Thoughts, views and opinions

How do we reinvigorate our public realms?

(Blog by Mahmood Faruqi, written April 2015)

When Sir Edward Lister, the Mayor of London’s Chief of Staff and Deputy Mayor, unveiled the New London Model at MIPIM 2015, he challenged everyone in the room. “I see a lot of empty spaces. Now go ahead and fill them up,” he said.

Not that long ago, Sir Lister’s words would have prompted a rush to fill those spaces with buildings – and lots of them! But things have changed dramatically over the last decade as developers, local authorities and designers have come to realise the value of the public realm as a central component of the built environment which, if designed properly, can add tremendous value both to their buildings and our cities.

It is hoped therefore that the call will be taken up instead with an intelligent approach to densification, in part through anchoring developments around transport, and with new public spaces which complement the buildings that surround them and provide breathing spaces for their communities.

Rather than being a necessary evil, it is now broadly understood that the public realm can bring value on three levels: socio-economic, in terms of connectivity, accessibility and social amenities; real estate, in terms of elevation of value around areas of well-designed public realm; and tertiary value from the actual use of the public realm, whether it be temporary uses such as outdoor markets, fairs and concerts, or fixed value from advertising and so on.

But while the value of public space and place making has finally been realised, it is not clear if we have fully understood what the public realm really is and more specifically how it should be designed. Clearly it is much more than just a nicely landscaped park or a plaza with some artwork. It is the connective fabric which cities are built around. If we are to deliver a vibrant and viable future for city inhabitants, it is essential we better understand how these spaces can shape our cities.

In the simplest of terms, the built environment comprises buildings which provide shelter and accommodate uses, plus outside space that allows us to access these uses. This outside space is the public realm, so called because it is accessible by all users and hence public even if it is, in many cases, owned and managed by private companies.

The interaction between the built and unbuilt part of the city plays a key role in whether these open spaces are associative usable environments or cold and unfriendly ones – too little open space and it becomes claustrophobic and disorienting. Too much and it is soulless and disconnected. Too rigidly defined and it is restrictive and inflexible. Too loosely formed and it is undefined and useless. Getting this balance right can add tremendous value to our built environment both in real estate terms as well as social capital. 

The public realm in the built environment consists of three basic categories: spaces of rest such as public squares, parks, plazas and waterfronts; spaces for movement including roads, streets, alleys and walkways; and spaces of exchange in which either the spaces of rest and movement connect, or where the outside connects with the inside world of buildings. As planning professionals, it is important that we realise these basic categories while understanding the attributes of each.

The physical shape of the public realm also plays a part in determining which category it is. For example, squares, plazas and parks tend to be in the form of rest, i.e. square, rectangular, circular or oval – these are ‘stop’ spaces.  Similarly, spaces which enable movement such as streets and roads are generally linear and convey their use through the form of movement – these are ‘go’ spaces, allowing us to get from one rest space to another.

‘Exchange’ spaces are the transitional ying-yang or interlocking shapes that extend the ‘stop’ and ‘go’ spaces into the other, or the outside into the inside. A simple example of this is the arcade along the edges of a plaza which creates the threshold between the inside and the outside. This exchange space is crucial to ensuring that the public realm we design is functional, attractive and usable. The natural world offers many examples of transitional spaces. For example, water and riverfronts are at their best when they are defined not by a clean minimal edge but by beaches, bays, peninsulas and tidal pools – all physical forms that provide definition for inhabitation and create enjoyable and usable exchange between land and water.

In the same way, the public realm needs exchange spaces to be articulated so they are more usable, more enjoyable and more valuable. These are the places where people meet, interact and which provide the platform for creating the quality of life of a city.  But who owns this critical part of the city, this public realm which provides the most important element of a city; social interaction? Ownership not in the sense of physical ownership or even maintenance, but rather, who shapes it, who designs it and who is it designed for?

London and other cities in the UK have suffered over the past half-century through a gross misunderstanding of this question and a catastrophic response from designers, planners and developers alike.

For many years the public realm has been engineered to accommodate utilities such as cars, lorries, pipes, cables and services. But in doing so it has lost the ability to be the social space of our cities.

Engineers and planners have tried to create what they perceive as an efficient, safe and manageable environment. But unfortunately, despite their best objectives, this has resulted in roads that are too wide, parks and squares that are too big and uses that are too far apart to walk and without any associative space between each other. All designed with the intention to keep our cities functioning; to provide light air and hygiene, but with a gross misunderstanding of how social interaction in cities can best take place.

This engineering-led dominance of the public realm is still evident in city planning all around the developing world. Traffic and service engineers determine the width of roads and streets to accommodate cars, trucks and utilities, but not the needs of people or the understanding of uses that make cities work. The result is unsustainable new urban environments that are inflexible, inhospitable and unusable.

It is equally important to realise that while the public realm should not be engineered or planned, it cannot be treated as left over space between or around buildings or subservient space to buildings. We cannot expect to grow our cities only by designing good buildings.  We must also realise that for landscape design to successfully form the public realm, it needs to be structural, not cosmetic. Fine paving or remarkable artwork can make a public space more appealing but it cannot fundamentally change the dynamic of how the space works.

For our built environments to add the highest value to our cities, buildings need to shape and be shaped by the space around them. To do so, we need to understand how the public realm works, and how it can be shaped to complement the types and sizes of uses in the buildings and spaces around it. We, need to re-educate ourselves about the morphology of structured open space.

The past 50 years have seen urbanisation at an unprecedented scale, with existing cities expanding and new cities being created to cater to the mass migration from country to city. We have entrusted the design of our cities in the hands of developers, politicians, planners, engineers, architects and landscape architects. However, it is clear from recent examples that we have not properly understood the real issues that shape our cities and enrich the lives of their inhabitants.

The result is a combination of engineered, fractured, isolated, overregulated and under-articulated urban patterns that create unfriendly and inhospitable spaces and a misuse of land, material, energy and effort.

For urbanism to work and for us to create better neighbourhoods, districts and cities, we need to understand the public realm and learn how to design it to deliver the best value for cities, developers, local authorities and residents. It is time therefore that the role of the urbanist changed. More than just a part-time architect, landscape architect or planner, the future urbanist needs to specialise in blending these disciplines through an in depth understanding of the morphology and functionality of the public realm in order to preserve the future of our cities.