Life Between Buildings: Using Public Space

It is important that all meaningful social activities, intense experiences, conversations, and caresses take place when people are standing, sitting, lying down, or walking. One can catch a brief glimpse of others from a car or from a train window, but life takes place on foot. Only “on foot” does a situation function as a meaningful opportunity fo

Street life is drastically reduced when small, active units are superseded by large units. In many places it is possible to see how life in the streets has dwindled drastically as gas stations, car dealerships, and parking lots have created holes and voids in the city fabric, or when passive units such as offices and banks move in. In contrast, exa

the battle for quality is won or lost at the small scale

In connection with the effort to give the positive processes a chance, it is important to note that life between buildings, the people and events that can be observed in a given space, is a product of number and duration of the individual events. It is not the number of people or events, but rather the number of minutes spent outdoors that is impor

The senses are essentially frontally oriented, and one of the best developed and most useful senses, the sense of sight, is distinctly horizontal. The horizontal visual field is considerably wider than the vertical. If one looks straight ahead, it is possible to glimpse what is going on to both sides within a horizontal circle of almost ninety degr

When buildings are narrow, the street length is shortened, the walking distances are reduced, and street life is enhanced. (Competition project for the extension of Rørås, Norway.) Narrow street frontages mean short distances between entrances – and entrances are where the majority of events nearly always take place.

In situations where the degree of crowding can be determined freely, the upper limit for an acceptable density in streets and on sidewalks with two-way pedestrian traffic appears to be around 10 to 15 pedestrians per minute per meter (3 ft.) street width. This corresponds to a pedestrian flow of some one hundred people per minute in a 10-meter-wide

Popular zones for staying are found along the facades in a space or in the transitional zone between one space and the next, where it is possible to view both spaces at the same time. In a study of the preferred areas for stays in Dutch recreational areas, the sociologist Derk de Jonge mentions a characteristic edge effect [25]. The edges of the fo

This connection, that duration is as important as the number of events, explains in great part why there is so little activity in many new housing projects, such as multistory apartment areas, where great numbers of people in fact live. Residents come and go in great numbers, but there are often only meager opportunities to spend extended periods o