Urban spaces alias urban voids are spaces between buildings in cities. Broadly, they can be categorized into two categories, namely: hard urban spaces and soft urban spaces.
On the one hand, hard urban spaces entail mainly paved spatial content, and include squares, plazas, arcades, street pavements, paved walkways, pedestrianized streets, etc.
On the other hand, soft urban spaces consist mainly unpaved spatial content or what could be termed natural content with let say green grass, shrubs, trees, natural earth surfaces, etc. Soft urban spaces are also called green open spaces or simply open spaces.
Urban spaces define the horizontal urban plane of cities, on which urbanity is to the largest extent experienced. They perform crucial roles including the following.
1) Providing venues for social, economic, and other human activities 2) Enhancing spatial linkage 3) Enhancing spatial orientation 4) Aerating the city through providing channels for air circulation 5) When provided with ample vegetation especially trees, cleansing the air 6) Enhancing beauty of the city through providing, for example, vistas to scenic man-made and natural features like water bodies, mountains, monuments, etc. 7) Enhancing inclusiveness through catering for the spatial needs of all users. 8) Ensuring historic and cultural continuity
Urban spaces that can perform the above roles can therefore deliver considerable social, economic, environmental, and technical benefits to cities, hence contributing to better quality of urban life. For instance, well performing urban spaces can deliverer the following benefits to cities.
1) Can make cities livable and vibrant 2) Can attract local and even foreign investments 3) Can contribute to reduction of green house gas emissions hence enhancing sustainability 4) Can attract local and foreign tourists 5) Can support and promote walking and biking modes of transport
Capability of urban spaces to perform satisfactorily and generate associated benefits is largely determined by the types and spatial organization of their urban space treatment elements. The latter are also known as urban space outfitting or furniture, and include different types of vegetation like trees, shrubs, grass, and flowers; seating places; Lamp posts; rubbish bins; advertising boards; bus stop sheds; post office boxes; traffic sign posts; statues; Sculptures; fountains; pools; different types of floors; etc.
In some countries, particularly in the developing world, the significance of urban spaces hence the horizontal urban plane in enhancing the quality of urban life is often overlooked in favor of the vertical urban plane. In such countries urban design tend to give priority to individual buildings, leading to what could be amazing skyscrapers amidst undefined lowly maintained or neglected urban voids. To certain extent, this attitude in urban design is a result of continued embracing of urban design concepts inherent in the out-dated modern movement in architecture and town planning. The latter has been heavily castigated for non-contextualization and is being increasingly replaced with post-modern paradigms.
The video above underscores the importance of urban spaces in cities and illustrates how urban spaces can be furnished or what we like calling urban space treatment, to make them perform their roles satisfactorily. To do that, some selected good urban spaces from Stockholm region in Sweden are used as examples. Particularly urban spaces from Täby, Sollentuna, Barkarby New Town, Stockholm down town, etc. have been used. ____________________ © 2015 - 2019 Jacob Kimaryo Consultancy. All Rights Reserved
Comments