Tag: gehl architects

• The public life data protocol

  

  The Gehl Institute has just launched (in beta) something called the Public Life Data Protocol. It was developed by the Institute, as well as by Gehl (the practice), the Municipality of Copenhagen, the City of San Francisco, and Seattle’s Department of Transportation.

  The goal of the protocol is to improve the way in which we collect, share, and compare public space information. It is about improving public life in public spaces.

  To do this, they have proposed a series of metrics that measure everything from “posture within the space” to “objects brought into the space.” They also propose spatial metrics that help to analyze public life in relation to its physical context.

  Gehl is a real leader in this space. I commend them on opening up their methodology and working to create “a common language for people data.” Great data will only help us to build more human-centered cities.

  To download a full PDF of the protocol, click here. 

  Photo by Thaddaeus Lim on Unsplash

  2017.09.29

• Inviting behaviors

  

  The following paragraph is a great way to describe urban cycling and to explain how our built environment can explicitly invite certain behaviors:

  “If you want people to drive, build more automobile infrastructure. If you want people to bike, build better bike infrastructure. In San Francisco, as in most US cities, we’ve treated the idea of bike infrastructure as secondary to optimizing traffic flow, and have wound up protecting parked cars with bike lanes instead of the opposite. Because of this our bike lanes are plagued with double-parking. While enforcement is an important piece of the puzzle, we usually fail to admit how inviting a striped space between parked cars and traffic appears to an Uber driver. Our built environment invites a driving behavior that causes cyclists to spend much of their commute pushed into traffic, encouraging a culture of every-man-for-himself cycling behavior, adding to the discouraging perception that bikes are for the young and fearless only. This perception is elevated by the fact that bicycling deaths in San Francisco are hovering at least four times higher than the average rate in Copenhagen, a city with ten times as many cyclists.”

  This snippet is from a blog post written by Alex Schuknecht (urban designer with Gehl). In the posts he also contrasts the cycling cultures of San Francisco and Copenhagen – two cities of similar size and density, but with fundamental differences. It’s a good read.

  Many of us probably assume that we are agents of our own lives. We decide what we do and when we do it. We’re our own boss. That’s at least how I want to feel.

  But the built environment is distinct from the natural environment in that we design it. It is not a given. And the environments we collectively choose to fund and build will ultimately have a significant impact on the way we “choose” to live our lives. 

  This gets back to the first line of the above quote: build more of this; get more of that. It’s also related to the startup mantra: “you make what you measure.” If all we’re measuring is traffic flow, then that’s the kind of city we will make. And that’s certainly be done.

  I don’t think a lot of us think in these terms. But we should.

  2016.10.14

• How inclusive are your public spaces?

  I subscribe to a blog called Cities for People. It’s the blog of Gehl Architects out of Copenhagen and their focus–both the blog and the firm—is on how the built environment affects people’s quality of life. They call themselves Urban Quality Consultants.

  This morning, they wrote a post on gender mainstreaming in public spaces, which, I’m told, is top of mind in cities such as Copenhagen and Vienna.

  The key insight was that, for a variety of reasons, men and boys seemed to be engaging with public spaces more than women and girls. For example, they found that boys were generally more assertive than girls and so, if there was a toss up between who was going to use a space, the boys would usually win out. As a result, there’s been a lot of debate around creating more inclusive public spaces, both from a design standpoint and a policy standpoint.

  Interestingly enough, this is a debate that doesn’t seem to be happening here in Toronto. And I wonder if it’s because we don’t have the same problems (or I’m just oblivious) or if it’s because we don’t care enough about public spaces to do gender mapping exercises.

  2014.04.14

• Please don’t walk on the grass

  The blog of Gehl Architects, called Cities for People, wrote a post this morning called, “Reflecting on Urban Play in Denmark.”

  It’s a good follow-up to the post I did a week ago called, “Skateboarding and the city”, because in many ways, the example I gave (LOVE Park) is an extreme case of what Cities for People is talking about:

  “This sign, and other familiar signs such as “Please Don’t Walk on the Grass” characterize a common understanding of the urban landscape and its features as something to visually admire from a distance rather than interact with. While play and physical interaction with our surroundings is an intuitive social behavior, playful uses of the urban landscape and its features are often regarded as an illegitimate use of city space.”

  It’s the equivalent of buying a sofa, covering it with plastic, and not letting anyone sit on the damn thing. What’s the point?

  Fortunately, Copenhagen seems to be bucking that trend. Here are a few examples.

  2013.12.28