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Searching... | 32070000000514 | HT166 G44 2013 | Open Access Book | Book | Searching... |
Searching... | 30000010340173 | HT166 G44 2013 | Open Access Book | Book | Searching... |
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Summary
Summary
How do we accommodate a growing urban population in a way that is sustainable, equitable, and inviting? This question is becoming increasingly urgent to answer as we face diminishing fossil-fuel resources and the effects of a changing climate while global cities continue to compete to be the most vibrant centers of culture, knowledge, and finance.
Jan Gehl has been examining this question since the 1960s, when few urban designers or planners were thinking about designing cities for people. But given the unpredictable, complex and ephemeral nature of life in cities, how can we best design public infrastructure--vital to cities for getting from place to place, or staying in place--for human use? Studying city life and understanding the factors that encourage or discourage use is the key to designing inviting public space.
In How to Study Public Life Jan Gehl and Birgitte Svarre draw from their combined experience of over 50 years to provide a history of public-life study as well as methods and tools necessary to recapture city life as an important planning dimension.
This type of systematic study began in earnest in the 1960s, when several researchers and journalists on different continents criticized urban planning for having forgotten life in the city. City life studies provide knowledge about human behavior in the built environment in an attempt to put it on an equal footing with knowledge about urban elements such as buildings and transport systems. Studies can be used as input in the decision-making process, as part of overall planning, or in designing individual projects such as streets, squares or parks. The original goal is still the goal today: to recapture city life as an important planning dimension. Anyone interested in improving city life will find inspiration, tools, and examples in this invaluable guide.
Author Notes
Jan Gehl is a founding partner of Gehl Architects--Urban Quality Consultants. He is the author of Life Between Buildings and Cities for People . He has received numerous awards for his work and is widely credited with creating and renewing urban spaces in cities around the world, including Copenhagen, Melbourne, New York City, London, and many others.
Birgitte Bundesen Svarre holds an MA in modern culture from the University of Copenhagen and a PhD from the School of Architecture in Copenhagen. She is part of Gehl Institute, the division at Gehl Architects that works with research and communication of knowledge at workshops for city planners, politicians and others with interest in life in the cities - as well as suburbs, a topic she has specialized within. She is a guest lecturer at various universities.
Reviews 1
Choice Review
This is an excellent primer on how to "recapture public life" as an important dimension in the design of vibrant, pedestrian-friendly city spaces. Gehl and Svarre (both, Gehl Architects) offer fine-grained guidance on the range of behaviors to observe, tools to employ for observing and documenting, and the types of life-enhancing design solutions generated from interpretation of collected data. For each method, the authors cite specific studies from projects completed in major cities across the globe over the last 50 years, illustrated with clear and lively exemplars of effective graphic communication. At the book's core is a useful distillation of the history of public life studies. Readers will find discussion of the work of such pioneers as Jane Jacobs, William H. Whyte, Donald Appleyard, and architect/urban designer Gehl himself. Gehl's applied work as a planner in Copenhagen, and as principal of a global consulting firm, provides the basis for the book's how-to sections, with case studies drawn largely from his previous publications. These include Life between Buildings (CH, Dec'87) and Cities for People (CH, Apr'11, 48-4292). This is an important book for architecture and design programs at all levels. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Lower-level undergraduates and above; general readers. K. S. Edwards Clemson University
