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4.13
Figures 4.13–4.15
Oaklands Park, Dawlish,
Devon, Mervyn Seal and Associates, 1972–76.
Buildings in this modest housing estate are
arranged to enclose a specific series of spaces
and to frame particular views as the resident or
visitor moves through the development by car or
on foot. The architecture is an abstracted version
of the Devonshire seaside vernacular.
4.14
4.15
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the desire to distinguish and enhance the local
authenticity of places, and are structured around the
people who inhabit them.
The Social Use of Space
It’s important to add one other qualifier to pic-
turesque urbanism as a design method: while the
social use of space was implied in the work of Cullen
and his followers such as Francis Tibbalds during the
1980s and 1990s, these urban designers concentrated
primarily on the visual aspects of design. By contrast,
three important American urbanists – Jane Jacobs,
Kevin Lynch and William H. Whyte – focused
instead on what has been referred to as the ‘social
usage’ of space (Carmona et al.: pp. 6–7). In their
efforts at dealing with practical realities concerning
the patterns of human activity, these three authors
illustrate a third philosophical position, the uniquely
American one of pragmatism.
Pragmatism is best known through the work of
American philosophers Charles Sanders Pierce
(1839–1914), William James (1842–1910) and John
Dewey (1859–1952). Pragmatists embrace ‘truths’ in
the plural, examining conditions in the world from
the basis of their practicality and utility in the realm
of concrete human experience. In the context of
urban design and planning this approach has devel-
oped its theories and concepts by looking ‘more
closely at the practical effects of living in cities’
(Broadbent: p. 86).
Jacobs, Lynch, and Whyte all stressed the impor-
tance of everyday human experience in urban design,
and each in his or her own way rejected the abstrac-
tion of city life inherent in modernist values and
assumptions about cities. Lynch, in his seminal work,
The Image of the City
(1960), explored people’s per-
ceptions and mental images of urban places as a way
of relating the techniques of design specialists to the
everyday appreciation of spaces by their users. Jacobs,
most famously as we have already discussed, concen-
trated in 
The Death and Life of American Cities
(1961) on the space of the street as a practical venue
of daily life, and its role as a spatial container of social
activities. Whyte extended this interest in the prag-
matic use of urban space in his famous little book
and accompanying video entitled 
The Social Life of
Small Urban Spaces
(1980), which derived common
sense rules about the design of public space by watch-
ing to see what worked best in the everyday world
and then using these lessons on the drawing board.
This social view of habitable space and the impact of
CHAPTER FOUR
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SOURCES OF GOOD URBANISM
87
S. GIMIGNANO
I
II
III
a
b
N
S
I. Piazza del Duomo. 
II. Piazza della Cisterna.
PEROUSE
a. Duomo. b. Palazzo communale.
I. Piazza del Vescovato. 
II. Piazza di S Lorenzo.
III. Piazza del Papa.
I
II
©