3. Background
3.1 What are Successful Public Spaces?
Successful public spaces are those places that foster social interaction, contribute to happiness, and bring out smiles. They are where people would like to have life, where people can have a seat, meet and talk with friends, read or have food in the relax environment, take a break from the daily work and watch people around as the timeless urban pastime.
Urban sociologist William H. Whyte found out, in New York City, some plazas were crowded while many others were underused. Through observing how people use sixteen plazas and three small parks, he details what constitute an attractive public space in the book of The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces, which provided the foundation of new open space ordinances. The parameters that William thinks important for creating well-used public spaces include siting spaces, sun, wind, trees, water features, food, the relationship with streets, undesirable users, effective capacity, the indoor alternative, new design concepts — concourse and megastructure, the scale, external stimulus that creating interactions between strangers (Whyte,1980, P15).
Jan Gehl evaluates the quality of public spaces by amounts of three types of outdoor activities — necessary activities, optional activities, and social activities, happening in the space in Life Between Buildings: Using Public Spaces. Necessary activities mean those compulsory daily routines, such as waiting along street, commuting to school or work, grocery shopping, etc, which occur all year round regardless whether the physical environment is desirable or not. Optional activities are those depending on people’s willingness and initiatives, such as reading in the open air, having lunch in the sunshine, getting a breath of fresh air after raining. They take place “if there is a wish to do so and if time and place make it possible.” Social activities are “resultant” activities that “depend on the presence of others in the public spaces”, including meetings, greetings, conversations, etc. Gehl has found the relationship between the outdoor spaces and the incidence of three types of activities. When the public places are of poor quality, only necessary activities happen. However, when the quality of public spaces is good, both optional activities and social activities occur substantially frequently (Gehl, 1987, p.9–12). He also discussed the significance of scales, dimensions, safety, aesthetic quality and the sense of a place for producing welcoming and attractive public spaces.
American Planning Association (APA) defines a great public space as a place that “is safe, welcoming, and accommodating for all users; has design and architectural features that are visually interesting; relates well to bordering uses; promotes human contact, social activities, and community involvement; reflects the local culture or history by a unique or special character; and is well maintained.” (Great places in America: Public Spaces, https://www.planning.org/greatplaces/spaces/characteristics.htm)
Whyte, Gehl and APA’s judgments are instructive in clarifying criteria for successful public spaces. But they are not systematic enough to establish clear guidelines. Project for Public Spaces (PPS) proposes a well-rounded evaluating standard in the article what makes a successful place, after observing and analyzing thousands of public spaces in many countries. It has a conclusion that successful public spaces are usually accessible, sociable, comfortable, esthetical, and full of activities in the research. In addition, PPS created The Place Diagram, making these attributes visualized (Figure 1). The diagram consists of three concentric circles, respectively assessing the quality of a public space from a different perspective. The outer ring shows measurable quantitative factors that decide if a public space is good while the middle ring is comprised of intuitive or qualitative factors of great public spaces. The center ring lists four summarized fundamental evaluation criteria: access & linkage, comfort & image, uses & activities, and sociability.
Access and linkage. Usually, successful public spaces are readable, walkable, and easily accessible. The place should be visible from up close and a few blocks away to attract potential users’ attentions. Furthermore, sightlines from and into the space should be clear to make users feel safe. As everyone should be able to use these spaces, the design must be both disability-friendly and pedestrian-friendly. Then everyone can be able to get to and pass through easily and freely. People don’t need to go through fast moving traffic while trying to get the place. In addition, the continuity and proximity of the place are important as well. The edges of the space should be well connected to its surroundings, such as sidewalks, streets, and adjacent buildings. Less obstacles along the edges can make the place not only more inviting and welcoming but also more accessible. To be made fully use of, public spaces are typically proximal to gathering spots, such as office buildings, bus stops and subway stations. To judge the accessibility of a place, we can use measurements like traffic data, mode splits, transit usage, pedestrian activity, and parking usage patterns.
Comfort and image. Comfortability and giving good impressions play pivotal roles in building successful public spaces. A comfortable place means a place is safe, clean, sittable, and warm with the sunshine when it’s cold and cool with shadow when it’s hot. Greens, such as trees, plants, and lawn, and water features can be greatly helpful to form a pleasing and attractive environment since people love natural elements and tend to stay close to plants and water. Public spaces should also take the responsibility to building identities in their neighborhoods. Successful one’s design always have specific spiritual and historic meaning, which not only reflect the characters of the community, but also foster a strong sense of that small area. The comfortability can be tested partially by crime statistics, sanitation rating, building quality conditions, environmental data, and even the portion of female users. Generally, women are more sensitive to the surrounding environment and more discerning about where to take a break and meet with friends. Thus, a comfortable space usually accommodates more women than the average level. (Project for Public Spaces, 2001)
Uses and activities. A great public space always provides a few smaller “places” inside it, which make different activities happen. These small places, such as outdoor dining areas, water features, bedding plants, artworks, a small stage for performances etc., act as small temptations, attracting people of different ages, genders, and races, to come and return. Just as the benchmark of “the Power of Ten” requires, “a great place needs to have at least 10 things to do in it or 10 reasons to be there.” in addition, a successful public space can be used, no matter what time it is during the day and what season it is of the year. To cooperate these natural changes, flexible designs and seasonal strategies need to be considered in the process of design and management. Instead of building many permanent facilities, for example, there should be enough empty space left for seasonal programs, in which retractable or temporary place-making could be constructed. Likewise, it is important to hold and organize abundant activities, such as farmer’s markets, art or sculpture displays, and skating rinks, for off-peak periods, like weekends and winters. Diverse using and activeness can be reflected by land-use patterns, property values, rent levels, local business ownership, retail sales, and numbers of different types of activities occurring. (Project for Public Spaces, 2001)
Sociability. A sociable public place is where people have many interactive activities and feel neighborly, pride, friendly, and welcoming. Regardless of their ages and races, nobody feels isolated in such place. People would like to choose this place to do some social activities regularly, such as meeting friends and running into their neighbors. In these sociable public places, people tend to appear in groups, have smiles on their faces, talk with others, and make a lot of eye contact with each other. A sociable place could create a strong sense of belonging to its users. With this sense, people unconsciously keep the place tidy, clean, and in good condition. Sometimes they are even proud of having the place in their neighborhoods. It is difficult to create such a sociable place. But unique design features and thoughtful handling of details help. For example, more social interaction incline to happen if there are moveable chairs and tables in a public space, which offers more flexible seating choices for different kinds of social activities among both strangers and acquaintances. We can evaluate the sociability of a public space by numbers of different users, like women, children, elderly, social networks created, frequency of volunteerism, the number of evening user, and diversity of street life.
Privately owned public spaces are usually small- scale public spaces, like pocket parks, plazas, sun terrace, and atrium. By transitivity, great privately owned public spaces should display characters of successful public spaces stated above. However, they also have some specific characteristics that decide if they can be great, which would be discussed in later sections.
3.2 Existing Privately Owned Public Space Evaluation
3.2.1 New York City
New York City is the first city that introduced the incentive zoning program in its 1961 Zoning Resolution, which encourages developers to build privately owned public spaces in their projects. In return, they are allowed to have a larger development regardless of the existing requirements for densities in specific high-density areas. Until 2000, more than eighty acres of public spaces, equaling around ten percent of Central Park, are created in this trade-off. In the beginning, only plazas and arcades were counted as the types of public spaces that would get incentives. A few years later, other types, such as sidewalk widening, open-air concourses, covered pedestrian spaces, through block arcades, connections, and galleries, are included in the regulation (NYC Planning, 2014). Most these public spaces are concentrated in Manhattan’s midtown, Upper East Side, Upper West Side, and downtown districts. There are only a few spaces in Brooklyn and Queens while none in the Bronx or Staten Island (APOPS, 2015).
Even though the amount of privately owned public spaces is impressive, not many are of high quality. Only a few really benefit the public. Some can barely attract public use. Sometimes the poor usability was even intended, because of not only the cost to create inviting spaces but also the conflict between public and private users. Developers tried to dispel public’s visitation to make it easy to manage their properties (Smithsimon, 2008). The statistics of these spaces’ performances from the New York City Department of City Planning states that “Approximately 16 percent of the spaces are actively used as regional destinations or neighborhood gathering spaces, 21 percent are usable as brief resting places, 18 percent are circulation-related, four percent are being renovated or constructed, and 41 percent are of marginal utility.”(NYC Planning, 2014)
To have a well-rounded understanding of the performances of these privately owned public spaces, in 2000, Harvard University professor Jerold S. Kayden conducted a research of all 503 public spaces at 320 buildings in New York City, with the supports of the New York City Department of City Planning and the Municipal Art Society of New York. It is an examination of the effectiveness of the city’s incentive zoning program as well (NYC Planning, 2014). The research fully investigated every privately owned public and create a profile for each one, including its site plan, size, space type, location, accessible hours, amenities, public space designer, building architects, owners, year completed, and other information like legal basis and zoning computations (Kayden, 2000). All the detailed information, findings, and conclusions of this research are compiled in the book, Privately Owned Public Space: The New York City Experience (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 2000).
Base on the study conducted by Professor Kayden, the Department of City Planning realized the failure of these spaces mainly or at least partially because of out-of-date standards, or the lack of specific rules regulating the design and management of those provided public spaces (NYC Planning, 2014). For instance, there were no requirements about seating, landscaping, exposure to natural elements like sunshine and wind in relevant regulations, not to mention details in design and materials used in construction. It did not violate the rule at all, even though the developers earned bonus floor area by simply paving around the building (APOPS). Inspired by William H. Whyte’s findings through intensive observation of public spaces in New York City, the city proposed and adopt a text amendment with enhanced design and operational standards for a privately owned public place was in 2007 (NYC Planning, 2014. In 2009, a follow-up amendment was introduced and adopt to improve the 2007 text so that more successful high-quality public places can be developed (NYC Planning, 2014).
Kayden also gave following suggestion to change the situation of those privately owned public spaces: First, improve existing spaces in particularly bad condition by deploying more qualitative and discretionary order; and the second, propose the enforcement to confirm that spaces created in exchange for city’s grants of additional floor areas actually function as they are meant to. While these strategies could lead to the enhanced utilization of privately owned public spaces, he also points out policy implications related to their location. The allocations of POPOS should be implemented comprehensively rather than discretely, to sharpen their role in achieving fair and effective distribution of public spaces throughout the city. To award larger incentives is another recommendation for attracting developers to build POPOS in neighborhoods with insufficient amenity resources (Kayden, 2005).
The future research of privately owned public spaces in New York City are going on. In 2010, Schmidt, Nemeth and Botsford find the mid-1970s reformed regulation encourage more uses of those public places because of its introduction of design features and signage; On the other hand, it discourages uses by more subjective rules and restrictions of accessibility. A paper published in 2014, “Are They Well Situated? Spatial Analysis of Privately Owned Public Space, Manhattan, New York City” concludes that privately owned public spaces in NYC make it more possible for users to reach a public space within five minutes of walking distance, distribute public spaces more evenly, and ease the access to public spaces for workers and tourists. To ensure better public use of privately owned public spaces in New York City, Professor Kayden established a website, named Advocates for Privately Owned Public Space, where to find the electronic database with detailed basic information of each POPS and all newest relevant news and announcement, where to report any POPS issues and propose programs and (re)design solutions for unsuccessful or future POPS.
3.2.3 Seattle
Since 1966, the City of Seattle has allowed developers to develop a denser project if they would build certain amenities for public, including low-income housing, public restrooms, sculptured rooftops, and public open space of different sorts. However, this program had not made all places genuine public because of the vague requirement in rules. It simply states that the public spaces built by developers to get the bonus floor area should be “accessible to the public at all times.” This caused some confusions about the inclusiveness. The property owners have both the responsibility and the right to keep their spaces safe and pleasant by excluding people who behave weirdly. But does it mean the homeless people who are members of Seattleites as well don’t have the right to use these public spaces? Would people be forbidden to have protesting activities in these public spaces? “How far does this power of exclusion go?” To make the rule clearer and avoid intentional or unintentional exclusion in these public spaces, a much more detailed statement is added in the revised “Downtown Amenity Standards”:
“Bonused public spaces are provided for public use and enjoyment. They should be easily recognized as available for use by the general public, and they generally should be as accessible to the public as publicly provided open space. Within these spaces, property owners, tenants and their agents shall allow individuals to engage in activities allowed in the public sidewalk environment, except that those activities that would require a street use permit if conducted on the sidewalk may be excluded or restricted. Free speech activities such as hand billing, signature gathering, and holding signs, all without obstructing access to the space, the building, or other adjacent features, and without unreasonably interfering with the enjoyment of the space by others, shall be allowed. While engaged in allowed activities members of the public may not be asked to leave for any reason other than conduct that unreasonably interferes with the enjoyment of the space by others.” (Licata, 2006)
In 2001, MAKERS architecture and urban design conducted a research and prepared a report, “Downtown Open Space Evaluation”, for the Strategic Planning office to show the performance of existing open spaces (Licata, 2006). The method used was primarily site observations and quantitative analysis. It summarized a catalog of detailed information of existing open spaces in Downtown Urban Center, including photographs, site descriptions, overall performance, and influences on the pedestrian environment and surrounding development, visibility, accessibility, and maintenance (MAKERS, 2001, Pi). The performance of privately owned public spaces, namely spaces created by zoning incentives, was not that desirable. Many of them were not well connected to sidewalk, adjacent buildings or surrounding environment. A few were even isolated from streets and provided no pedestrian benefit. Arcade spaces were the worst. Nearly all arcade spaces are cold, dark, and uncomfortable because of the lack of sunlight. For those a few successful ones, they were usually with good visibility, a lot of pedestrian passing through, and surrounded by retail stores (MAKERS, 2001, P32).
To raise awareness and improve the visibility of privately owned public spaces, in 2007, the Department of Planning and Development published a logo (Figure 2) and forced all owners of these spaces to equip signs with this logo to inform the public that these places were public amenities and everyone have the right to use them. Up to now, there are twenty-six privately owned public spaces in the downtown area of Seattle (Licata, 2006). Their locations can be found on the interactive map on the website of the Department of Planning and Development. There is another online resource for the public to learn more about these spaces. Catherine “Didi” Anstett creates an online photography gallery in SmugMug. Those high-resolution photos show design elements and artwork inside every twenty-six places from various angles.
3.2.3 San Francisco
Although more than 250,000 people are living and working in San Francisco’s downtown office districts, the only public provided and managed spaces are five benches and ledges in Mechanics Plaza and the sitting ledges near to the entrance of a BART station, besides other large public parks on the margins of that area. Most open spaces there are the sixty-eight privately owned public spaces, forty-five of which were created before 1985. Prior to 1985, developers would create privately owned public spaces in their sites under three conditions: “voluntarily, in exchange for a density bonus, or as a condition of approval.” (SPUR, 2009)
Unlike the other two cities, San Francisco no longer offers any incentive programs after the 1985 Downtown Plan is adopted. It requires that each project in C-3 Districts should include publicly accessible open spaces, in order to “provide in the downtown quality open space in sufficient quantity and variety to meet the needs of downtown workers, residents and visitors.” Learning from the insufficiency of former unspecific regulations, the Planning Department made the requirements for privately owned public spaces more specific. The area of an established public space should be at least 1/50 of occupied office space. The form of public spaces can be plazas, urban parks, greenhouses, urban gardens, view or sun terraces, atriums, indoor parks, snippets, and public sitting areas (SPUR, 2009). It also required that each space should:
“Be of adequate size;
Be situated in such locations and provide such ingress and egress as will make the area easily accessible to the general public;
Be well designed, and landscaped where appropriate;
Be protected from uncomfortable wind;
Incorporate various features that will enhance public use of the area, including ample seating and, if appropriate, access to food service;
Have adequate access to sunlight if this is appropriate to the type of area;
Be well-lit if the area requires artificial illumination;
Be open to the public at times when it is reasonable to expect substantial public use;
Be designed to enhance user safety and security;
Provide toilet facilities open to the public if the open space is on private property;
Have at least 75 percent of the total approved open space open to the public during all daylight hours.” (SEC.138 Privately Owned Public Open Space Requirements in C-3 Districts, 2009)
In 2009, an evaluation of all existing privately owned public spaces in the office district of San Francisco was conducted by the San Francisco Planning and Urban Renewal Association (SPUR). Methods used in this evaluation included multiple site visits, the quality comparison of POPOS build prior to and after the adoption of the Downtown Plan, and an examination of how well existing POPOS meet the 1985 Downtown Plan design guidelines. In general, all these spaces are distributed evenly over the office district. Twenty-seven are located in the north of Market and seven are on the Market Street while thirty four are on the south of Market. However, comparing to ones built before 1985, those created after 1985 are with higher quality, one-quarter of which are impressively enjoyable. In terms of the forty-five pre-1985 spaces, 50% of them fulfill or approximate Downtown Plan standards after being made a few improvements; while only 17% are of poor design and not publicly use friendly (SPUR, 2009).
In the end, SPUR concluded fourteen recommendations for improving existing privately owned public spaces and ensuring the successes of future ones. Eight of fourteen recommendations focus on improvements to existing POPS, such as improving signage, more specific requirements for public restrooms, amounts and styles of seating, creation of detailed design guidelines, establishing a nonprofit entity to help with management of POPS, and forming a code of conduct to avoid inappropriate activities. Another six recommendations are proposed to make the development of new POPS more attractive and comfortable to users, such as enhancing the requirements for landscaping and ecological functionality, expanding the types of POPS, increasing the publicly accessibility after work-hour, strengthening connections to the rooftop park, and adding requirement for open spaces in downtown residential dwelling units(SPUR, 2009).