Expert Group Meeting on Public Space: Toolkit Framework

Global Toolkit on Public Space:

A Proposed Framework

Public Space in the Global Agenda for Sustainable Urban Development

Expert Group Meeting, 12-14 January 2014, Rome, Italy

FROM THE CITY OF ROME, HOST OF THE EGM

“……., the discourse on the city emerges primarily on the basis of a demand for security, of protection from the presence of the other, we assist to a progressive weakening of that feeling of life that is fundamental to the urban civilization.

….We will affirm in all our interventions that if the city isn’t public then it simply isn’t a city”

From Commissioner Giovanni Caudo’s presentation of the programme of the Office for Urban Transformation, “Towards a more Liveable, Sustainable and Solidary City”, 17 July 2013.

This “proposed framework” provides initial content and a preliminary outline for the Global Toolkit on Public Space, an initiative of UN-Habitat. It is offered here for initial reference and for review and reworking during the EGM.

I. PRELIMINARY CONSIDERATIONS
Public Spaces as “Promoters of Equity”

As cities grow and densify, access to well designed and pleasant public spaces is becoming an increasingly important asset. This is particularly true for those citizens -including women, the elderly, children, low-income residents- whose individual living circumstances, such as the home and its immediate surroundings, are lacking in quality and comfort, or who are in special need of communal spaces for health, recreation and socialization. Improving access to good public spaces on the part of less favoured urban residents is a powerful tool to improve equity in the city and combat discrimination.

In this light, public spaces are to be seen as precious public goods. But these goods are increasingly under threat.

Thus, public space in our cities deserves priority attention - because it serves all urban residents, and particularly those most in need, and because its quantity and quality is not a given - it requires attention and care.

Public Spaces as Goods and Commons Under Threat

In its introduction, UN-Habitat’s 2012 State of the World Cities Report states:

The Report advocates for the need of cities to enhance the public realm, expand public goods and consolidate rights to the 'commons' for all as a way to expand prosperity. This comes in response to the observed trend of enclosing or restricting these goods and commons in enclaves of prosperity, or depleting them through unsustainable use.

Public Spaces as Entry Points for Better Cities

The Toolkit will also present a number of themes and topics that could serve as entry-points and opportunities – as well as incentives - for good public spaces to produce better cities. The goals, objectives and desired results could include the following:

· Providing safe and secure urban environments;

· Promoting safer, smarter and more sustainable mobility;

· Securing accessible public services;

· Stimulating economic activity;

· Attracting investments;

· Increasing land and property values;

· Reconstituting pristine environmental assets;

· Promoting culture, history and art;

· Renewing and revitalizing urban areas.

Thus, public space in our cities deserves priority attention – because it serves all urban residents, and particularly the ones most in need; its quantity and quality is not a given – it requires attention and care; and it promotes better and more viable cities.

Why a Global Public Space Toolkit

Despite its importance, public space has not been given the attention it deserves in literature and, more importantly, in policy and action at the local level. For this reason, and also in keeping with the mandate given by its governing body[1], UN-Habitat has decided to put together, in cooperation with INU and other partners, a “Global Public Space Toolkit” - a user-friendly guide to provide cities, and particularly those with high rates of demographic growth and limited financial resources, with actionable ideas on how to find resources and solutions for improving the availability, quality and distribution of good public spaces. The Toolkit will be a practical reference for cities to concretize principles and policy recommendations on public space. It will also serve the important purpose of stimulating the involvement of civil society in securing, developing and managing public space in the city.

Methodology

This “proposed framework” constitutes the first step in producing the Toolkit. It provides initial content and a preliminary outline for the Toolkit, based on the Charter on Public Space and on UN-Habitat’s approach. It is an initial reference and will be the object of review on the part of the Expert Group Meeting, which will also provide the project with ideas and good practices from many regions of the world. The third step will be the actual preparation of the Toolkit, which is scheduled to be presented at the 7^th World Urban Forum in Medellin, Colombia in April 2014.

Primary Sources

1. UN-Habitat sources[2] already mentioned in the EGM Concept Note as well as additional ones that may become available from its projects and field activities after the EGM;

2. The “Charter of Public Space” adopted by the Biennial of Public Space in May 2013 (See Annex). Definitions and principles found in the Charter will be used to structure the Toolkit and to identify new important topics for policy and action;

3. Additional sources to become available prior, during or after the EGM through the contribution by experts and institutional partners.

The EGM will agree on a standard methodology for assessing, qualifying and presenting technical references from partners for inclusion in the Toolkit.

Toolkit Format

The Toolkit should be a user-friendly on-line resource with a printed version. Just like public space, it should be available to all and easily accessible. This means its language should be simple and clear and its messages enriched by attractive illustrations. Furthermore, it should contain examples of good practices demonstrating the feasibility of the approaches proposed.

The web or on-line version will enable the Toolkit to be expanded in terms of content and to accommodate new types of content. UN-Habitat will periodically review the Toolkit with regard to its form, structure and usage in order for it to be relevant in the long-term and beneficial to its target users.

The text will be accompanied by illustrations, sketches, photographs.

II. SUGGESTED OUTLINE

Table of Contents

Foreword (why public space is important; why a “Public Space Toolkit”)

Introduction (Principles drawn from Habitat’s normative and field work; II Biennial of Public Space; Charter of Public Space; the “Future of Places” Conferences)

1. Definition and Typologies of Public Spaces

2. The Case for Public Space

3. Types of Public Spaces

3. Constraints to the Creation, Management and Enjoyment of Good Public Spaces

4. Public Space as a System

5. Public Spaces and Different Urban Contexts

6. Creation, Maintenance/Management, Enjoyment

7. Recommended Approaches to Different Types of Public Spaces

8. Resources for the Creation and Maintenance of Public Spaces

9. Surveys and Indicators

1. Definition and Typologies of Public Space

The Charter of Public Space offers the following definition of public spaces:

“Public spaces are all places publicly owned or of public use, accessible and enjoyable by all for free and without a profit motive.”

The definition of “public space” that will be used in the Toolkit, whatever it turns out to be, will have to be clarified. In the above example, the term “public” is explained in relation to context, functionality and legally-held definitions. In addition, the term “places” is used because some public spaces, e.g. public libraries, cannot be properly classified as “spaces”. Both public ownership and public use are contemplated, although the Charter (para. 9) contends often more stable guarantees of access and enjoyment over time. The absence of a profit motive is there because the Charter takes a position with regard to commercial places, which are subject to their own security jurisdictions and are created to attract consumers rather than for the benefit of citizens. The EGM will examine this definition in terms of its relevance and usefulness to target users of the Toolkit.

Questions:

- Which definitions are used in operational terms by cities?

- What to do with ‘semi-public spaces’? What role for public policy in such cases?

- Is there a hierarchy of spaces? Which are the most critical ones?

The Charter also offers a classification of public spaces. However, the Toolkit could offer simpler and more precise definitions, such as:

· streets (in the view of many, the most useful and widely enjoyed public spaces of all);

· sidewalks, squares, passages and galleries;

· parks and gardens;

· waterfronts;

· brownfields;

· public sports facilities;

· market places;

· civic centres, museums, public libraries, etc.

This typology could be enriched by additional categories.

Additional questions:

- Is landscape a type of “public space”, even if it cannot be enjoyed physically? By the same token, can cyberspace be considered a kind of public space, and in what way?

- Is this classification or typology of public spaces operationally useful?

2. The Case for Public Space

All of the positive arguments, including the ones in the introduction, that provide a strong justification for cities investing in efficient, sustainable and equitable public space systems.

3. Constraints to the Creation, Management and Enjoyment of Good Public Spaces

It is important to be aware of the various kinds of obstacles that can imperil the success of public space initiatives in cities. The Charter lists the following ones:

a. The commoditisation of urban sociality (such as the proliferation of specialized facilities for shopping and leisure, private sports facilities, etc.);

b. Decreasing resources for the creation and maintenance of public spaces due to weakened fiscal revenues and the frequent inefficiency of public spending;

c. The declining inclination of citizens to affirm their rights;

d. The weakening of social cohesion, the little regard for public goods on the part of large portions of the citizenry and the increasing frequency of acts of vandalism;

e. The pressures exercised by speculative real estate interests;

f. Design choices that ignore multifunctional criteria and structural connections;

g. The difficulties encountered by many local authorities in exercising a role of effective public leadership;

h. The sectoralization of administrative structures and the frequent lack of communication between various departments;

i. The vulnerability of many public spaces to improper uses such as the transformation of public squares into parking lots, the vehicular occupation of spaces reserved for pedestrians, the encroachment on public spaces by restaurants and commercial activities outside permitted areas;

j. Perceived or real insecurity in public spaces, with consequent effects of limited use, abandonment and decline;

k. The conviction that the “web” and “social networks” have become “the new public spaces”, to the extent that the traditional ones are regarded as irrelevant or, at the very least, outmoded.

l. The absence of directions and references, which may cause a condition of deep disorientation in users of urban space.

Others could be added as follows:

• The competition for space for different uses and users (resulting in the privatization of public space);

• The weakness of the ‘public actor’ and lack of planning and policy direction regarding public space;

• Weak regulatory and legislative frameworks for its creation and preservation (e.g. legal frameworks that give priority to private interests or private property);

• The lack of mechanisms for the solution of conflicts over use and fruition of public space;

• Modern urban design and planning which has created ‘artificial’ public or open spaces, which are not easy to appropriate or use because of their scale, functions etc.

4. Public Space as a System

While cities offer many different types of public spaces, there is a strong need for public spaces to be conceived and planned as a “system”. The Toolkit would explain and develop this concept, which is germane to the recommendation for all cities to develop public space surveys and a city-wide policy.

5. Public Spaces and Different Urban Contexts

5.1. While no city is entirely like any other, similarly you can find different degrees of intervention with regard to public spaces. Existing public spaces will often need to be enhanced and revitalized, or modified; others will have to be planned and designed anew together with urban expansion plans. The Toolkit will provide examples according to different kinds of urban situations, such as:

· Urban expansion;

· Urban transformation & densification;

· Urban improvement, upgrading, revitalization.

5.2. Different kinds of public places demand different approaches. Streets, for example, demand as a rule to be classified according to hierarchies, with some serving primarily vehicular mobility, others ensuring an optimal mix of motorized, non-motorized and pedestrian mobility, and others still serving prevalently, or exclusively, pedestrian uses. Each type of public space (see Point 2 above), will have to be planned, managed and used according not only to its locational characteristics, but also its nature and perceived functions.

6. Creation, Maintenance/Management, Enjoyment of Public Spaces

The Toolkit would explain why these moments, which are often conceived separately, should be considered jointly if we aim at successful public spaces. Creation and design, as well as regeneration and upgrading, have to keep in mind the needs and aspirations of present and future users as well as ease of maintenance and repair; maintenance relies on good design and respectful civil use and enjoyment; use would be not only the main indicator of success, but also an effective means for improving design and management practices.

Questions:

- Which examples of an integrated approach can be identified?

- How is the loop managed and sustained?

Other detailed considerations can be the following:

Creation:

· Principles, standards, options, in new and existing urban areas. Stakeholders, planning, design.

· How to extract public space from private space?

· Design options, functions?

· What rules for public spaces?

· Planning at the level of the eye

Maintenance and management:

· Principles, standards, options to enhance the good management of existing public spaces.

· What are the stakeholders’ interests and benefits?

· Public, private and community partnerships: many roles of public spaces.

· Can public spaces pay for themselves?

· Service delivery in public spaces.

· Managing conflicts and solving problems: policing and/or self-policing.

· Reporting maintenance and rapid response.
· Protecting public space from grabbing and encroachement (the role of communities, associations, activists).

Enjoyment:

· Inclusion and access, functions in public space, security, time management.

· Typical conflicts and the role of design in their prevention.

· Different groups, different needs (youth, children, women, the elderly, traders, artists, etc).

· Rules and cultural demands on public space.

· Who can improve public space? Participatory mechanisms and collective interests.

· How to provide feedback from users to planners and managers.

Questions:

- Which key elements the shall be identified for each step and which tools can be documented and proposed to support the key principles?

- Can we distinguish space specific (site) and city wide (system) issues in the above 3 steps?

- What are the key actors’ roles for each of the steps and the whole loop?

7. Public Space Strategies for fast-growing & resource-poor cities

The vast majority of cities all over the world share similar problems in pursuing more, better, and better distributed public spaces. However, most cities in the so-called developing world face the same problems more acutely. The pace of urban growth, the persistence of vast pockets of informal settlement, the strain on resource mobilization are only some examples of this predicament. Consequently, the Toolkit will try and indicate appropriate solutions based on successful real-life practice.

8. Resources for the Creation and Maintenance of Public Spaces

The question of how to fund the creation, upgrading and improvement of physical public spaces and ensure their maintenance and enhancement, thus guaranteeing the full satisfaction of users, is of paramount importance. The Toolkit will rely on good practices and identify various strategies that local governments and communities can put in place to this end. This will include forms of taxation including cross-subsidization, revenues accruing from business and commercial activities benefiting from public physical improvements, public-private partnerships, leasing to non-profit activities in exchange for maintenance and guardianship, and community-based operation and management.

9. Surveys and Indicators

The need for a sytem-wide approach and the imperative of identifying locational priorities suggest the usefulness of city-wide public-space surveys. The EGM will try and identify good examples of such surveys already undertaken, the criteria that could guide them, means for citizens’ involvement, and instruments for funding these exercises, including their incorporation in city-wide physical plans.

Similarly, evaluating the success of the design, maintenance and enjoyment of public spaces, including viability options, will be of paramount importance in selecting good practices and improving effectiveness. The Toolkit should draw on experience in this area as well and suggest appropriate basic indicators.

Annex I – Charter of Public Space

The following document constitutes the contribution of the Biennial of Public Space to a process of further definition on the same subject that will be conducted at the global level in collaboration with the United Nations Programme on Human Settlements (UN-Habitat), in order to make a significant contribution to the preparatory process of the third Conference of the United Nations on Human Settlements to be held in 2016.

Table of Contents

Preamble

I. Definition of Public Space

II. Typologies of Public Space

III. Creation of Public Space

IV. Obstacles to the Creation, Management and Enjoyment of Public Space

V. Management of Public Space

VI. Enjoyment of Public Space

Preamble

1. In addition to the need to exhibit good projects and exemplary realizations, the Biennial of Public Space is also born out of a strong need to support the desire, shared by many citizens and long-sighted and efficient public administrators, to make public space the banner of urban civility.

2. The main criteria this document is based on are that a) it is useful to formulate a clear and comprehensive definition of public space, b) that public space should be regarded as a public good, c) that the Charter should contain reasonable and shared principles with regard to the conception, the design, the realization, the management, the transformability and the enjoyment of public space, d) that it must be a concise document and, just like public space, accessible to all.

3. The Charter of Public Space aims at serving all those who believe in the city and in its extraordinary ability for hospitality, solidarity, conviviality and sharing; in its inimitable virtue in encouraging social interaction, encounter, togetherness, freedom and democracy; and in its calling for giving life to these values through public space. At the same time, cities show the worsening of economic, social, ethnic, cultural and generational inequalities. Public space must be the place where citizenship rights are guaranteed and differences are respected and appreciated.

4. The charter is based on a wide and inclusive concept of citizenship that goes beyond its legal definition. All in their capacity, as users, are “citizens” and have the same rights and duties with regard to the public space.

5. When citizens coincide with the inhabitants they have the right to be involved through participatory processes in the creation and management of public space.

I. Definition of Public Space

6. Public spaces are all places publicly owned or of public use, accessible and enjoyable by all for free and without a profit motive. Each public space has its own spatial, historic, environmental, social and economic features.

7. Public spaces are a key element of individual and social well-being, the places of a community’s collective life, expressions of the diversity of their common natural and cultural richness and a foundation of their identity, as expressed by the European Landscape Convention. The community recognizes itself in its public places and pursues the improvement of their spatial quality.

8. Public spaces consist of open environments (e.g. streets, sidewalks, squares, gardens, parks) and in sheltered spaces created without a profit motive and for everyone’s enjoyment (e.g. public libraries, museums). Both when they possess a clear identity, can be defined as “places”. The objective is that all public spaces should become “places”.

9. Views differ on whether public spaces should or should not be publicly owned. However, all public spaces that are also publicly owned offer more stable guarantees of access and enjoyment over time, because they are less subject to those legitimate changes of use typical of private ownership.

10. Public spaces, whenever safeguards of natural or historical value allow, must be made accessible without barriers to the motorial, sensorially and intellectively handicapped.

11. Analogously, all areas even if publicly owned or unfenced, which by their characteristics are substantially unusable by the public inaccessible slopes, abandoned areas, or cut-outs, cannot be considered a public space and cannot be counted as a service or public infrastructure.

12. Conversely, public spaces which are not yet accessible and/or usable must be considered as “potential public spaces”, and therefore as a precious resource for the strengthening and renovation of the existing system of public space, and thus of urban quality as a whole.

II. Typologies of public space

13. Public spaces can be distinguished in: a) spaces that have an exclusive or prevalent functional character; b) spaces that presuppose or favour individual uses; c) spaces that, by mix of functions, form, meanings and by connecting the built with the non-built, have the prevalent role of aggregation and social condensation. In the web of these latter functions is the essence of the city.

14. Public spaces:

a) Are the physical web and support for the movement and the stationing of people and means of transport, from which the vitality of the city depends;

b) Host market and accessible commercial activities in fixed premises, public venues and other services (collective and not, public and private), in which the socio-economic dimension of the city is always expressed;

c) Offer precious opportunities for recreation, physical exercise and regeneration for all (parks, gardens, public sports facilities);

d) Help promote education and culture( e.g. museums, public libraries);

e) Are places of individual and collective memory, in which the identity of the people is mirrored and finds sustenance, growing in the knowledge that they are a community;

f) Promote conviviality, encounter, and freedom of expression;

g) Are an integral and meaningful part of the urban architecture and landscape, with a determinant role in the overall image of the city;

15. For the above characteristics, they represent the principal resource available to public administration on which to build integrated policies and to a broad range of urban planning, of morphological and functional upgrading of the urban fabric and of social and economic regeneration.

III. Creation of public space

16. Every public space should be designed with full consideration for diversity.

17. Public space is the gymnasium of democracy, an opportunity for creating and maintaining over time the sentiment of citizenship and the awareness of the roles that each of us has and can have with regard to one’s daily lifestyle and to one’s living environment.

18. It is advisable for decisions regarding the creation, the management and the enjoyment of public space to be subjected to clear and transparent participatory processes with all interested stakeholders. Such processes, be they institutionalized, regulated or spontaneous, are to be regarded as a right of urban residents and not as unilateral initiatives of government.

19. It is vital to regard urban public spaces as a continuous, articulated and integrated system, to be developed from the scale of neighbourhoods relationships to vast environmental spaces, to facilitate the diffusion of its enjoyment within the whole community and to raise urban quality.

20. Designing public spaces also means taking into account alternative and creative practices based on new techniques of communication and urban usage.

21. The urban public-space system requires a unitary view capable of bringing out the features to maintain, enhance and communicate. It is therefore advisable for local governments to adopt a specific strategy for public-space networks.

22. Within public-space networks it is also advisable to identify polarities and aggregative phenomena, with a view to prevent psychological obstacles from reinforcing physical ones. The interconnection and improvement of public space as a strategy for upgrading peripheries and suburban areas should include improving connections, the enhancement of multifunctionality and access and the reduction of phenomena of privatization and exclusion.

23. Eliminating and/or overcoming the physical barriers that impede or limit access to certain categories of users is therefore a priority goal to pursue both in the design of new public spaces and in the adaptation of existing ones.

24. In extension plans of newly urbanizing cities, whose population will double over the next 10-

20 years (Africa and Asia), it is very important to guarantee sufficient amounts of well connected

and adequately proportioned public spaces.

(especially…..)

25. Design must pay full attention to maintenance and management costs by using simple solutions and materials that are durable, simple, easily replaceable and climatically adequate.

26. The upgrading of unused public sites is a great opportunity for enhancing the supply and quality of urban public space. In designing the re-use of privately owned derelict sites, the extension and design of new public spaces must take into account both environmental considerations (and eventual shortcomings to compensate) and the socio-economic interrelations within the entire urban sector they are to be part of.

27. The role of urban public spaces for environmental regulation (drainage, microclimate…), the environmental protection of ecologically valuable areas (river banks, wetlands, biodiversity) and the reduction of urban environmental risks must be taken into account both in the design and management phases.

28. In areas destroyed by catastrophic events public spaces must be the starting point of the reconstruction process.

29. The creation, improvement and management of public spaces can provide an opportunity for new job creation and private investment, also in harmony with the provisions of the European Landscape Convention.

30. Interdisciplinary and participatory approaches to public-space design are an exciting opportunity for planners, landscape professionals, architects, technicians and designers to express fully their social roles.

IV. Constraints on the Creation, Management and Enjoyment of Good Public Spaces

31. The following can be considered constraints on the creation, management and enjoyment of good public spaces: