Social Life of Small Urban Spaces

To start again, I'm using a reference book.




It is a by-product of first-hand observation of city spaces, of New York public spaces. It was done in 1970 by the group The Street Life Project formed by William H. Whyte.




It has been very interesting to see how direct observation, that is mainly for "living", is here a great research tool.

1. Make Maps of the spaces to analyze
2. Count the people in the space: Activity, time of the day, Weather,...
3. The patterns concluded:
Diversity of Activity: lovers, "just standing there", talking, seating, eating,... The number one of the activity is : "people looking at other people", which being a NYC lover like me seems very reasonable.
Sociability: proportions in numbers in groups: 2,3,... They've noticed that a busy place can be the best place to be alone.

Linking physical feature to social patterns:

Defining the architectural design settings that permits different kind of social activity: playing in the pond, seating in the stairs,... and block the traffic but in a friendly kind of congestion...
Defining the social uses in different small spaces: the intersection bulbs, middle of the sidewalk...

Some of the inminent finding is that some of the well design details thought for serving a specific purpose are used in an unexpected way whenever they come to life.
This video is a good reason for revising public designs after some years, and learn about the analysis of those unexpected uses to conclude social patterns. It a fresh piece of research to understand what the way people occupy space, and get a sense of the importance of not just the shape or size of urban open spaces, but also how it functions and where it is.


more info:
www.pps.org/info/amenities_bb/Water_Features

public art Matrix

Coming back to work.
Have to explain all the new discovers...



This matrix is related with the list of purposes that I think Public Art can have in the urban context.
(Starting point in this link http://columbusavenuesfo.blogspot.com/2008/07/importance-of-art-in-urban-design.html)

It is related with specific urban design goals that I wrote down for the thesis site: Columbus Avenue.
It also relates the appearance of art during the urban design process. The timing, the phasing of those new artful tools that I want to incorporate in a new way of doing Urban Design is one of the biggest issues addressed in this thesis. Having examples of the types of Art that can accomplish those purposes is essential to associate the purposes with the existent public space.


PD: Click in the picture to see a better resolution.

a month is too much...
I will come back starting tomorrow with an update of the improvements of my thesis in this lat month until my final presentation on august 26th.
thanks for staying there!

Great places of America. NEIGHBORHOODS

Copy fron the article:
http://www.planning.org/greatplaces/neighborhoods/northbeach.htm

Authentic Character Is Intact 150 Years Later
This thriving, European-style neighborhood — nestled in a sunny, wind-protected valley between San Francisco's financial district, Chinatown, and Russian and Telegraph Hills — has evolved into one of the city's most unique and authentic communities. North Beach, with the help of planning and zoning tools, has managed to preserve its essential character: a mix of tolerance and tradition in both its built and social environments.
Designated one of the American Planning Association's top 10 Great Neighborhoods for 2007, North Beach attained international repute in the 1950s as the genesis of the Beat Generation. While it remains a popular pilgrimage destination for former beatniks, the neighborhood is anything but a relic. Its eclectic mix of mom-and-pop shops, nightclubs, and polyglot character make it a favorite among residents and tourists alike.
North Beach is, in many ways, a traditional neighborhood. It's rarely more than a few blocks walk to find a grocer, bakery, barber shop, hardware store, church, school or park. What cannot be found in the neighborhood are chain stores and fast-food outlets. And that's by design.
As early as the 1980s, the city placed controls on the type and scale of commercial uses as a way to help protect North Beach's identity. The idea was to promote homegrown businesses and discourage chains and franchises by including in local regulations descriptions of how North Beach businesses could operate. To further dissuade chain stores, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors voted in 2005 to ban retailers with more than 11 stores from locating in the neighborhood.
North Beach's identity has been formed over a century or more. Settled in the 1850s, the area's first residents were middle-class Americans. Thirty years later, two-thirds were immigrants, mostly from Ireland, Germany, and France. By 1939, more than 60,000 Italians had moved to this square-mile neighborhood, earning it the nickname of Little Italy. The streets were lined with Italian restaurants, shops, and social clubs. Tourists frequented the area, drawn by the quality and affordability of the local cuisine.
With the 1950s came an influx of beatniks who filled jazz clubs, coffee houses, and esoteric bookstores. Nightclubs along Broadway hosted top entertainers. Today you can find boutique shops and restaurants mixed in with dance clubs and risque venues, making North Beach a neighborhood of contrasts and one of the liveliest parts of town.
Part of North Beach's appeal stems from restrictions on building heights and billboards that were prompted by neighborhood associations and implemented in the 1980s. Today, historic landmarks such as Coit Tower are visible; no skyscrapers block the view. Washington Square, the neighborhood's central open space, is a place for morning Tai Chi classes, dog walking, sky gazing, and several annual festivals.
Affordability — both residential and commercial — remains an issue in North Beach. Roughly 60 percent of the housing stock is rent controlled. An inclusionary housing program requires that new developments set aside a certain percentage of units as affordable. For example, the 341-unit North Beach Place apartments, which replaced crumbling 1950s mid-rises, opened to acclaim in 2004. This mixed-use project contains 34,000 feet of street level retail and a mix of residential units: public housing, low- and moderate-income, and senior citizen.
What truly makes North Beach unique are the people who live there. If they are left behind by the market, so, too, is the character that a century of effort has kept in place.

a Fork Forked by Forkes
in Washington Square.

Citas/ Quotes

“La ciudad no es tal, sin sus ciudadanos unidos”
Francesco Di Giordio Martini 1482

“La ciudad es una obra de arte consciente, y continua, que incluye muchas formas de arte más simples y más personales. La mente adquiere forma en las ciudades y, a su vez, las formas urbanas condicionan la mente. El espacio, lo mismo que el tiempo, se reorganiza artísticamente en las ciudades.” _
Lewis Mumford 1938

sugerencias

I don’t know where to locate this, and how to integrate it in my thesis, but it is very encouraging to find this type of sentences in great professor’s blogs.

"(...) Thomas Mann worried about the responsibility of the artist and the intellectual in preserving notions of beauty and truth. (...) we are neglecting the life affirming role of art and culture in building human dignity and freedom. He feels we must be willing to draw on the well of Spinoza, Socrates and the classics to heal the wounds of the present."

(...) where Sir Ken Robinson held forth on the state of today’s public schools, drawing on his book Out of Our Minds:Learning to be Creative. Robinson’s main thesis follows the lines of our esteemed colleague Hugo–that K-12 Education, built on the industrial model, completely suppresses creativity in our students. (...)

I understand we will need a lot more engineers and scientists in the next few years, but in our rush to remake our school system, we cannot forget that it is art and the humanities that teach us how to creatively live our lives to the fullest."

http://jtaplin.wordpress.com/2008/07/06/creativity-the-humanities/

It might not be immediately related to my thesis but it's the kind of reading that makes me move on forward. It's called motivation, no? The font doesn't really matter...

The importance of Art in Urban Design

The title of the thesis is ”The collaborative use of Public Art and Urban Design in infrastructural projects to enhance culture in the public realm”. So I better Stara… manos a la obra…

Yesterday (26^th June 2008) when I presented in the review, I started saying why I think it is important using Public Art as a tool for Urban Design. And why so, it will be more important to talk about the timeline of the Urban Design process, how and when include art, or the artist in the process.

LEGIBILITY OF THE URBAN CONTEXT in all its complexity.

Makes people be aware of their surrounding circumstances. Invite them to reflection. Critical contribution to society. Refresh people’s life from their tedious routines. (they have things to talk about! It’s amazing to hear a boring person talk about something that has happen to them in the street and you realize that YES they have gestures!)

· Physical

· Social

· Cultural

· Political

· Economical

VITALITY:

The capacity of art to be an attraction to the public, to create vibrant spaces, and experiences.

· Economical: Art generate value of the land. This relates to gentrification. It becomes an economic attraction.

· Social: The capacity of art to create vibrant spaces and memorable experiences (of any kind, and in either way; being the cause or the consequence).

MEMORY:

It is a tool that creates a collective memory, or talks about it. Memory can be the cause or the consequence of the art. The individual memory might be most difficult to detect, to register, to evaluate but it is no doubt an important and interesting element. How art (and the city) affects the everyday reality…

It can also be use to map, identify, find the historical interest in the district. It could be a good tool for Preservation of the District, not only in physical terms, but also in a more narrative sense, as a good storyteller of the district, as a good “measurement” of memory.

IDENTITY:

Art can gather broad communities together. Can create a cultural space where people come together to look at issues in different ways.

It helps create a dialogue along the process.

“Art is a potent tool of communication, and communication can cross all sorts of boundaries” (Tom Finkelpearl)

“Cualquier obra de arte importante puede considerarse como un acontecimiento histórico o como una esforzada solución de algún problema. Es irrelevante ahora si el acontecimiento fue original o convencional, accidental o voluntario, torpe o hábil. La cuestión importante es que cualquier solución señala la existencia de algún problema para el que han existido otras soluciones, y que es muy probable que se inventen otras soluciones para este mismo problema. Conforme las soluciones se acumulan, el problema se modifica. De todas maneras, la cadena de soluciones revela el problema”

G.Kubler “La configuración del tiempo. Observaciones sobre la historia de las cosas, Madrid, Nerea, 1988 (ed.orig. 1962). P91

“Any important artwork can be considered as an historical event or like a challenged solution to a problem. It is irrelevant now if the event was original or conventional, accidental o volunteer, clumsy or agile. The question is that any solution indicates the existence of any problem for which there has been other solutions, and it is very probable that other solution will be invented for the same problem. But while solutions accumulate, problems change. Anyway, the chain of solutions revealed the problem.”

(Sorry for the bad translation)

Cooking Ideas I

Talking with Tony today (25^th June 2008) he said so many suggesting things. Some were still buzzing in my mind later in the afternoon.

I haven’t talk about the topic of my thesis yet. I haven’t written about it because, sincerely, I get lost doing it. It’s so important to me and it has been with me for so long now that it’s difficult to start it.

“Sometimes the world speaks too loud” and we need to be systematic in the way we tell things. It links with what Laura told me ones “I need a clear mind, brand new and clean.” I would love too… but it seems that I cannot, it’s not going to be easy, I can hear the world. It’s talking multiple languages, at the same time, with different voice tunes… I hear them… A lot of people do… Sometimes it’s hard to digest, sometimes it makes life better… and I will try to explain systematically what they say.

….Art and Citizen….

How Art already coexist with citizens in the street in a very spontaneous manner, in the way the world turns. So why don’t we turn around the question that comes in Urban process “When should we do the Community process?”. Why couldn’t the question be “How and when the professionals come into the frame and act, and proposed?”

A Catalogue of what is already being done on the street. A narrative of what is already happening. Doing a focused set of examples will help, as Gertrude Stein said “description is explanation”.

I need a method that doesn’t increased burocracy. A more organic method that doesn’t include paperwork in front of an institutional window. We need the human touch…. (I cannot let it be too conceptual…)

This has to do with improvisation, with the way we program things. Everybody that has work in our discipline, or maybe that has work, knows that we have to know how to improvised solutions to problems in minutes in the construction… One day, in Bermeo a port on the gulf of Vizcaya we woke up with a 9meter whale dead in the side of the construction. It had to lay down in the main construction area for 24 hours until we decided with the mayor to preserve it and finally make a space for her in the waterfront and program a maritime museum use to install the intact bones when it will be built. The project is a-waiting-for-state-money to get started. The whale is waiting for the money to rest in peace in the main hall of our project too….

Why everybody is so scared at what is going to be, at what is going to happen, why not “program the unexpected”. It’s my gestalt. How to do it? Maybe everything follows that process, but I’m thinking about doing it deliberately. Architecture has a lot to do about control, but we have to know where we don’t have to control. (I’m sure this was inspired by Tony)

Yona Friedman Illustration

This has to do with the conversation with Peter about the nature of change. How we can know give some “easy” variables about change:

We can rate it. We can say when is going to happen, the frequency, speed and money hat has to be spent. We can measure it and give a reference in size, scale and physical dimensions. But how do we categorize the type of change, what does that mean?

I just learnt that the technical word to say might be “trade offs”. Have I understood right? But who is the master? Who decides? Who do we want to listen to? Or Do we want to listen or guide?

This is important for me, but right now. I just want to go to bed.

Buenas noches!

PD:
I once read “the anticipation makes the food tastes better”.

We can anticipate, we can predict, but let it cook !!!!

Karlos Arguiñano. The best basque cooker.

Sol y Sombra

After a walk around Washington Square on a really sunny and hot day...20th june 2008...

Today I’ve been thinking of a new categorization of users in public parks:

The shaders, and the sunners.

The shaders will find a shade, cool or remotely darker space in the desert. They will almost be consider as photophobic. You don’t whether they had a sun-trauma, sensible skin, sun panic, they don’t have sunglasses or they just don’t like to frown.(I’m not obviously part of that group).

The sunners are considered the foolish irresponsible souls that expose themselves to skin cancer and other sun diseases. People never think that they might have taken a sunscreen bath or they are the missing link of a Mesozoic reptile and they need the high temperature to warm up their blood.

They normally wait for any occasion to interact with Lorenzo (Spanish name for the sun).

Who are those users?

The shaders: Elder people. Hairy-Dog owners (not the cruel ones). Big consensus reached mixed groups of shaders and sunners. Eaters (that don’t like melting ingredients). Readers (that don’t like to frown). Homeless. Working out persons.

The sunners: Young people. Elder leathery people. Laying down attitude. Time consuming (non)activity.

Those 2 groups coexist “normally” (without social problems or bloody quarrels).They are not confronted. The exemption comes if 2 different users are in a relationship. That’s when you can see couples traveling along shades divided by a perfect delineated line on the ground.

The problems appear more between the specimens of the same groups when the shaded or the sunny space is limited. This is the case of sites with extreme weather conditions (too hot, or too cold) where specimens switch and are temporary part of the-other-group. I am not considering the case for this study, it will be too variable and complex (just like humanity).

A bigger study needs to be done after just this reflection/comment. Maybe we could find out the percentage of these users in population to establish a common and equitable coefficient to calculate the shade space needed in public spaces.

"What percentage of the population is a shader? How much public shaded space is needed in this area?" would be the question, and the answer will be a number.

It will be for sure an interesting design factor, since shades moves (as the sun) along the space. "How this movement can change the ground floor?" would be the next question, and the answer will be a design.

Furia Roja

He ido a ver el partido de la Selección española contra Italia a North Beach.
Para estudiar la vitalidad...
Pues bien, HEMOS GANADO! Todo el barrio se ha quedado apagado, pero hoy no importa.

¡¡Força Azzurri!!

PD: que conste que el fútbol me da igual.

First Step: Explaining the past

I came back from Spain last Thursday. Back to my Berkeley bubble, to my Berkeley mind, my thesis mind.
I've been constantly thinking what should this blog has to say. I just realized this morning that this blog it's just like me when I arrived to this side of the ocean. It appears in a scene that doesn't know, and have to explain where does it come from, what are the things that happened to it before to be whatever it is.
That is exactly what my life has been the last year and that is what this blog will have to be. It will have to explain Why this thesis statement, why this topic, why this place, why it's me to do it. Sometimes I will have to assume that you know what I'm talking about and others I will actually go back and write the story from the beginning.
Today, I'm talking about 3 things:
1. The pedestrian environment
2. Columbus Avenue Introduction
3. Central Subway Opinion/ Commitment
-will post them along the day-

Doble trabajo, pero intentar'e traducirlo todo, sin enies y sin tildes though...
Volv'i de Espania el jueves. De vuelta a mi burbuja en Berkeley. De vuelta a mi mente de Berkeley, a mi mente de tesis. Cuando no tienes una realidad familiar y social cerca, tus inquietudes personales (que con suerte son las mismas que las profesionales) se vuelven los grandes fantasmas de tu vida, lo ocupan todo. Ahora estoy constantemente pensando en lo que este blog tiene que decir.
S'olo ha sido esta maniana cuando me he dado cuenta que este blog es como yo cuando llegue a este lado del oc'eano. Ha aparecido en una escena desconocida, y tiene que explicar de donde viene, y qu'e cosas le han ocurrido antes de estar donde est'a. Esto es lo que ha sido mi vida este 'ultimo anio y lo que mi blog tendr'a que ser. Va a tener que explicar el porqu'e este enunciado de tesis, porqu'e este tema, porqu'e este lugar, y porqu'e soy yo la que la escribe. Alguna vez tendr'e que asumir que sae'is de que hablo y otras volver'a a los or'igenes y escribir'e la historia desde el principio.
Hoy, voy a hablar de 3 pensamientos:
1. El entorno peatonal.
2. Introducci'on a Columbus AVenue
3. Mi opini'on "comprometida" acerca del Central Subway Line
---a lo largo del dia----

Start from the Beginning

I just have to start....

"start always from the beginning" my father said.

So, I start a new format, a new phase.

This new space has the good things of the unknow, of the no-directed, of what gets shaped along the process.

This new space is an attempt to share my thesis, to share the doubts, references and discoveries in the way of research.

Is an attempt to open a public debate in a specific actual topic.

Is an attempt to try new participatory methods in urban processes.

Is an attempt to get all the persons related to the topic involved: citizens, professionals, institutions, specialists and thinkers...

Let's get started

.............................

Sólo tengo que empezar.

“Empieza siempre por el principio” mi padre dixit.

De esta manera, empiezo un nuevo formato, una nueva etapa.

Este nuevo espacio tiene lo bueno de lo desconocido, de lo "sin rumbo", de lo que toma forma a lo largo del proceso.

Es un intento de compartir mi tesis, de compartir la colección de dudas, referencias y descubrimientos en el camino de una investigación.

Es un intento de abrir un debate público sobre un tema concreto, de actualidad.

Es un intento de nuevos métodos de participación en los procesos urbanos.

Es un intento de involucrar a todas las personas relacionadas con el tema tratado:

ciudadanos, profesionales, instituciones, especialistas y pensadores.

Empezamos.