Designing Public Spaces for All

The urban public spaces, as spaces where the social nature of human beings can be expressed, are concurrent to the notion of City/Polis itself. Public spaces are where social interaction, commercial activity, recreation and even political expression take place. This has been so for many centuries. It is not a coincidence then that any kind of societal change affects the design of urban public space or that public space design influences the societal structure and behaviour of people.

This relationship between design of the public realm and behaviour of people is an ongoing one. The 21st century is the most urbanised century of humanity and has also brought extreme challenges to the global urban population: natural disasters, financial stress and inequality, immigration etc. All these challenges will deeply affect the character of urban space. The question that arises here is how social problems can be addressed by imposing changes onto the character of urban, public space and how the local population can be involved in the process. Can inhabitants initiate change in a successful way? Some examples from Europe can help us understand how easily this can be done.

‘Estonoesunsolar’, Zaragoza

The city of Zaragoza in Spain experienced 21st century challenges: the combined forces of the fading industrial power of the city and the global financial crisis of 2008 had a strong impact on the local population. After 2008, the unemployment rate radically increased and social relations were disrupted on many levels. That was the moment when local authorities and architects decided to combine forces in order to reverse the loss of social cohesion by intervening in the urban, public and private space. An analysis of the urban tissue of Zaragoza showed that there were numerous vacant public and private plots, disrupting the normal functioning of the city. The design team interpreted these empty plots as areas that destroy the coherence of the city. 

The assumption of the designers was that a city could only function well when it has a continuous narrative for its users.

The proposed solution was the ‘estonoesunsolar’, meaning ‘this is not an empty site’, programme. Firstly, the local authorities hired a few dozen people to clean the abandoned, empty plots of the city. Later, a team of architects extended the idea and proposed to redesign the emptied plots. Together with the municipal services and the architects, more than 60 citizen associations, neighbourhood groups, community organisations and citizens were involved in a creative process, which encompassed the whole design and implementation phase of each selected spot. Through the programme, a series of new urban spaces were introduced targeting different age groups and different social groups. The empty sites were transformed into urban gardens, green spaces, playgrounds, street bowling areas for older people, an all-ages game centre and gathering spaces. The diverse uses implemented within the different spots reflected the needs of the local population: recreation and educational uses, such as dance classes, architecture workshops for children as well as horticulture programmes for adults.

The effect of this initiative was manifold. The unemployment rate dropped while the city acquired and cleaned the vital urban spaces. By adding design qualities to the unused plots, the urban tissue became stronger and added a new range of uses, qualities and experiences to the city. Additionally, the estonoesunsolar team made spoke extensively to the local people to determine existing community needs before embarking on the design process. The programme was such a success that it has now been expanded to more city areas.

Zeeheldentuin, The Hague

While estonoesunsolar in Zaragoza is a good example of how interventions in the urban tissue of a city with a problematic structure can be extremely effective, other examples in cities with fewer social problems and a well-organised, state-oriented public realm design policy also shows that city dwellers often recognise the importance of public space and try to optimise it according to their everyday needs. As is the case with Zeeheldentuin, very close to the city centre of The Hague in the Netherlands.

In the Zeeheldenkwartier, a comparatively wealthy neighbourhood of the city, the old Maria-School was destroyed in 2006 by a fire leaving only ruins within a fenced plot. The efforts to convert the remains of the building plot into social housing units were not successful and so people living in the surrounding area decided to take action and claim this space in order to fulfill their needs for more public space. A group of volunteers consisting of designers, artists, botanists and citizens together with the local landscape consultants DGJ formed a Foundation, and through an open, participatory process they managed to design and find sponsors to construct a very successful mini park central in the neighbourhood.

What makes Zeeheldentuin unique is that due to the participation of many locals and the wide representation of social groups within the design team, several different uses were combined in the garden. A wilderness playground for children, a flower garden, an open play field, vegetable and collaborative gardens, a fruit orchard and a lounge, all fitted perfectly within the limited space available. The creation of the garden had a huge social impact in the neighbourhood. The board of the mini-park initiated co-operation with local daycare facilities for children and the elderly. The former school was transformed into new housing units, increasing the social occupancy of the place. In the present situation, different social groups co-exist all day long in the garden in a harmonious manner. The project has received several local awards including the European Green Infrastructure Award 2015.

Zeeheldentuin is a good example of how people’s willpower can drive the transformation of public spaces, but we should keep in mind that this happened in The Hague, in a country where the state has created the legislative context for such moves and with plenty of experience from past years.

Navarinou Park, Athens

While in some countries similar state or municipal-oriented programmes are common, the question remains whether initiatives such as the Zeeheldentuin are possible in cases where the authorities do not have the financial or executional power to start and support such initiatives. A perfect example is to be found in Athens, the city that was hit most severely by a combination of two types of crises, the global financial crisis and the refugee crisis.

Athens, in Greece, a city of approximately 4 million inhabitants, has faced several problems for decades. The rapid urbanisation of the city, which followed the establishment of the Greek state in the 1830s led to degeneration of the urban tissue. And the complicated building regulations, which came in force after World War II created an almost inhuman urban landscape. The problems in the city centre of Athens were exacerbated after the 1990s, when poor immigrants and refugees started renting cheap, empty apartments in the city centre abandoned by Greeks who had moved to the outskirts of the city. Because of this, the state and locals neglected the urban space. It was a period when the necessary and hard-to-find public space of the city centre of Athens was ignored by its owners.

The image of this part of the city is one of massive, dense, derelict concrete structures, an absence of green spaces and an abundance of empty plots and dirty fields looking like they did not belong to anybody, but in anticipation of becoming a building someday.

In Exarchia, a very vibrant sub-area of the city centre of Athens, where political and artistic movements have always flourished, locals decided to create a neighbourhood park on an empty plot between multi-storey buildings that was being used as a parking lot. The plans by the city to transform the same plot into a multi-storey parking garage were blocked by the movement started by the locals.

The idea of making a new green oasis became the reason for locals, immigrants and visitors to band together and fight for their public space. Without any structure or help from the state or the municipality, even without the existence of any relevant legislation, the neighbourhood managed to organise themselves to create the ideal public space designed for their specific needs. Together, locals and foreigners, children and adults, people living there for ages and newcomers, managed to achieve the desired result. 

The park itself, the design of which occurred by involving many different people with different backgrounds without any central control, is very innovative within the Greek public space design context. Even though it is not an official park with legal validation, but rather an occupied plot, it has high quality vegetation and hosts uses for people of different ethnic backgrounds, ages and social or educational levels: a playground, an open-air cinema, vegetable gardens and meeting points.

Interestingly, after the completion of the park the people involved in the creation of the park formed an assembly that meets weekly in order to manage its maintenance. The park has been beneficial in many ways: people started using the public realm again, the area became safer and locals cooperated and met one another in the newly designed park.  

Because of the unique social structure that created the park and the absence of any central control, Navarinou Park is continually evolving as per people’s needs. 

Recently, a new segment of the park with organic agriculture opened. A compost production area is planned in order to reduce waste in the neighbourhood and also to provide the park with natural fertilisers. The park can be seen as a constantly changing open, urban lab, which everyone can be a part of.

Kerckebosch, Zeist

The above examples are all relatively small interventions, where pockets of public realm were recreated to be all-inclusive. There are, however, also examples where larger urban areas have been redeveloped to be more inclusive. An example of this is Kerckebosch Housing Estate on the outskirts of Zeist, in the Netherlands.

Kerckebosch, designed in the 1950s as a social housing estate for low-income families had approximately 700 housing units surrounding a centrally located forested area. At the beginning of this century, the buildings and the public realm, which were both showing signs of wear and tear, were due for a major renovation. Neglect of the forests within the estate had resulted in dense vegetation, which was unsafe, unattractive and impenetrable. Also, the concentration of low-income families had resulted in a neighbourhood with a one-sided social structure and relatively high unemployment rates. In 2005 the housing corporation and the owner of the estate joined forces with the local council and took the radical decision to demolish almost all the social housing and build new housing to cater to a wider range of incomes. The Rotterdam studio of the international design consultancy firm, BDP, was commissioned to design an urban vision for the new neighbourhood. The theme ‘Living in the Forest for Everyone’ was coined as the design motto for the urban vision.

Through the vision, a more diverse and inclusive neighbourhood was proposed. Homes for families and single urbanites, social housing for low-income families and privately-owned homes for high income families, special care homes for the elderly and a home for mentally challenged people were proposed. A new, centrally located ‘Multifunctional Accommodation’ housing a health-centre, a music school, a small sports centre and a café where residents could meet, was proposed at the heart of the scheme. The existing cluster of schools in the neighbourhood was redesigned as a ‘school campus’ – accessible and open for all. In the vision, the forest weaves through the neighbourhood to maximise access to the forest. The vision proposed to limit the size and number of private gardens – the idea being that the forest, which belongs to everyone, is a large collective ‘garden’ for all and forms the primary space where the inhabitants, with their diverse backgrounds, will meet.

The ‘interactive neighbourhood’ idea was carried further by the design consultancy company Wurck, a Rotterdam-based design firm, which was responsible for the design of the public realm of Kerckebosch. Wurck made the forest more accessible by designing an intricate network of footpaths, which carefully avoid the trees and link the different built clusters together. Parts of the forest have been opened up to bring back the indigenous heather-plants and to create vistas. Felled trees are reused in the public realm as playing objects or informal seating areas. A new unfenced central playground has been designed between the schools, to be used by children from the neighbourhood after school hours. A public outdoor Calisthenics exercise park has opened next to the Multifunctional Accommodation for the use of sports-fanatics. 

The new Energy Plaza, with its own WiFi- hotspot, caters to the needs of teenagers (and the young at heart). A feeling of ownership of the public space was developed among residents by actively involving them in the design process through public consultation sessions and involving them in activities such as Tree Planting Days and Neighbourhood Nature Days when forest maintenance takes place. This has contributed greatly to the success of the neighbourhood because residents take pride in ‘their’ forest and thus treat it with respect.

Conclusion

Public Spaces should be open, free, democratic and accessible for everyone and cater to the needs of all. These case studies show examples of inclusive public spaces that are used by people of different ages and backgrounds. A common thread in all these examples, whether they are own-initiatives or organised developments, is the direct involvement of the users in the design and execution of the spaces. In this it is important that the input and the opinions of the participants bear equal weight in the design process. One could conclude that the active involvement of the end users in the design of the public space is a prerequisite for public spaces to be enjoyed by everyone.