In the pre car city there is usually little open space, particularly if it is a pre-Georgian or unplanned city. However what space is there, is usually integrated into the street network in that you have to or can move across it or through it to get to one place or another. Look at the market square at the centre of this town to the right for example.
Village greens wrap around the roads, as does the market square- both are wrapped by buildings that front onto them. Well used, open spaces are located at well-connected points in the street network, ensuring many people pass through them, which keeps them safer and more vibrant. So when deciding where to locate new open space, we need to consider the character which will arise from where it falls in the urban structure. If we want it vibrant and safe, we must place it so that it is integrated into the street network with buildings fronting it. It is then more likely to be used because people will pass through it whilst moving from one place to another- and it will feel safer because it will be overlooked. Open space that is hidden out of the way or is not well connected is far less likely to be used, for it is less accessible and less secure. A smaller amount of better located and better-connected open space is likely to be better used and more likely to be safe.
Images: Which do you think would be better used? In which would you feel more comfortable walking alone at night? The one which opens onto the street with multiple points to enter or exit on the left or the one with only one way in or out and wrapped by the back of buildings to the right?
In the historic city it is usually clear what space is private space and what space is public. People know they can use the public space and so do. People also know they shouldn't use private spaces and so don’t.
In the historic street the front and back garden are clearly private, the back is more private and the more private it is the more likely it is to be used for private activities. There is usually some form of barrier between the public and private space and the private open space will be crossed by the main access to the private property when it faces the street.
However, in the modernist city there is a tendency to have vast swathes of open space where it is not particularly clear whether it is public or private. Quite often these spaces are surrounded by barriers that make it difficult to get to the green space- yet the facing properties have no access onto the space so life can not flow out from the building into the space. So the space isn't used and serves no purpose.
With all 3 of these buildings- is that green space private or public? It is fenced from the street to keep the public out, at the other side are apartments but it is the back of the apartments that face the open space and the street. Therefore this space is pointless, it is not private, not public, not used but it has to be maintained by the Council at cost to the people who don’t use it.
All three of those apartment building would work far better and that open space would be better used if some of it was divided up into private open space, and each ground floor apartment had is front door facing the front garden and main access through it. That would also make the street feel more like a traditional street because the side of the building facing the street would be activated. Here is a half-decent example of that being done to a 1960's building:
Good new developments use this same methodology to give the street a traditional feel at the bottom of large apartment blocks and provide space people actually use.
Larger areas of open space such as parks (regardless of size) should have the front of adjoining buildings facing onto them so life can spill out from the building to the park and so life has to cross the open space to get to from building to building. If the back of buildings faces onto open space it does not create an appealing environment, or a safe environment as there are few eyes on the space from overlooking buildings.
Image: Bad example of park in Melbourne- Click Here for a street view tour where you can see the back fence of all the houses faces onto the park.
Defensive design is something of a problem in badly designed open space. When something is designed defensively it is designed to keep people out. Think of a medieval castle, there will be barriers, ditches, a moat and then castle walls. The routes into the castle will be long, indirect and designed so that the route in is difficult to escape from and easy to attack people on whilst they are moving along it. That is defensive design at its most extreme.
This moat and the defensive walls at either side stop people from crossing directly and forces them to cross via the narrow elevated bridge beneath the apartment block. Unlike a castle this is not a draw bridge- but just like a castle it makes it easier to attack people crossing the space.
Defensive design can arise in the city at a structural level – as I have shown you at the Barbican in video 4– or in the finishes of a place - where it is more likely to arise in open space. It is unfortunately very common for open spaces to be surrounded by barriers, in the form of changes in level, fencing of various forms which serve to keep people out, or with water features that serve the same purposes. Those bad examples of open space I've shown you above employ defensive design by having barriers at both sides of the open space to prevent life entering the space.
Very often the defensively designed open spaces actually cost more to build and maintain yet are less useful and less used by people than places designed simply without barriers. Watch video 5 to find out more.
I hope you never look at a "keep off the grass" or "no ball games" sign the same ever again. Onto section 10 next.
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