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Figure 6.11
Covent Garden, London, Inigo Jones
1631; market buildings by Charles Fowler, 1832.
This refurbished space is now the most European
(and lively) of London’s public squares, with
arcaded edges, 18-hour-a-day activity and a
complete lack of greenery (except for imported
Christmas trees).
Figure 6.12
St. James’ Square, London. Although this
handsome square is now surrounded mainly by
modern offices and nineteenth-century residences,
there are traces of some early dwellings built on this
site in the 1670s, and a couple of notable Georgian
town houses still remain. The square itself is a typical
London oasis, intimate, public and green.
Figure 6.10
Piazza Grande, Arezzo, Tuscany; Loggia
by Giorgio Vasari, 1511–74. Like many European plazas,
the Piazza Grande functions as the urban living room
for the community, the setting for informal gathering
and large communal events like the antique market.
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few Smart Growth objectives can be achieved.
Figure 10.13 illustrates a typical street design for a
commercial street that balances pedestrian priority
with car parking and circulation.
Building Façades
The second element in our design vocabulary is the
design of the building façades that enclose and define
urban space to create the sensation of an outdoor
room. This is especially crucial at the ground floor
pedestrian level. Here the entrances into the build-
ings should be obvious and they should be accessed
directly from the public space, be it a sidewalk along
a street or a plaza. The edges of an urban space should
consist wherever possible of active uses such as retail,
cafés and restaurants and high-density housing with
entrances directly off the public space, as illustrated
in Figure 6.15. These uses provide the pedestrian
traffic that energizes the space and renders it safe and
attractive. Arcades and colonnades are especially use-
ful design devices for the edges of public space. They
provide a sheltered intermediate zone that further
protects and enhances activities along the edges of
public spaces (see Figure 6.16).
For residential buildings, this intermediate zone is
best created by the use of porches or stoops, raised
semi-public spaces that create a threshold between
the public realm of the street or square and the pri-
vate realm of the home. These spaces (and the lowest
residential floors that they provide access to) should
be elevated at least three feet above the public areas
outside the dwelling where pedestrians walk close by
(see Figure 6.17). This safeguards visual privacy
within the dwelling.
CHAPTER SIX
●
URBAN DESIGN IN THE REAL WORLD