Soft edges

A multitude of surveys has established that life in residential streets and other public spaces is a major attraction and a very highly valued amenity. Trends in the 1980’s point towards a growing importance of lively residential streets for formal and informal social activities. This article discusses a number of conditions for supporting this function of residential streets. The focus is primarily on the importance of creating “soft edges” by way of frontyards/ forecourts/ porches in order to provide better opportunities for staying in the public spaces for residents of all ages. Studies of residential street life in Australia, Canada, and Scandinavia arre presented to support the conclusion that “soft edges” may be a most important way of promoting an active life in present-day residential streets.El conocido arquitecto danés Jan Gehl (Copenhague, 1936), lleva aquí su trayectoria de investigación sobre los espacios públicos a analizar el valor que tienen los que denomina “bordes blandos” (“soft edges”) de las áreas residenciales. Bordes blandos que incluyen los patios frontales, porches, patios semiprivados, etc. que adquieren, tras una serie de estudios y encuestas realizados en paralelo en calles residenciales de Australia, Canadá y Escandinavia, un papel importante en la capacidad de dotar de vida, de animación, a los espacios públicos de estas áreas. Este sugerente artículo nos remite al interés por lo cotidiano más que por los contenidos ideológico-urbanísticos, como herramienta de conocimiento de la ciudad y de sus usuarios –y por tanto como instrumento de diseño -, que Jan Gehl nos ha acostumbrado desde sus primeros trabajos (“Life between buildings”, 1971) y que en esta entrega en el Scandinavian Housing and Planning Research (1986) nos ampliaba hacia la tipificación de los espacios de borde, sus usos posibles y sus potenciales grupos sociales, vinculándola a la forma y características de esos bordes blandos entre la vivienda y la propia calle. La carga propositiva que contiene esta investigación se refleja en otros trabajos, a partir de sus célebres tres condiciones para hacer más habitable la ciudad y de mejor calidad su vida urbana: andar más, estar más tiempo en la calle y salir de casa (que hizo suyas Copenhague); acompañada de una amplísima labor de divulgación; “La humanización del espacio público”, “Ciudades para la gente”,” Nuevos espacios públicos”, “Cómo estudiar la vida pública”, que sitúa siempre la valoración de la ciudad y de su espacio público en el papel que en ella juega el ser humano. El diagnóstico que Gehl realizaba en este texto en lo referente tanto a la estructura social como en los hábitos de comportamiento tiene hoy una renovada vigencia. Asimismo, la atención por los espacios frontera nos remite a la idea contemporánea de dilución de los límites que en climas como el nuestro incorpora la noción del espacio intermedio como elemento regulador. Todo ello, la escasa divulgación entre lectores de habla hispana y la no aparición de estudios similares en países más proclives al contacto social y utilización de espacios públicos como los latinos –con lo que pudiera propiciar de validación o rechazo de sus apreciaciones-, nos anima a reproducir su contenido con la esperanza de despertar el interés de nuestros estudiantes e investigadores.Peer Reviewe

Retracing trajectories: the embodied experience of cycling, urban sensescapes and the commute between ‘neighbourhood’ and ‘city’ in Utrecht, NL

This paper looks into the experience of “passing through different territories of the city” (Sennett, 2006, p. 3). Despite their importance for making sense of the city as a whole, these experiences are often not acknowledged in urban planning. This paper compares the everyday, embodied experiences of commuter cyclists with the planners’ perspective on Utrecht. ‘On the ground’ data was collected via ride-alongs with 15 inhabitants of the Leidsche Rijn neighbourhood. Our analysis reveals cycling trajectories composed of diverse sensescapes. It paints a much more complex picture of intra-urban divisions and connections than the planners’ perspective of the ‘new’ Leidsche Rijn neighbourhood separated from the ‘old’ city by major infrastructure lines

Planning and Designing Walkable Cities: A Smart Approach

Walking may be considered one of the most sustainable and democratic ways of travelling within a city, thus providing benefits not only to pedestrians but also to the urban environment. Besides, walking is also one of the means of transport most likely subjected to factors outside an individual\u2019s control, like social or physical abilities to walk and the presence of comfortable and safe street infrastructures and services. Therefore, improving urban conditions provided to pedestrians has positive impacts on walkability. At the same time technological solutions and innovations have the power to encourage and support people to walk by overcoming immaterial barriers due to a lack of information or boring travel and they give to decision makers the possibility to gain data to understand how and where people travel. Merging these two dimensions into a unique approach can drastically improve accessibility, attractiveness, safety, comfort and security of urban spaces. In this context, this paper aims to draw a more multifaceted context for walkability, where new technologies assume a key role for introducing new approaches to pedestrian paths planning and design and thus for enhancing this mode of transport. Indeed, by combining more traditional spatial-based and perceptual analysis of the urban environment with technological applications and social media exploitation there will be room to better support the decision on and to enhance satisfaction of walking as well as to easier plan and design more walkable cities

Urban Mosaic: Visual Exploration of Streetscapes Using Large-Scale Image Data

Urban planning is increasingly data driven, yet the challenge of designing with data at a city scale and remaining sensitive to the impact at a human scale is as important today as it was for Jane Jacobs. We address this challenge with Urban Mosaic,a tool for exploring the urban fabric through a spatially and temporally dense data set of 7.7 million street-level images from New York City, captured over the period of a year. Working in collaboration with professional practitioners, we use Urban Mosaic to investigate questions of accessibility and mobility, and preservation and retrofitting. In doing so, we demonstrate how tools such as this might provide a bridge between the city and the street, by supporting activities such as visual comparison of geographically distant neighborhoods,and temporal analysis of unfolding urban development.Comment: Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nrhk7lb3GU

‘Fourth places’: the Contemporary Public Settings for Informal Social Interaction among Strangers.

This paper introduces ‘fourth places’ as an additional category of informal social settings alongside ‘third places’ (Oldenburg 1989). Through extensive empirical fieldwork on where and how social interaction among strangers occurs in the public and semi-public spaces of a contemporary masterplanned neighbourhood, this paper reveals that ‘fourth places’ are closely related to ‘third places’ in terms of social and behavioural characteristics, involving a radical departure from the routines of home and work, inclusivity, and social comfort. However, the activities, users, locations and spatial conditions that support them are very different. They are characterized by ‘in-betweenness’ in terms of spaces, activities, time and management, as well as a great sense of publicness. This paper will demonstrate that the latter conditions are effective in breaking the ‘placelessness’ and ‘fortress’ designs of newly designed urban public spaces and that, by doing so, they make ‘fourth places’ sociologically more open in order to bring strangers together. The recognition of these findings problematizes well-established urban design theories and redefines several spatial concepts for designing public space. Ultimately, the findings also bring optimism to urban design practice, offering new insights into how to design more lively and inclusive public spaces. Keywords: ‘Fourth places’, Informal Public Social Settings, Social Interaction, Strangers, Public Space Design

Rethinking place-making: aligning placeness factors with perceived urban design qualities (PUDQs) to improve the built environment in historical district

Understanding the concept of place is critically important for urban design and place-making practice, and this research attempted to investigate the pathways by which perceived urban design qualities (PUDQs) influence placeness factors in the Chinese context. Twelve hypotheses were developed and combined in a structural equation model for validation. The Tanhualin historical district in Wuhan, China was selected for the analysis. As a result, place attachment was verified as a critical bridge factor that mediated the influence of PUDQs on place satisfaction. Among the five selected PUDQs, walkability and space quality were revealed as the most influential factors associated with place attachment and place satisfaction. Accessibility was actually indirectly beneficial to place-making via the mediation of walkability. Corresponding implications and strategies were discussed to maintain the sense of place for historic districts