Current uses of public space

A look at different cities and cultural patterns in countries where communications, marketplaces and transportation have undergone radical changes in the last century gives a varied picture of the current uses of public space and the conditions for the use of the city as a public arena. Using a good measure of simplification, at this point in history it is possible to observe and describe four very different types of cities.

• The traditional city - where meeting place, marketplace and traffic continue to coexist in balance, more or less.
• The invaded city - where a single use, usually car traffic, has usurped territory at the expense of the other uses of city space.
• The abandoned city - where public space and public life have disappeared.
• The reconquered city - where strong efforts are being made to find a new, workable balance between the uses of the city as meeting place, marketplace and traffic space.

The traditional city
In the Middle Ages, towns emerged on the premise of pedestrian traffic. Streets were adapted to foot traffic and squares tailored to uses that needed space: markets, town meetings, military parades, religious processions and so on.
Even today, particularly in Europe, there are still many cities whose structure was formed during that period, and thus the centres of many European cities still have the character of the Middle Ages, as do many villages and small towns.
Isolated examples of intact medieval cities continue to function in traditional ways, with Venice as one of the best-known examples. Common to the cities and public space of that period is that they continue to be well suited for all types of pedestrian activities. The scale of these cities, the dimensions of the streets, the distribution of uses along streets and squares, the scale and detail of buildings are in harmony with human senses and opportunities for movement, and they support the comings and goings of pedestrians very directly.
In these cities throughout time, public spaces have served simultaneously as meeting place, marketplace and traffic space. In those cities in which car traffic has not been allowed to take over, we can still see modern versions of the traditional uses of public space.

Many traditional urban spaces were designed to emphasise the city's function as meeting place. Bollards at Piazza del Campo in Siena, Italy provide psychological and practical support as well as the perfect spot for people watching.

There are other forms of invasion, too, such as reducing the variety of urban functions. Shown here, large office blocks in Stockholm, Sweden.

The invaded city
In old cities and urban areas where car traffic has gained the upper hand, public space has inevitably changed dramatically.
Car traffic and parking have gradually usurped space in streets and squares. Not much physical space is left, and when other restrictions and irritants such as dirt, noise and visual pollution are added, it doesn't take long to impoverish city life. It becomes unpleasant and difficult to get around on foot, and spending time in public spaces is made impossible by lack of room and by environmental problems. The result in city after city is that only the most essential foot traffic battles its way between moving and parked cars, and only a severely amputated selection of other activities can be found.

Numerous studies have shown the obvious correlation between urban quality and public life.  Public spaces offering many qualities and few disadvantages inspire a broad spectrum of urban activities. Attractive walking routes and places to stop along the way encourage foot traffic which in turn promotes social and recreational activities, because people walking along become inspired to linger and enjoy the urban scene.

In impoverished public spaces, most of the social and recreational activities disappear completely, leaving only the remnants of the most utilitarian and nessesary pedestrian activities. People walk there because they have to, not because they want to.
In most of the cities besieged by cars, the quality of public space has become so problematic that people avoid the city centre altogether.

Prague, Czech Republic

Westport, Ireland

Riyadh, Saudi Arabia

Istanbul, Turkey

Naples, Italy

The abandoned city
Where urban tradition is weaker and car culture has had more time to develop without major constraints from urban planning, a new type of city develops. This city has no historical model, because for the first time in history pedestrian traffic has been made impossible or superfluous, and many of the other activities traditionally tied to foot traffic in public spaces have disappeared completely. Public life in public places is gone. There are many cities of this type in many places, although predominately in North America. City centres are a sea of asphalt with parking places marking off the space between buildings. Walking is impossible and would also be unreasonable.

Distances are too great and the environments an intrepid pedestrian might encounter on his way would be ugly, dirty and possibly dangerous. Such cities are not intended for walking. Sidewalks have disappeared in the city centres as well as residential areas, and all the uses of the city have gradually been adapted to serve the motorist. Transportation and life itself are totally dependent on the car in a drive-in culture. It is difficult to describe the total consequences of this type of urban policy. However, it is important to point out that heavy dependency on the automobile means that children too young to drive, the elderly who are too old to drive and the handicapped who are physically prevented from driving are consigned to a life of being transported everywhere by others. Indeed, for young people life doesn't really start until the day they turn 16 and acquire their driving license!

People shop from drive-in stores along car-filled streets, by and large requiring the driver to drive and re-park at each destination. The alternative is to shop in large shopping centres outside the cities. And only in these centres is it still possible to walk both from the car park to the centre and inside on the walkways of the covered centre itself.

As a countermeasure to the regional shopping centres and as a strategy for maintaining turnover and uses of the city centre, numerous cities have experimented with new forms of shopping environments adapted to car culture.

In some cities shops have been moved indoors into atriums and shopping arcades within the city centre itself. The Eaton Centre in Toronto is one example.  Other cities such as Calgary, Winnipeg, Minneapolis and Atlanta have built skywalks, systems of pedestrian bridges running one or two storeys above street level and connecting shops placed strategically inside the buildings of the city centre. Here pedestrians are lifted up a storey and can move about indoors from building to building, protected from the weather and free from streets and other public space.

A third category of centrally located, private shopping environment is "the underground city" as the phenomenon is known in Montreal and Toronto in Canada, as well as in cities such as Sapporo, Nagoya and Osaka in Japan. These cities, often in connection with underground metro stations, have set up a network of shopping centres and walkways that connect the lower storeys of buildings in the city centre. Common to all of these types of shopping centres is that they are private and closed outside office hours, and that both pedestrian activities and other city activities are subject to heavy restrictions conditional on the commercial character of the centres. There is no room for versatility, humour and democracy on the agenda of these very standardised, modern shopping centres.

In a historical perspective, the abandoned city is new. Walking is impossible or superfluous and public life in public space no longer exists. Above left: The city centre as car park, Spokane, Wa. USA Above right: Empty street scene, Clarksdale, Miss. USA Right: Street scene, Atlanta, Ga. USA

An interesting public health problem has developed in these cities where it is virtually impossible to walk or bicycle as a natural part of daily routine. Many of the urban inhabitants are overweight and in poor physical condition. Some of them try to combat the problem by jogging during their lunch breaks or spending time in fitness centres or working out on some of the many exercise machines designed by the fitness industry to fill this need.

For other segments of the population, who have neither the opportunity nor the motivation to engage in fitness activities, the problem literally grows larger and larger. Indeed, doing away with pedestrian traffic and public space - and public life to a great extent - has many direct and indirect conesquences.

		New problems arise when people no longer walk for daily exercise Left: Lunch-time fitness with landscape painting on the back wall. IT compnay, Silicon Valley, Ca. USA
		Far left: Park-n-Sweat structure with seven storeys of parking and a two-storey fitness centre, Atlanta, Ga. USA

The reconquered city

Over the past 30 to 40 years, interest in public spaces and public life has begun to grow again, often as a direct reaction to the increasingly poorer conditions for both, and in many cities efforts are now being made to give pedestrians and urban life better odds.
Paradoxically enough, one important source of inspiration came from shopping malls, particularly in the USA. Already in the 1920s when the first malls were built, it was clear that customers had to be lured out of their cars and into car-free shopping streets in order to have the peace of mind to concentrate on shopping. Some of the earliest pedestrian areas in Europe such as Lijnbahn, built in war-torn Rotterdam in the 1950s, and the rebuilding of many German cities in the same period, had this same starting point. Many of the other pedestrian areas established in the 1960s and 1970s throughout Europe, including the pedestrian street in mid-Copenhagen from 1962, were also based primarily on this commercial concept. While true that pedestrian streets made it easier for people to get about downtown, the primary purpose of having them was to get people to shop.

The idea of using public space as social and recreational space grew gradually and was reinforced during the decades that followed. Jane Jacob's description of the development in American cities in her book "The Death and Life of Great American Cities", published in 1961, had major impact. Many American and European researchers also contributed by pointing out the importance of varied forms of public life in the public spaces of the city. The connection between city quality and the extent and character of city life were also documented during this same period. Particularly in Europe, tradition was a third and very important source of inspiration. Many European cities continued to carry on a lively tradition of using public spaces for social and recreational activities. Throughout this period, the 1960s and 1970s, more and more pedestrian streets, areas and peaceful squares were established in European cities. Conditions for pedestrians were also gradually improved in many of the other streets in major cities. Sidewalks were widened and enhanced with street furniture, flowers and trees.

An important turning point for the traffic situation in cities was the oil crisis starting in 1973. The break in traffic expansion led to planned efforts to limit the encroachment of cars in the cities as well as other measures to ensure a better balance between motorists and other forms of transport. Interest in bicycling and public transportation grew accordingly. Throughout this whole period, the concepts for new public spaces expanded. Once confined to narrow commercial interests, concepts now had a considerably broader focus: creating space and conditions for walking under reasonable provisions and ensuring development opportunities for social and recreational urban activities.

Although many cities in Germany and Scandinavia pioneered efforts to push back cars from the city centres and create more peaceful conditions for pedestrians, it was in Barcelona, starting in about 1980, that a broader concept of public spaces was formulated in a co-ordinated public space policy. In the course of 50 years, all city space had been conquered by cars. Now the city was fighting back, both physically and culturally. It was also in Barcelona that the concept of "the reconquered city" was born. In terms of both idea and specific architectural formulation, public space policy in Barcelona came to play a major role in further developments. What happened in Barcelona was the starting point for a new, intense period in the last 20 years of the 20th century, in which increasingly more good urban spaces were created or renewed, in order to ensure good public space for new types of public life.
If we are looking for development patterns in the most recent decades, it is clear that several European cities left their mark. In terms of policy, the Dutch, German and Scandinavian cities were among the first to experiment with new types of city space. More recently, many cities in central and southern Europe have followed suit.

New ideas are adopted to regain lost public space. Shown here : In Stockholm, Sweden new housing has been built on top of existing multistorey car parks. Empty streets dominated by cars and concrete are changed to narrow streets lined by houses and shops.

The policy of pushing back cars and giving urban life better conditions continues to be a European phenomenon primarily, but it is interesting to note that corresponding urban policy strategies can now be found in cities in North and South America, Asia and Australia. Precisely because of what has happened in other regions on these continents, the efforts made in Portland, Oregon and Curitiba, Brazil are remarkable, and show that we can no longer refer to public space strategies as being solely a European phenomenon.
Every part of the world has desolate, invaded and abandoned cities, and all over the world there are cities that have fought back by inviting inhabitants to return and use public space.
The marked differences from city to city within the same cultural circles underlines another interesting common trait, namely that most urban improvements are carried out or at least initiated by visionary individuals or groups. It can be a mayor, a city architect, a city council, a political party or inspirational co-operation between consultants, politicians and grassroots movements, but common to the cities that have recaptured public space is visionary, targeted urban policies.
Typically, various topics are combined in these urban visions, such as traffic safety, changes in traffic patterns, public health, a reduction in resource consumption, a reduction in noise and pollution - and efforts to strengthen the role of the city as a democratic forum. Where visions and political will go hand in hand to meet a number of these objectives, it is clear that cities actually do become better places in which to live and spend time.

Lost public space is being regained and new urban spaces established all over the qworld due to the desire for a better balance between the functions of the city as a marketplace, meeting place and traffic space. Left : Centre Pompidou, Paris, France Below from left : New public space in Seattle, Wa. USA. Public space along the reopened waterway, Århus, Denmark. Renovated pedestrian street, San Jóse, Costa Rica.