Public space

Summary

A public space is a place that is open and accessible to the general public. Roads (including the pavement), public squares, parks, and beaches are typically considered public space. To a limited extent, government buildings which are open to the public, such as public libraries, are public spaces, although they tend to have restricted areas and greater limits upon use. Although not considered public space, privately owned buildings or property visible from sidewalks and public thoroughfares may affect the public visual landscape, for example, by outdoor advertising. Recently, the concept of shared space has been advanced to enhance the experience of pedestrians in public space jointly used by automobiles and other vehicles. Public space has also become something of a touchstone for critical theory in relation to philosophy, urban geography, visual art, cultural studies, social studies and urban design. The term 'public space' is also often misconstrued to mean other things such as

Official source

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_space

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Walking through Cerdà's Plan. (Re) Introducing Networked public Space into the Example's Courtyards

Mathieu Hefti

The strength of the Barcelona's Eixample comes from its urban plan, a visionary project designed by Ildefons Cerdà in 1859. The original project proposed blocks with a central open space built on two or three sides, allowing the introduction of variation through the urban fabric. However, to increase density the courtyards were privatized thereby reducing the public realm to the streets. The process was nevertheless reversed in 1986 by a new bylaw promoting the recuperation of the courtyards for public space. This project reasserts Cerdà's agenda for a diverse public realm forming a fluid network through streets and reclaimed courtyards and creating unique localities along promenades within a repetitive system. To solve the relation between users and programs, the different uses can coexist by a set of levels, taking up the existing fragmentation of buildings' terraces. Housing is extended by communal gardens, preserving privacy, while cafés and retail expand their activities on the interior and children and the elderly find social activities. The design of these itineraries is solved through parametric optimization, using a gaming pathfinder algorithm, with emphasis on the privacy condition of each block. The engine uses agents (virtual people) to determine the appropriate location and permeability of the threshold between street and courtyard. It is able to manage systematically small, human-scale interventions to (re) introduce a walking dimension into Cerdà's urban fabric.

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A section cuts through BÜMPLIZ-BETHLEHEM – western periphery district of the city of Bern. The drawing shows fragments of a picturesque garden city, cheap and simple Kriegssiedlungen, post-World War II serial houses, CIAM-influenced large-scale ensembles and vestiges of a former farming village cohabiting side by side. The patchwork-like urban body of BÜMPLIZ-BETHLEHEM appears in section as a linear succession of very diverse city spaces and transition moments. This comprehension of the city as a "sequence" of different spatial conditions is reflected in the project. The project organizes an urban sequence from the old village through a 1970ies' large-scale housing ensemble to the railway station. The transformation of the Fellergut's fissured interior landscape and the implantation of Bern's civil registry office turn the "Grosssiedlung" into urban space.

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Dramatic growth of urban populations in the developing countries is being a challenging issue in the upcoming decades. Tabriz is one of those megacities in the northwest of Iran with a rapid rate of development and modernization. As a consequence an urban-social segregation is being formed in the southeast of the city. To hinder such segregation a mix program that combines the traditional aspects of the urban development and modern life styles is proposed. Within this respect a residential complex built in 1960's in the southeast of the city is chosen to analyze and devise a plan for the redevelopment of the site with an induce on the district. The complex is the core of the development of the district that indeed differs from the neighboring sites in the manner of typology, density and diversity. The objective of the project is to generate a mix program of activities with the concept of the ancient Bazaar of Tabriz. It is to valorize the original aspects of the site in correlation with modern life styles. The project is based on the presence of activities, which participate to the reinvention of public space and contribute to the construction of an urban passage. The proposition is to introduce a mix structure of commerce, offices and housing to requalify the urban spaces by creating interrelations with the activities of the site and the district.

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