Life Between Buildings: Using Public Space

Wherever there are people – in buildings, in neighborhoods, in city centers, in recreational areas, and so on – it is generally true that people and human activities attract other people. People are attracted to other people. They gather with and move about with others and seek to place themselves near others. New activities begin in the vicinity o

... See more

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

... See more

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

... See more

Benches that provide a good view of surrounding activities are used more than benches with less or no view of others. An investigation of Tivoli Garden in Copenhagen [36], carried out by the architect John Lyle, shows that the most used benches are along the garden’s main path, where there is a good view of the particularly active areas, while the

... See more

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

... See more

If activity between buildings is missing, the lower end of the contact scale also disappears. The varied transitional forms between being alone and being together have disappeared. The boundaries between isolation and contact become sharper – people are either alone or else with others on a relatively demanding and exacting level. Life between buil

... See more

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

... See more

Frequent meetings in connection with daily activities increase chances of developing contacts with neighbors, a fact noted in many surveys. With frequent meetings friendships and the contact network are maintained in a far simpler and less demanding way than if friendship must be kept up by telephone and invitation. If this is the case, it is often

... See more

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

... See more