…social activities are indirectly supported whenever necessary and optional activities are given better conditions in public spaces.

…life between buildings represents primarily the low-intensity contacts located at the bottom of the scale. … valuable both as independent contact forms and as prerequisites for other, more complex interactions.

Life between buildings offers an opportunity to be with others in a relaxed and undemanding way. One can take occasional walks, perhaps make a detour along a main street on the way home or pause at an inviting bench near a front door to be among people for a short while. Or one can do daily shopping, even though it would be more practical to do it once a week. Even looking out of the window now and then, if one is fortunate enough to have something to look at, can be rewarding. Being among others, seeing and hearing others, receiving impulses from others, imply positive experiences, alternatives to being alone. One is not necessarily with a specific person, but one is, nevertheless, with others.

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.

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 of events that are already in progress. In the home we can see that children prefer to be where there are adults or where there are other children, instead of, for example, where there are only toys.

Both in areas with single-family houses and in apartment house surroundings, children tend to play more on the streets, in parking areas, and near the entrances of dwellings than in the play areas designed for that purpose but located in backyards of single-family houses or on the sunny side of multi-story buildings, where there are neither traffic nor people to look at.

Sidewalks are, not unexpectedly, the very reason for creating sidewalk cafes.

Fewest stops were noted in front of banks, offices, showrooms, and dull exhibits of, for example, cash registers, office furniture, porcelain, or hair curlers. Conversely, a great number of stops were noted in front of shops and exhibits that had a direct relationship to other people and to the surrounding social environment, such as newspaper kiosks, photography exhibits, film stills outside movie theaters, clothing stores, and toy stores.

A summary of observations and investigations shows that people and human activity are the greatest object of attention and interest. Even the modest form of contact of merely seeing and hearing or being near to others is apparently more rewarding and more in demand than the majority of other attractions offered in the public spaces of cities and residential areas.

When the main street in Copenhagen was converted to a pedestrian street in 1962 as the first such scheme in Scandinavia, many critics predicted that the street would be deserted because “city activity just doesn’t belong to the northern European tradition.” Today this major pedestrian street, plus a number of other pedestrian streets later added to the system, are filled to capacity with people walking, sitting, watching events, playing music, and talking together.

…in reality only two noteworthy radical developments in connection with the present discussion of urban planning ideologies and outdoor activities have occurred: one in relation to the Renaissance, and one in relation to the functionalism movement.

The city was no longer merely a tool but became to a greater degree a work of art, conceived, perceived, and executed as a whole.

In this period [Renaissance] it was primarily the appearance of the city and its buildings–the visual aspects–that were developed and transformed into criteria for good architecture and urban design. Concurrently, certain functional aspects were examined, in particular the problems involved with defense, transportation, and formalized social functions such as parades and processions. The most important development in the basis for planning, however, concerned the visual expression of cities and buildings.

The basis for functionalism was primarily the medical knowledge that had been developed during the 1800s and the first decades of the 1900s.

In the 1930s no one could visualize how it would be to live in the new cities when the architects’ aesthetics and the functionalistic ideas of healthy buildings became realities. As an alternative to the existing dark, overpopulated, and unhealthy workers’ housing, the new, light multistory blocks offered many obvious advantages, and it was easy to argue in their favor.

No one wished to reduce or exclude valuable social activities. On the contrary, it was thought that the extensive grass areas between the buildings would be the obvious location for many recreational activities and a rich social life.

Parallel to the development of functionalistic multistory buildings, low, open, single-family housing areas, made possible by the increased use of automobiles.

The automobile has made it possible to replace active participation in spontaneous local social activities with a drive to see selected friends and attractions.

When entrances, balconies, verandas, front yards and gardens are facing the access street, people can follow the life in the public space and will meet frequently in the course of their daily activities.

The establishment of a social structure and corresponding physical structure with communal spaces at various levels permits movement from small groups and spaces toward larger ones and from the more private to the gradually more public spaces, giving a greater feeling of security and a stronger sense of belonging to the areas outside the private residence.

The field of upward vision is reduced further because the axis of vision when walking is directed approximately ten degrees downward, in order to see where one is walking. A person walking down a street sees practically nothing but the ground floor of buildings, the pavement, and what is going on in the street space itself.

In cities and building projects of modest dimensions, narrow streets, and small spaces, the buildings, building details, and the people who move about in the spaces are experienced at close range and with considerable intensity.

Only “on foot” does a situation function as a meaningful opportunity for contact and information in which the individual is at ease and able to take time to experience, pause, or become involved.

Something happens because something happens because something happens. … nothing happens because nothing happens

That life between buildings is a self-reinforcing process also helps to explain why many new housing developments seem so lifeless and empty. Many things go on, to be sure, but both people and events are so spread out in time and space that the individual activities almost never get a chance to grow together to larger, more meaningful and inspiring sequences of events.

If people are tempted to remain in the public spaces for a long time, a few people and a few events can grow to a considerable activity level.

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 outdoors. There are not really any places to be, nothing to do. Thus outdoor stays become short, and the activity level is comparably low. Rowhouses with small front yards may have considerably fewer inhabitants but much more activity around the houses because the period of time spent outdoors per inhabitant is generally much longer.

Large building projects need more streets and squares with a more differentiated structure that includes main streets, side streets, and primary and secondary squares, such as are found in old cities.

In this way the individual activities have been dispersed in time and space because of overdimensioning and an unnecessary doubling and spreading of the access roads. It is not the lack of pedestrian traffic and residents that has prevented the establishment of more intimate and better-used public spaces, but rather the decision to have many dispersed roads and paths instead of a more concentrated street network such as that found in the old cities.

It is nearly always more interesting to be in small spaces, where both the whole and the details can be seen–one has the best of both worlds.

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. … Only the entrances to all functions and the most interesting activities take up space in the facade. This principle is demonstrated in movie theaters, for example, where only the entrance with the ticket booth and advertising are placed on the street, while the auditorium itself is well hidden somewhere behind. This should be the standard solution when banks and offices must be located on city streets.

An integration-oriented city plan can do this by describing growth directions or areas to be extended at various times, rather than by various functions, specifying growth segments for the years 2005 to 2010 to 2015 instead of residential, industrial, and public service areas.

Without doubt the scattering of the university throughout the city causes a number of disadvantages to the institution as an administrative unit. But for those involved, the near contact with the city creates innumerable possibilities for using the city and participating in its life. And for the city the placement of the university means a valuable contribution of energy, life, and activities.

The streets are detailed in a way that clearly indicates their status as predominantly “soft traffic” areas. Traffic speed is further reduced by low ramps and other restraints.

Flexible boundaries in the form of transitional zones that are neither completely private nor completely public, on the other hand, will often be able to function as connecting links, making it easier, both physically and psychologically, for residents and activities to move back and forth between private and public spaces, between in and out.

Youth clubs and community centers with windows on the street have more members than clubs in basement rooms because passersby are inspired to join in by seeing what is going on and who is participating.

Public libraries, too, have noted a direct relationship between distance and book borrowing. Those who live nearest to the library and who can get there most easily also borrow the most books.

The fact that adults who work at home on an average spend nearly three times as much time shopping as those who work outside the home, and the fact that the shopping excursions are distributed evenly throughout the week, even though shopping once a week would perhaps be easier, make it natural to assume that the many daily shopping excursions are not only a question of getting supplies.

This interweaving of motives emphasizes the importance of destinations in the public environment: things and places that the individual can seek out naturally and use as a motive and inducement to go out.

Even though most playgrounds have only limited uses, and children play in places other than the playground during most of their time outdoors, the playground has an important function as a meeting place, as a starting place for other children’s activities.

In other instances considerations of efficiency appear to have played an important part. Schoolchildren are not able to look out of the windows, and may not be seen, in order not to be disturbed. Factory workers must, with regard to productivity, manage with fluorescent lighting and carefully monitored public address system music. Office workers in a high-rise building may look out at the clouds but not at the street, and so on. Only where openness and accessibility may directly assist in promoting commerce is the view opened up to merchandise and, if necessary, human activities.

This trend, seen from a developer’s point of view, may create very interesting perspectives, but seen from the point of view of the city, the result will almost always be a dispersal of people and an effective closing in of people and activities, emptying the public spaces of human beings and interesting attractions. The city thus becomes depopulated, duller, and more dangerous, when instead, the same functions, now closed in, could have enhanced many public spaces and the city as a whole.

That people and events are assembled in time and space is a prerequisite for anything at all to occur, but of more importance is which activities are allowed to develop.

Support of the outdoor activities of adults and the elderly is in itself considered the best conceivable support for children’s activities and the environment in which they grow up.

The problem here is to define the human level of tolerance for interferences encountered during walking so that spaces are sufficiently narrow and rich in experiences, yet still wide enough to allow room to maneuver.

What space requirements can mean to baby carriage traffic was demonstrated when Strøget, the main street in Copenhagen, was converted from a mixed street with motor traffic and closely packed sidewalks to a walking street with a pedestrian area four times as wide. While the number of pedestrians increased during the first year by approximately 35 percent, the number of baby carriages increased by 400 percent.

Acceptable walking distance is a highly subjective matter. The quality of a route is just as important as its actual length. … Crucial to determining the acceptable distance in a given situation is not only the actual physical distance, but also to a great extent the experienced distance. … A stretch of 500 meters (1,600 ft.) viewed as a straight, unprotected, and dull path is experienced as very long and tiring, while the same length can be experienced as a very short distance if the route is perceived in stages. For example, the street can wind a bit, so the space is closed and the distance to be walked is not immediately visible, provided that the walk takes place under good external conditions.

Despite the fact that it can be tiring to walk when the entire distance to a far destination is in sight, it is still more tiring and unacceptable to be forced to use routes other than the direct one when the destination is in sight.

The quality of experiencing a large space is greatly enriched when the approach occurs through a small space: when sequences and contrasts between small and large exist.

Movement at the edge of a space makes it possible to experience simultaneously both the large space as well as the small details of the street facade or the spatial boundary along which one walks.

It is important that the connection is felt to be easy and free of complications. Gradual, short ascents and descents are less difficult to move about on than long, sharp ones. A long, steep stairway is felt to be tiring, while a number of short flights of steps, interrupted by landing, comparable to a street with small squares, is psychologically more manageable. 

At the edge of the forest or near the facade, one is less exposed than if one is out in the middle of a space. One is not in the way of anyone or anything. One can see, but not be seen too much, and the personal territory is reduced to a semicircle in front of the individual. When one’s back is protected, others can approach only frontally, making it easy to keep watch and to react, for example, by means of a forbidding facial expression in the event of undesired invasion of personal territory.

Benches placed in the middle of open spaces look interesting on architectural drawings but are definitely less inviting than more sheltered spaces. The most popular places to sit can be found at the edges of open spaces, where the sitter’s back is protected, the view unobstructed, and the local climate most favorable.

Each bench or seating area should preferably have an individual local quality and should be placed where there is, for example, a small space within the space, a niche, a corner, a place that offers intimacy and security and, as a rule, a good microclimate as well.

In addition to primary seating, many opportunities for supplementary, secondary seating in the form of stairways, pedestals, steps, low walls, boxes, and so on, are needed for times when the demand for seating is particularly great.

A spatial design based on an interplay between a relatively limited number of primary seating opportunities and a large number of secondary places to sit also has the advantage of appearing to function reasonably well in periods when there is only a modest number of users. … many empty benches and chairs, such as are found during off-season periods at sidewalk cafés and resort hotels, easily can give the depressing impression that the place has been rejected and abandoned.

Better lighting means an adequately bright level of lighting directed or reflected toward the horizontal surfaces–faces, walls, street signs, mailboxes, and so forth–in contrast to the lighting of traffic streets. Better light also means warm and friendly light.

In planning city and residential public spaces, designers should try to place benches that allow for more choice of action than the previously mentioned straightforward “back to back” or “face to face” arrangements. For example, curved benches or benches placed at an angle to one another often will permit a valuable choice of action. When sitting at an angle to one another it is a bit easier to start a conversation if there is mutual interest in doing so, and if conversation is not wanted, it is also easier to free oneself from an undesired situation.

Planners must take into consideration that it is the feeling of risk and uncertainty rather than actual statistical risk that plays the decisive role in a given situation. This implies that it is necessary to work carefully with both the actual traffic safety and the feeling of security with regard to traffic.

By far the greatest problem in outdoor spaces is wind. When the wind is blowing, it is difficult to keep one’s balance, to keep warm, and to protect oneself.

In Denmark traditional buildings in the old towns are low, attached buildings, placed along narrow streets, with small courtyards behind the buildings. When the west wind meets these low settlements, most of the wind is conducted over them. At the same time, sunshine is captured and held, because the buildings are low and the outdoor spaces small and carefully oriented toward the sun. In these towns the local climate is considerably better than in the surrounding open countryside, and the annual number of hours that one can comfortably remain outdoors is much greater. In terms of climate, these towns are “moved” many hundred kilometers south because of appropriate design.

The climate in the outdoor areas in front of many multistory buildings is much worse than in the surrounding open land. This is especially true for the high-rise buildings, which catch the strong winds 20, 30, and 40 meters above ground and direct them downward toward the surface, where they chill everything and everybody and blow sand out of the sandboxes.

It is thus important for planners to place walking routes and outdoor resting areas optimally in relation to the microclimatic factors of each specific place.

If the edge of a public space works, so does the space. Carefully designed edge zone: a small terrace, a tiny garden, a bench by the door, and a screen between neighboring units.