares, and observed city life. These uses often overlap and conflict, and urban residents and planners try to include some and exclude others. In this first book-length analysis of the sidewalk as a distinct public space, Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris and Renia Ehrenfeucht examine the evolution of the American urban sidewalk and trace conflicts that have arisen over its competing uses. They discuss the characteristics of sidewalks as small urban public spaces, and such related issues as the ambiguous boundaries of their 'public' status, contestation around specific uses, control and regulations, and the implications for First Amendment speech and assembly rights. Drawing on historical and contemporary examples as well as case study research and archival data from five cities - Boston, Los Angeles, New York, Miami, and Seattle - the authors focus on how the functions and meanings of street activities have shifted and have been negotiated through controls and interventions. They consider sidewalk uses that include the display of individual and group identities (in ethnic and pride parades, for example), the everyday politics of sidewalk access, and larger political actions (including Seattle's 1999 antiglobalization protests), and examine the complex regulatory frameworks that manage street and sidewalk life. The role of urban sidewalks in the early twenty-first century depends, the authors conclude, on what we want from sidewalk life and how we balance competing interests.
Download or read book Contesting Public Spaces written by Ed Wall and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2022-06-01 with total page 165 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores concerns for spatial justice as streets, squares, and neighbourhoods are continuously made and remade through planning processes, political ambitions and everyday activities. By investigating three sites in London that have been the focus of masterplanning, Ed Wall exposes conflicts between planning offices and private developers who direct large urban change and community groups, market traders and residents whose public lives are inseparable from their neighbourhoods being reconfigured. The book uniquely brings sociological approaches to what are often considered architectural concerns, revealing challenges as London's public spaces are designed, regulated and lived. Through in-depth research, Ed Wall identifies how uncertainty caused by large-scale urban strategies, the realisation of visual priorities, and uneven relations between private interests, public organisations and daily lives determine the public realm of global cities. This work is intended for readers interested in how the urban spaces of their cities are continually produced in competing ways—from architecture and urban studies scholars to planners and politicians.
Download or read book Re Imagining Public Space written by D. Boros and published by Springer. This book was released on 2014-12-09 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Public space, both literally and figuratively, is foundationally important to political life. From Socratic lectures in the public forum, to Occupy Wall Street and the Arab Spring, public spaces have long played host to political discussion and protest. The book provides a direct assessment of the role that public space plays in political life.
Download or read book The Hidden Wealth of Cities written by Jon Kher Kaw and published by World Bank Publications. This book was released on 2020-02-13 with total page 546 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In every city, the urban spaces that form the public realm—ranging from city streets, neighborhood squares, and parks to public facilities such as libraries and markets—account for about one-third of the city’s total land area, on average. Despite this significance, the potential for these public-space assets—typically owned and managed by local governments—to transform urban life and city functioning is often overlooked for many reasons: other pressing city priorities arising from rapid urbanization, poor urban planning, and financial constraints. The resulting degradation of public spaces into congested, vehicle-centric, and polluted places often becomes a liability, creating a downward spiral that leads to a continuous drain on public resources and exacerbating various city problems. In contrast, the cities that invest in the creation of human-centered, environmentally sustainable, economically vibrant, and socially inclusive places—in partnership with government entities, communities, and other private stakeholders—perform better. They implement smart and sustainable strategies across their public space asset life cycles to yield returns on investment far exceeding monetary costs, ultimately enhancing city livability, resilience, and competitiveness. The Hidden Wealth of Cities: Creating, Financing, and Managing Public Spaces discusses the complexities that surround the creation and management of successful public spaces and draws on the analyses and experiences from city case studies from around the globe. This book identifies—through the lens of asset management—a rich palette of creative and innovative strategies that every city can undertake to plan, finance, and manage both government-owned and privately owned public spaces.
Download or read book Public and Private Spaces of the City written by Ali Madanipour and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2003-09-02 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The relationship between public and private spheres is one of the key concerns of the modern society. This book investigates this relationship, especially as manifested in the urban space with its social and psychological significance. Through theoretical and historical examination, it explores how and why the space of human socities is subdivided into public and private sections. It starts with the private, interior space of the mind and moves step by step, through the body, home, neighborhood and the city, outwards to the most public, impersonal spaces, exploring the nature of each realm and their complex, interdependent realtionships. A stimulating and thought provoking book for any architect, architectural historian, urban planner or designer.
Download or read book Public Places and Spaces written by Irwin Altman and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 329 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This tenth volume in the series addresses an important topic of research, de sign, and policy in the environment and behavior field. Public places and spaces include a sweeping array of settings, including urban streets, plazas and squares, malls, parks, and other locales, and natural settings such as aquatic environments, national parks and forests, and wilderness areas. The impor tance of public settings is highlighted by difficult questions of access, control, and management; unique needs and problems of different users (including women, the handicapped, and various ethnic groups); and the dramatic re shaping of our public environments that has occurred and will continue to occur in the foreseeable future. The wide-ranging scope of the topic of public places and spaces demands the attention of many disciplines and researchers, designers, managers, and policymakers. As in previous volumes in the series, the authors in the present volume come from a variety of disciplinary backgrounds, research and design orientations, and affiliations. They have backgrounds in or are affiliated with such fields as architecture, geography, landscape architecture, natural re sources, psychology, sociology, and urban design. Many more disciplines ob viously contribute to our understanding and design of public places and spaces, so that the contributors to this volume reflect only a sample of the possibilities and present state of knowledge about public settings.
Download or read book Transforming Urban Nightlife and the Development of Smart Public Spaces written by Abusaada, Hisham and published by IGI Global. This book was released on 2021-05-14 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Public places are places where all citizens, irrespective of their race, age, religion, or class level (social or economic), cannot be excluded. It serves to improve the lifestyle experience of its inhabitants, as well as promote social connections. All citizens are responsible for it and are interested in it, and the intervention for change must be the responsibility of all without exception. As such, bottom-up urban planning is essential for urban environments and for transforming nightlife in public places in order to create more meaningful experiences and instill a greater sense of identity and community. Transforming Urban Nightlife and the Development of Smart Public Spaces analyzes the patterns of transformations of nightlife in public life. The book investigates urban nightlife transformations and the challenge of enhancing the sense of belonging in sensitive areas such as local communities and historical sites. The chapters present new insights to control the chaotic intervention related to the elements of traditional or digital technology, whether from citizens themselves or local authorities. The objective also is to document urban nightlife transformations that enhance the sense of belonging in historical sites. Important topics covered include urban-gamification, digital urban art, urban socio-ecosystems, and reimagining space in the urban nightlife. This book is ideal for urban planners, developers, social scientists, technologists, civil engineers, architects, policymakers, government officials, practitioners, researchers, academicians, and students who are interested in urban nightlife and nightscape and the smart technologies used for transformation.
Download or read book People Cities written by Annie Matan and published by Island Press. This book was released on 2016-11-15 with total page 194 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Over the last 50 years architect Jan Gehl has changed the way that we think about architecture and city planning--moving from the Modernist separation of uses to a human-scale approach inviting people to use their cities. People Cities tells the inside story of how Gehl learned to study urban spaces and implement his people-centered approach in car-dominated cities. It discusses the work, theory, life, and influence of Gehl from the perspective of those who have worked with him in cities across the globe. It will inspire anyone who wants to create vibrant, human-scale cities and understand the ideas and work of the architect who has most influenced urban design.
