Public Space & Happiness

What Makes A Good Public Space?

Space for all of us?

Our Public Realm“How public spaces are planned, designed and built, how clean they are, and how safe we feel while using them influence both the quality of our experience of the city, and how we feel about it as the place in which we live, socialise, visit or work. Dublin’s identity is inseparable from the user’s experience of the city. Our everyday history, our heritage and culture, and the impact of innovations are all around us in the public realm.” [DCC Public Realm Strategy]

Medieval Dublin

Medieval Dublin

Developer’s Dublin

Withdrawal of the Elite to Gated Communities

Jane Jacobs (1916-2005)City life – a fragile, complex , diverse ecosystem with pockets of vivid experience.

Brooks: The passersby come and go like animals, each performing his or her little unconscious service to the ecosystem. …

“[Jacobs] has taken the pastoralism of Emerson and Thoreau and reconciled it with modern urban life. … It is complexity she admires, the small unplanned niches were specialized activities can thrive. “

(Brooks 126-7)

Features of Bobo Neighborhoods

Stricter zoning requirements, opposing new commercial development, and fighting tear-downs.

Upscale neighborhoods seem to be looking back, seeking to preserve their stable and orderly past.

Save old theatres, old neighborhoods, old factories, old warehouses, or even significant diners.

Preserve local character, fight sprawl, combat unregulated growth, and enhance “liveability” and “quality of life”.

(David Brooks, Bobos in Paradise, 263-5)

This desire for community is seen in the nostalgia for the idealised small town, a ‘wish for a harmonious community’ which is actually ‘a wish to transform the roughness of utilitarian dealings in the marketplace, the courts and government administration into neighbourly conciliation’.

Bellah, et al, Habits of the Heart, Chapter 10 (get page ref)

But why can’t we ALL live in neighbourhoods like this?

Why are civilised spaces “cute” enclaves of the

privileged?

Inequality & Urban Flight

“Those left behind were then subjected to the

systematic withdrawal of institutional support, both

public and private.” (Bellah, et al, xx)

[Time Magazine Photo essay, “Detroit Beautiful, Horrible Decline”]

Gentrification in San Fran

QUOTATION OF THE DAY"You can't have a city of just rich people. A city

needs restaurant workers, a city needs schoolteachers, a city needs taxi drivers.“

KEVIN STARR, an urban planning expert at the University of Southern California, on San Francisco, where highly paid tech workers are seen as driving out less-affluent people.

•http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/25/us/backlash-by-the-bay-tech-riches-alter-a-city.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20131125&_r=0

Public Private Space

Temple Bar Meeting House Square

Public Space & Protest

The Right to the City

“The right to the city is far more than the individual liberty to access urban resources: it is a right to change ourselves by changing the city. It is, moreover, a common rather than an individual right since this transformation inevitably depends upon the exercise of a collective power to reshape the processes of urbanization. The freedom to make and remake our cities and ourselves is, I want to argue, one of the most precious yet most neglected of our human rights.”[David Harvey, The Right to the City, 5]

BREAK

What makes a good city?

• DIVERSITY: • “what results when places become both dense and diverse, as

in packed streets or squares, their functions both public and private; out of such conditions comes the unexpected encounter, the chance discovery, the innovation.” (Richard Sennett)

3 measurements of an open city

1. PASSAGE TERRITORIES: Look out for “porous” barriers – these are areas where people can access buildings or businesses in a way that makes connections.

3 measurements of an open city• 2. INCOMPLETE FORM – the existence of one

building sited in such a way that it encourages the growth of other buildings around it. Connections between buildings, not just standing alone. Also means buildings that could over time serve different purposes – from office space to residential, for example.

3 measurements of an open city

• 3. DEMOCRATIC SPACE – Spaces where people can interact, be together informally, without having to pay (i.e. not cafes/pubs etc). Places where people could gather to protest/celebrate.

Good Public space: criteria

PROTECTION: (against)• Traffic and accidents – feeling safe– (pedestrians-friendly, eliminating fear of traffic)

• Crime and violence – feeling secure– (lively public realm, eyes on the street, overlapping

functions day and night, good lighting) • Unpleasant sensory experiences– (wind, rain / snow, cold / heat, pollution, dust noise

glare, pools of weekend vomit or other anti-social behaviour)

Good Public space: criteriaCOMFORT: (Opportunities to)• Walk

– (room for walking, interesting façades, no obstacles, good surfaces, accessibility for everyone)

• Stand / stay– (edge effect / attractive zones for standing / staying, supports for standing,

façades with good details that invite staying)• Sit

– (zones for sitting, utilizing advantages – view sun people, good places to sit, benches for resting)

• See– (reasonable viewing distances, unhindered views, interesting views, lighting)

• Talk and listen– (low noise levels, street furniture that provides ‘talkscapes’)

• Play and exercise– (physical activity, exercise, play and street entertainment, by day and night, in

summer and winter)

Good Public space: criteria

• ENJOYMENT: – Scale

• (buildings and spaces designed to human scale)– Opportunities to enjoy the positive aspects of climate

• (sun / shade, heat / coolness, shelter from wind /breeze)– Positive sensory experience

• (good design and detailing, good materials, fine views, trees, plants, water)