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part, certainly in the American South, this preference
for a large number of trees in urban settings is climatic;
trees play a vital role in providing much-needed sum-
mer shade (see Figure 6.9). Europeans tend to distin-
guish squares and plazas as ‘hardscape’ areas distinct
from urban parks, which are green oases in the city. 
It is not easy to imagine a public square in Arezzo, or
the Piazza Navona in Rome dotted with trees. In these
situations, the edges of the buildings, lined with steps,
arcades or outdoor cafés with umbrellas provide suffi-
cient softening and scale to the formality and hardness
of the pedestrian environment (see Figure 6.10).
William H. Whyte’s classic analysis of 
The Social Life
of Small Urban Spaces
(1980) explains the basic princi-
ples of plaza design with elegant simplicity. This slim
CHAPTER SIX
●
URBAN DESIGN IN THE REAL WORLD
133
Figure 6.8
Victoria Square, Birmingham, UK.
Public art and fountains are integral elements of this
important and attractive and well-used public
square.
Figure 6.9
Urban square in Savannah, Georgia. One
of twenty-one surviving squares from James
Oglethorpe’s original 1735 town plan, this delightful
mini-park epitomizes the urban shade generated by
the native evergreen live oak trees in the hot and
humid American South. The lush planting, however,
was a Victorian development. Originally the squares
were hard surfaced for everyday urban uses,
including drilling the town’s militia.
Figures 6.6 and 6.7
Ashburton ‘Bull Ring,’ Devon. These two views of the same urban space illustrate the
markedly different spatial character derived from open and closed views. The open view, on the left, pulls the
viewer onwards, while the closed view, on the right, suggests a destination. The name ‘Bull Ring’ owes its origin
to the cruel practice of baiting bulls (and bears) during the medieval fairs held in this location.
6.6
6.7
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volume is a massive indictment of blank walls, bare
concrete paving and barren open space and provides a
compendium of good details about intimate scale, mul-
tiple places to sit, and habitable edges as places to meet
and watch the passing urban theater. Ultimately, the
design of the edges of the space and its location are
more important than whether it has trees or not.
British attitudes to nature in the city, predictably,
fall somewhere between the American and European
extremes. On the one hand, a public space like
Covent Garden (see Figure 6.11) follows continental
European precedent – not surprisingly as Inigo Jones
designed it in 1631 based on an Italian model, the
piazza at Livorno. On the other hand, the green
squares of London, although originally hardscaped,
now integrate nature into the city in a way that is far
more comfortable to American sensibilities (see
Figure 6.12).
Historically, American cities have included few
urban squares in their plans, although Philadelphia
and Savannah (see Figure 6.9) are two notable excep-
tions. Whereas Italian cities, for example, are best
known for their public piazzas, London by its tree-
filled urban squares, the iconic American urban
space, as we have noted before, is the street. The
commercial typology is the classic ‘Main Street’ lined
with stores, wide sidewalks and on-street parking (see
Figure 6.13). Its residential equivalent is ‘Elm Street’
(or a similar tree name) which can be found in the
older residential quarters of almost every American
town (see Figure 6.14). This focus on streets as the
primary type of public space in America partly
explains the emphasis on proper street design typical
of New Urbanism, for without a street design that
encourages and enhances walking in residential
neighborhoods and mixed-use commercial districts,
DESIGN FIRST: DESIGN-BASED PLANNING FOR COMMUNITIES