Life Between Buildings: Using Public Space

In connection with the effort to give the positive processes a chance, it is important to note that life between buildings, the people and events that can be observed in a given space, is a product of number and duration of the individual events. It is not the number of people or events, but rather the number of minutes spent outdoors that is impor

The Danish cooperative housing project Tinggården [49], consisting of eighty rental housing units built in 1978, is an example of a building complex in which planners carefully considered both social and physical structure. The goal was to get processes and project to work together. Planning was a joint venture of the future residents and the archi

Even when well-developed systems of parks and pedestrian routes are available, children of all ages spend most of their time outdoors in or alongside the access roads. (Survey of children’s play habits in single-family house areas in Denmark [29]).

Benches that provide a good view of surrounding activities are used more than benches with less or no view of others. An investigation of Tivoli Garden in Copenhagen [36], carried out by the architect John Lyle, shows that the most used benches are along the garden’s main path, where there is a good view of the particularly active areas, while the

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Frequent meetings in connection with daily activities increase chances of developing contacts with neighbors, a fact noted in many surveys. With frequent meetings friendships and the contact network are maintained in a far simpler and less demanding way than if friendship must be kept up by telephone and invitation. If this is the case, it is often

If activity between buildings is missing, the lower end of the contact scale also disappears. The varied transitional forms between being alone and being together have disappeared. The boundaries between isolation and contact become sharper – people are either alone or else with others on a relatively demanding and exacting level. Life between buil

It is important that all meaningful social activities, intense experiences, conversations, and caresses take place when people are standing, sitting, lying down, or walking. One can catch a brief glimpse of others from a car or from a train window, but life takes place on foot. Only “on foot” does a situation function as a meaningful opportunity fo

The area that the individual perceives as belonging to the dwelling, the residential environment, can extend well beyond the actual dwelling.

Different kinds of social activities occur in many places: in dwellings; in private outdoor spaces, gardens, and balconies; in public buildings; at places of work; and so on; but in this context only those activities that occur in publicly accessible spaces are examined. These activities could also be termed “resultant” activities, because in nearl