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00095

How Conducive Are Urban Public Open Spaces To Social Inclusion?

Barbara Golicnik

Urban Planning Institute of the Republic of Slovenia, Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh

College of Art

Abstract

This paper focuses on the relationship between the two attributes of the public realm: the physical

spatial characteristics of the place itself and the dynamic of use. The examined relationship between

public spaces such as parks and squares in town centres and activities within them is shown on the

maps based on the GIS-supported databases, which were created upon the data, originally carried out

manually using an observation and behavioural mapping technique. Addressing both spatial-usage

characteristics of places and their conduciveness to occupancy, parks are discussed at a general levelwhile squares are explored in more detail. A reflection on conduciveness of places from designers

perspectives concludes the paper with some brief comments on some of the results from the

workshops undertaken by urban landscape designers, dealing with spatial-usage relationship in the

case of one particular square.

Keywords: Urban landscape design; parks; squares; usage; diversity

1. Introduction

The paper is concerned with empirical values rather than with pure theoretical issues in the

field of urban landscape design. According to Carmona et al (2003), urban design, recognised

as a means of manipulating the probabilities of certain actions or behaviours, should be an

activity that provides people with choices rather than denying them choice. As such, it

reflects the provision of opportunity and management of use (Carmona et al, 2003) and

involves urban designers as professionals who can master increasing space potential to create

a meaningful, significant and desirable place.

Discussing the environmental opportunities and peoples choices, Gans (1968) distinguishes

the potential and the effective environments. He recognises a potential environment, which is

proposed by the planner and provides a range of environmental opportunities; and an effective

environment, which derives from the potential environment, created and determined by what

people actually do within it. Addressing both terms, Anderson (1986) distinguishes potential

environment as the physical environment; an arena for potential actions and interpretations asit exists at any point in time, which is characterised by limits of activity and significance. An

effective environment, named influential, is defined as the realised potential environment,

manifested in two options: exploited potential and recognised but unexploited potential. It is

that version of the potential environment which is manifestly or implicitly adopted by users,

and thus represents the actually observed pattern of use and meaning. The unrealised potential

environment is defined as latent environment and is recognised as that version of the potential

environment which supplements the influential. It consists of the environmental possibilities

not currently being exploited.

On these bases, guiding the discussion towards an account of the form, use and significance

of the physical environment, Anderson (1986) addresses robustness and resilience as domainsof the above defined environments. Robustness is seen as the extent of the potential in the

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physical environment, while resilience is seen as the degree of latency together with the

recognised but unexploited potential within the influential environment. Developing

Andersons arguments further, Carmona et al (2003) recognise robustness, in general, as a

function of the relationship between form and the uses it accommodates. Both use

(people) and form(place), as the materialisation of public and space, are the essential

and interdependent components of any public space.

Public space is an inseparable entity of a two-way process between both the components:

people and place. In this paper, places form and its main articulation represent the

spatial component of an urban open public space. This refers to a general physical layout of a

place such as a square or a park. Although places are unique and distinctive, they have some

characteristics in common, which, through the method of abstraction, match some usual terms

of spatial analysis and very basic elements of spatial definitions such as soft/hard surface,

edge, corner, boundary, elevation, or any general vertical or horizontal articulation. A social

component of that public space is understood as its daily dynamic pattern of users. A

comprehensive behavioural map showing a places occupancy in a particular temporal frame

is a source of such information. It usually contains a range of different uses, exemplified by aspan of activities from walking to climbing a tree in a park, and from sitting or walking to

skateboarding in a square. Although the observed uses are quite diverse, they share some

characteristics and aspects of occupancy. Bearing this in mind, the final categorisation of

patterns of uses is based on the interaction between time-occupation represented by three

different categories of continuously present, temporarily present and in transit, and the

way of involvement described as active, passive and intermittent.

The series of methods and techniques that enabled the examination of public spaces starts

with observation and behavioural mapping, taking place in several squares and parks in the

centres of two European towns, Edinburgh and Ljubljana, within the timeframe of one month

for each. It continues with the digitalisation (re-mapping) of the original data using GIS and

on this basis builds up an empirical knowledge visualised on maps. On the basic level, it

provides different original information about uses such as type of activity, gender, age,

duration of activity, time of day of occupancy, time of week of occupancy, movement

direction and weather conditions at the presence of the activity. Its advanced level shows

results arising from statistical analysis and calculations; for example, the values of rates of

use, participation of users engaged in any one activity and their intensity of use, nature of the

spatial-temporal involvement of activity and the like. The most sophisticated level of this

empirical knowledge shows generated results arising from maps as graphical sources of

locations and dimensions of the behaviours/uses. Comprehensive workshops with urban

landscape designers close the series of examinations of public open spaces. Focusing onexploring designers convictions/beliefs and experiences in relation to the nature of public

space use they address validity, understanding of implementation of gained empirical

knowledge, and the notion of design and its relation to conduciveness of places.

However, when the goal of urban design is understood as providing potential places for social

inclusion, potential behavioural patterns in urban settings, and moreover, their inner structure

of the effective environment, become important. Thus, there is a challenge to elucidate and

represent the physicality of spaces with a spatiality of usage, to know about potential

behavioural patterns in urban settings and talk about the physicality of spaces using the

language of patterns of use(r)s.

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2. What Are Interesting Behavioural Patterns? Where Are They?

The examination has identified five significant groups of the ways in which activities took

place within all the examined places. Commenting on social inclusion, the presence of

greatest diversities of uses and/or of specific uses in public spaces is relevant. Accordingly,

two groups are examined in more detail. One example consists of parks such as the Meadows,

Princes Street Gardens and the Tivoli Park, in which greatest diversity of uses is reached withactivities happening once or twice only. It concerns specific activities, for example climbing a

tree, flying a kite, playing volleyball, baseball, badminton, performing street theatre, making

art exhibitions and the like rather than usual activities such as walking, sitting, cycling,

jogging, walking children and pushing baby-carriages, and walking dogs, of which the

majority happened very often. The greatest diversity of uses in the other group, consisting of

two squares, Trg Republike and Bristo Square, is in both the squares built upon the usual

everyday activities such as walking, sitting, standing and cycling. The situation is additionally

enriched with the presence of a specific use, skateboarding, which is carried out quite often,

too.

The similar number of skateboarders in each of the two squares shows that both the townsshare a level of interest in that activity. The actual engagement at the same time is also

constant in both the places but differs in terms of the number of active participants, being

much higher in the case of Edinburgh. In contrast to the situation in Edinburgh, in Ljubljana

sometimes more than half of the skateboarders sat out for longer and observed the others.

Neither place was planned as a skateboarders platform but a certain articulation of those

places stimulates these users to be there and use it for their pastime. However, this certain

articulation in itself does not ensure optimal use. The size, shape and vertical articulation of

the available space are of key importance.

3. What Are the Physical Characteristics of the Settings Where These Interesting

Behavioural Patterns Happened?

The examined cases show that steps, which merge into a flat platform, are essential elements

that attract skateboarders but this merged flat area is crucial to enable their actual use.

Physical traces of actual activities represented as graphical information on the map elucidate

the inner structure of the effective space, reflect usage ability of a place and in this way

address its spatial capacity. In this particular case, the capacity of the supplementary space,

this available space which actually enables the complete activity to happen fully, in the square

of Ljubljana was simply not big enough to support skateboarders complete active

involvement.

Although both the examined squares serve as representative places in town centres, andthrough some elements of spatial definition, as mentioned above, invite the same type of

users, their overall physical layout and spatial context differ from each other. This is reflected

in the ways of spatial occupation and co-habitation of users. Bristo Square (Edinburgh) is a

squared, enclosed space with no ramps, but is attached to the spatial frame, which ensures that

the sunken platform, the core of the place, is accessible by wheelchairs, prams, bikes and the

like. The Trg Republike (Ljubljana) consists of two sub-positioned longitudinal platforms,

attached to the surroundings with steps and ramps. One platform has a built frame along both

the longest sides, the other along one side only. The open side borders on a car parking area.

In Edinburgh, the interaction between people in transit through the place and skateboarders

happened mainly in skateboarders supplementary spaces of their actions, while in the case ofLjubljana it did so in the areas of the actual events themselves (event spaces). The equipment

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such as boxing and some other light structures, which skateboarders brought to the stage,

evokes latent environments, too. A cumulative intensity of occupancy in the square of

Ljubljana concentrates in the node between both the platforms. It is the narrowest but the

most articulated part of the whole square. Three significant zones of cumulative intensities

were noticed in Bristo Square in Edinburgh. Active users, people in transition through the

place and skateboarders take places from boundaries between edges and periphery,peripheries to central areas. When evoking latent environment for skateboarding, the intensity

of occupancy is increased at the periphery between articulated edge and the area that is off

one of the most used lines for passing by. Passive uses such as sitting and standing are usually

concentrated along the volume of edges. Bigger groups usually take places in corners, while

individuals and small groups are scattered along the edges.

Map 1 Map 2

Figure 1. Overall assembly behavioural maps of spatial occupancy, distinguishing skateboarders from

the rest of users in Bristo Square ( Map 1) and the Trg Republike (Map 2)

Parks are often considered as negative or soft spaces, places of implicit limits. In parks, where

physical limits are well defined consequentially, effective environments are easily recognised

and realised. Where voids are larger and the physical limits are further apart, users themselvesstructure the resilience of the potential environment to become effective for one or more of

them. The Meadows in Edinburgh has such spatial characteristics. It invites as many active as

passive users. Passive activities such as lying down and sitting are often seen along the edges

and within broader peripheral zones, rarely in the centres. Active participants such as football

and frisbee players most often take places in these broad peripheries, but occasionally

encroach on centres of the green voids, too.

Overall assembly maps of behavioural patterns in the Meadows show that rare but

contributory activities to the enhancement of the diversity of uses in the park share locations

of appearance with other, more frequent activities. The areas of cumulative intensity

consisting then of either passive or active activities of different extents and sizes are

significant for the areas in the wings away from the main promenade of the park, either in

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corners or in the peripheral zones of inner boundaries and along the inner sides of outer edges

of the park. In the other two examined parks, passive users are in the majority. Nevertheless,

the relationship in location between frequent and rare activities is similar to the one found in

the case of the Meadows.

4. Where Are the Role and the Notion of Design?Behavioural patterns show possibilities of occupancies in places, while designers drawings

from the workshops show what they consider is likely to happen in a particular place and

reflect the environmental probabilities of places. Designers beliefs and awareness about uses

in a place such as Trg Republike in some aspects differ from actual happenings in the place.

The biggest majority (86 per cent) see this environment as a setting for passing by. About one

fourth of this majority (26 per cent) do not recognise any other activities but transitory ones.

About twice as many of them (43 per cent) see the node of both the platforms also as a

potential environment for sitting or waiting. Only 14 per cent of them, in addition to passive

uses and engagements in passing by, recognise this articulated area between the platforms as

an attractive place for skateboarders or roller-skaters. Fourteen per cent of all the participants

have not recognised any particular type of activity in this particular part of a square.

Every activity people carry out within public open space takes place in a particular place. The

physical spatial capacity and the usage ability of the occupancy of a place act as common

denominators in the relationship between places and their occupancies. A discussion about

different approaches and understandings of the environment-people interaction reflects the

conviction that design matters, but not absolutely. What matters is conduciveness of a place

for occupancy. It refers to addressing possibilities for usage ability of a place and

probabilities of spatial capacity of a place and thus reflects spatial potentials for occupancy.

Patterns of spatial occupancy seem like an x-ray of places. They show hidden and embedded

structures of places, features which are sometimes invisible, but potential. The aspects of

spatial-human dimensions elucidate the anatomy of space and therefore make a critical

reflection on designed public open spaces. However, the empirical knowledge suggests this

anatomy of space expressed by behavioural patterns could provide an additional point of view

in/of an inclusive design.

Key Concluding Points

Many spatial forms are relatively adaptable and can be accommodated within a varietyof patterns of users but their conduciveness to usage is limited by both physical

dimensions and articulation of places, and dimensions which uses require for being

satisfactorily carried out.

Behavioural patterns differ from one place to another. Nevertheless, activities formtheir own spaces and through them elucidate and shape places. Thus, behavioural

patterns address usage ability and/or spatial capacity of a place, reflect spatial potential

for occupancy, and refer to conduciveness of a space to be used.

The same elements of spatial definition, organised in different ways in a complexphysical setting, might keep facilitating, could become neutral or even non-facilitating

for certain single or sympatric happenings in a place. From this point of view,

conduciveness of places to usage inclusion relates to available supplementary spaces

for the activities carried out in a place.

The empirical knowledge about spatial-usage potentials of places is of key importancein urban design professions and has an important role in urban landscape design

practice. It might bring additional insights, validities and criteria for sustainable,successful and all-inclusive town planning and design.

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