A Critical Evaluation of Public Space: Lessons

from Exchange Square, London

Hsiao-Wei Lin

Hsiao-Wei Lin graduated with a BA from Tamkang University in Taiwan in

1991 and with an MLA from the University of Edinburgh in 1996. She is
currently reading for a PhD in the theory of urban design, focusing on
contemporary spatial theory.

Introduction

As a passenger leaving a busy transport terminal, passing through the

narrow path leading out to Exchange Square on the northern side of
Liverpool Street Station, in the middle of office buildings and hidden from the
street view I encountered an outstanding space, a well-used, open, lively
and active contemporary city square (see Figure 1).

Figure 1: An aerial view of Exchange Square.

It was a stimulating experience to watch how the typical users, office

workers, enjoy the benefits of this city square in London as intensely as do
people in the Piazza del Campo in Siena. As a researcher of urban space, I
was curious to know three things: what makes this space different from what
Richard Sennett calls "dead public space?" (1) Does this visually seductive
space represent the urban life of Londoners? Are there certain criteria for
successful city squares which can be used in the design of new urban public
spaces?

I considered a variety of viewpoints such as history, social relations,

discourses and spatial image in order to read the urban landscape and
answer the above questions. Sojas "the trialectics of spatial thinking" (2)
seems to me to provide a reasonable approach to relating urban design and
social politics. This paper thus attempts to make practical sense of spatiality
in reading urban landscape in assessing the present day role and the
formation of an urban square, and to provide a useful lesson for making
public space.
The Trialectics of Spatial Thinking

Figure 2: The Trialectics of spatial thinking.

Figure 3: The Trialectic Frame of Spatial Formation in Broadgate. The place is shown as an
outcome of interactions between historicality, sociality and spatiality.

Soja asserts the importance of the existential nature of life and develops a
balanced view using what he calls the trialectical thinking of spatiality,
sociality and historicality to question the meaning and significance of space.
(3) This trialectics of spatial thinking is originally inspired by Lefbvres "lived
space." (4) These are the spaces of representation, which not only consist of
material spatial practices, but also contain symbols, politics, ideology, the
real and the imaged space o capitalism, racism, patriarchy and other social
relations. (5) For Soja, spatiality had tended to be marginalised in historical
and social actions. Thus, spatial thinking should start with the spatiality of
existential being and becoming, i.e. lived and perceived spaces. Then there
is the spatialisation of historicality and sociality in all aspects of place
making: conceived and lived spaces, which is mainly theory formation,
empirical analysis, critical inquiry, and urban design practice (6) (see Figure
2).

In order to provide substance to this abstract idea in relation to Exchange

Square, I have developed a selective view of the spatial formation of the
square in terms of its sociality and historicality. I sum up the main features in
Figure 3 first and then examine the implication for the design of future public
space.

Spatial Formation of Exchange Square

Figure 4: Location map of Broadgate. The double circle marks the site.

Exchange Square is one of three large city squares within the Broadgate
development, which lies to the north east of the City of London, on the
northern side of the River Thames (see Figure 4). Broadgate is a
comprehensive private office development incorporating a number of spaces
and amenities intended for public use, carried out by Rosehaugh Stanhope
Developments PLC in partnership with the British Rail Property Board (see
Figure 5).

Figure 5: Development of Broadgate. Exchange Square is located between numbers six

and seven.

The changing spatiality of the Exchange Square in the 1980s illustrates how
important commercial culture has become in urban public space strategies
in the City of London. This is but the latest phase in the developing spatiality
of the square, for the area has had a long and varied history as an open
space, as a boundary and as a gate to the city. In different periods it has
been a Roman burial ground and it has been surrounded by Elizabethan
mansions. Later it was the subject of Victorian slum clearance for the
development of the railway and Liverpool Street Station. Now Broadgate is
one of the leading financial centres of the world. The site is a social
laboratory where spatiality, sociality and historicality interact endlessly.
Figure 3 depicts these interactions through time.

During the pre-Roman and Roman periods, Broadgate was a large

marshland outside the City Wall (see Figure 6). Until the twelfth century it
was large enough for local people to skate when it froze during the winter.
This historical memory of the site is reflected in the winter open air ice rink of
Broadgate Circle. In addition, the main feature of the site was a stream, the
Walbrook, which is remembered in a City street name today.

Figure 6: Broadgate in pre-Roman and Roman periods. The site was a large marshland
during these periods.

By the sixteenth century, the Moorfield around the Walbrook was well used
for recreation and by laundresses who laid out clothes and linen on the
ground to bleach and dry. It consisted of gardens, summer-houses, drying
greens, streams and open spaces. In the late sixteen century, it was
transformed by tree planting and gravel walkways, becoming Londons first
civic park: "the garden of their city and a pleasurable place of sweet ayres
for citizens to walk in." (7) Beside these recreational functions, a Bedlam
(insane asylum) was set up here for keeping distracted persons from the city
centre. Here the site operated as an outside for containing an unwelcome
social group. Thus it was a place of social exclusion as well as a public
space (see Figure 7).

Figure 7: The Agas map-view of circa 1553. The site of Broadgate and Liverpool Street
Station contains gardens and summer houses.

In 1569, this site was chosen for the "New Churchyard" due to the rapidly
growing population between 1500 between 1700 and the plague in 1563,
which put pressure on the established practices of burial. (8) Earth and
rubbish were brought from outside to raise the ground level because the
area was still liable to flooding. As well as the change of the landform, the
street pattern was changed dramatically because of the extraordinary
gathering of migrants attracted to London by higher wages and the
expansion of manufacturing industry. Around the churchyard the area
became densely populated with migrants dwellings and the space was
formed by this social movement.

Leakes survey of 1667 shows the densely populated area around

Bishopgate (see Figure 8). (9) The numerous alleys, courts and yards which
are now the site of Broadgate and Liverpool Street Station. Although some
wealthy citizens chose to live in the sixteenth century garden suburb outside
Bishopsgate, wealthy citizens tended to drift west, preferring to live in the
handsome new squares of brick houses built in Covent Garden Piazza after
the disasters of the plague and the Great Fire during the seventeenth
century. The poor condition of housing in Broadgate area was planned to be
improved by George Dance the younger through development of Finsbury
and Moorfield. However, Dances wider vision of residential squares,
crescents and circuses never materialised. Instead warehouses, banks,
offices and railway stations soon took over with increasing commercial
tendencies.

Figure 8: Leakes survey of 1667 shows the densely populated area around Broadgate.

The clearance of acres of slums on the north of Liverpool Street prior to the
construction of Broad Street Station and Liverpool Street Station was a
welcome prelude to the extension of the North London Railways into the City
for prosperous Victorians, although it was a human tragedy for the local
inhabitants. Here social exclusion of the poor has shown on the spatiality
and commercial power is represented by the development of the stations.
Broad Street Station in 1865 and Liverpool Street Station in 1875 were
opened to cope with the steam railway traffic. The economic benefit was
enormous, but the social impact of the railway was equally devastating on
spatial formation. Charles Dickens wrote about the social and spatial
disruption caused by the advent of the railway:

Houses were knocked down; streets broken through and stopped; deep pits and trenches
dug in the ground; enormous heaps of earth and clay thrown up; buildings that were
undermined and shaking, propped by great beams of wood. Here, a chaos of carts
overthrown and jumbled together, lay topsy-turvy at the bottom of a steep unnatural hill;
there confused treasures of iron soaked and rusted in something that had accidentally
become a pond. Everywhere were bridges that led nwhere; thoroughfares that were wholly
impassable; Babel towers of chimneys, wanting half of their height; temporary wooden
houses and enclosures, in the most unlikely situation; carcasses of ragged tenements, and
fragments of unfinished walls and arches, and piles of scaffolding, and wildernesses of
bricks, and giant forms of cranes, and tripods straddling above nothing. There were a
hundred thousand shapes and substances of incompleteness, wildly mingled out of their
places, upside down, burrowing in the earth, aspiring in the air, mouldering in the water, and
unintelligible as any dream... In short, the yet unfinished and unopened railroad was in
progress; and from the very core of all this dire disorder, trailed smoothly away, upon its
mighty course of civilisation and improvement. (10)

This interaction between spatial and social changes was not only described,
but was also illustrated in paintings. Figure 9 shows the site of Liverpool
Street Station and the demolition of existing buildings such as the City of
London Theatre and the Worship Street Gasworks. This railway
development followed the expansion of the city to the east, ending
Bishopsgates role as a residential area, but opening a commercial potential.
In the 1890s as many as fifty-two workmens trains emptied their load at tis
station each morning. The station became a new gate for the City, a place of
arrivals and departures where passengers increased from 136,000 a day in
1898 to 244,000 a day in 1923. (11) The railway changed the space of
Broadgate which was now dominated by dismal warehouses, railway
buildings and derelict land. It was a significant transition in social usage from
residence to transportation, from inhabitants to passengers and even from
family use to mainly male users, such as newspapermen, market porters,
printers and other city workers, who used this space for everyday
transportation (see Figure 10).

Figure 9: The site of Liverpool Street Station, 1870. The demolition of existing buildings on
the site.

Figure 10: Busy railway station - everyday transportation.

Figure 11: The Ordnance Survey of 1896, showing Broad Street and Liverpool Street
stations.

Later on, commercial culture started to dominate the urban development in

this area. The redevelopment of Liverpool Street Station and the Broadgate
project, including Exchange Square in 1986, represents a commercial public
space under private control and was an important spatial change in the site
reflecting the capitalist society (see Figure 11). Firstly, there was a
modernisation of Liverpool Street Station which received the Royal Assent in
1983 after a long period of argument about the conservationand
modernisation of the station buildings. Secondly, Broadgate which built to
address the need for high quality office buildings under the impact of
information technology and partly to finance the redevelopment of Liverpool
Street Station. The result is a gentrified district with fourteen phases of
international-standard office buildings on the twenty-nine acres (11.7
hectares) of former rail land. It comprises 3.5 million square feet of office
space, restaurants and wine bars, as well as a childcare nurery and a health
club, and embraces three main squares: Exchange Square, Broadgate
Circle and Finsbury Avenue Square (see Figure 12). With its generous
provision of public space and facilities, this private development seems like a
public utopia even though it has specific users. In fact, the high quality of
public space was used to attract potential tenants under a commercial
strategy. To quote Charles Jencks: "Broadgate was the result of intensive
market research over several years which revealed the demand for high
quality offices in London in the late 1980s." (12) It was the product of
commercial decisions in order to generate the new style of urban public
space within a financial capital.

Exchange Square, under this spatial transition based on commercial

development, is one of the most used public open spaces in and around the
City of London today. (13) It seems like a good model of privatisation for the
commercial culture and an attempt at combining democratic access with
social controls. However, the contradictions related to social diversity in the
sharing of this public space imply some important social, spatial and
historical issues for modern cities. Here, it is worth giving a detailed
observation of its spatiality to see how the social relations of historicism,
capitalism, commercial development, symbolic economy, social control,
urban politics, design ideology and visual images interact to make the real
and imaged space of the Exchange Square.

Figure 12: Plan of Broadgate development. The two photographs show the two major public
spaces - Broadgate Circus and Exchange Square.

How to observe this square?

1. Location: regional development and urban policy

One of the social relations which Soja emphasised in his spatial thinking is
urban policy. Exchange Square is located in a transition zone between the
extensively developed Finsbury Circus and financial City institutions to the
south and the less developed mixed use of offices, light industry and
residential accommodation to the north. Exchange Square and other public
spaces within Broadgate were a result of urban policy for increasing the
commercial value and public life of this area. According to Ray Michael,
Director of Environmental Services, London Borough of Hackney, public
space was important in this project because "it was part of the planning brief
that it should develop a character that contributed more to the area than just
pure employment in the office blocks," and that "there should be public
spaces that would generate activity and interest, rather than people coming
in, doing a days work and going off again." (14)

Figure 13: Map of open space system in London.

This consideration is reflected on Figure 13, which shows Exchange Square

and the other open spaces within Broadgate connecting the network of
public access and open spaces in London (see Figure 12). The location of
Exchange Square is surrounded by office buildings (Exchange House,
Bishopsgate) with restaurants, wine bars, pubs, train station and links to the
other two nearby public squares: Broadgate Circle and Finsbury Avenue
Square, anchoring these spaces into the urban context and connecting with
th street system for regional development. Easy access to the square is
intended to invite the public in to use the open space and leisure facilities,
although Broadgate is a private development. Certainly, Exchange Square
has attracted its users by its location and its easy access, but it does not
attract many spontaneous users from the adjacent Liverpool Street Station
due to its invisibility from the station and the street level. (15) This implies
that the popular use of this square mainly comes from its development
strategy and those commercial creations within the site.

2. Background: commercial development and capitalist power

Capitalist power and commercial development played an important role in

creating Exchange Square, offering a model for the privatisation of public
space. The developers recognised that the commercial opportunities of
trading buildings which evolve with the patterns of information technology
could not be accommodated in refurbished old buildings, and Broadgate
filled the market gap in demand for high quality office spaces. At the same
time, quality public space as well as high quality office buildings is required
for a enjoyable urban life in 1980s. As a result of commercial and social
consideration, the existing space of the Exchange Square indicates form as
the frame for making money. (16)

Thus, the square reflects the expensive co-operation of the architects SOM
(partner, Bruce Graham), the client Stuart Lipton of Stanhoopes and
landscape architects Hanna/Olin Ltd (partner Laurie Olin), who decided to
close the unused space above the tracks of Liverpool Street Station by a
concrete deck, providing an opportunity to create a new urban pedestrian
space which could be "open, light, and expansive" (17) (see Figure 14). This
expensive and complicated decision was made since it wouldpromote the
commercial value of the office project and it was the first major
redevelopment in London in the Eighties of land left vacant by the decline in
railway usage. Indeed, this development policy of capitalist power dominates
the contemporary square which reflects the potential for commercial
exploitation of civic life in public space. As such it is a model for the other air
rights developments, such as Kings Cross, Waterloo, Euston and
Paddington, indicating the evolution of a design tendency to exploit the
artificial nature of the ground plane constructed over existing railway lines.
Overall Exchange Square, as with the other privatised public spaces within
Broadgate, confirmed that commercial power was making form as the frame
for making money and imposing a vision of commercial demand.

Figure 14: Section of Exchange Square looking towards Exchange House. It illustrates the
relationship between the Square ground and train platform.

3. Form: design ideology and visual images

Soja mentioned that spatial ideologies conceptualise the real space as the
vision of the square is not only determined by the capitalist control but also
by design and social controls. The design issues were, according to
Kirkwood:

First the Square would be connected to the surrounding streets, open spaces, and new
buildings by extending it to all edges of the space. Secondly, it was decided to develop the
Square to act as a counterpoint to the strong symmetrical forms of both the train shed and
the expressed external steel structure of SOMs Exchange House. Finally, the Square would
be designed to appear to be grounded on real earth or terra firma. (18)

In fact, they were a kind of spatial reflection integral to the commercial

development I mentioned in the previous section.

These decisions resulted in a square which is rectangular and enclosed by

office buildings and the station. In addition, it is on a south facing deck with
five open accesses connecting to surrounding streets. These five entrances
are shown in Figure 15. Four entrances are reached by steps or ramps to
approach the site, which is about five metres higher than street level (see
Figures 16-19). Another entrance from Exchange Arcade is at the same
level as Bishopsgate, which coincides with the lower level area of the site
(see Figure 20). The higher level ground of the square does not attract many
spontaneous users or passers-by due to its invisibility from street level and
the physical separation from the crowd movement (see Figure 21).

Figure 15: Plan of Exchange Square. <15> to <19> indicates the entrances. Sketch of
Broadgate Venus shows the visual attraction on higher ground.
Figure 16: South entrance to Exchange Square, linked by narrow steps (around one meter
wide).

Figure 17: North entrance to Exchange Square, linking to Primrose Street by the large
combination of steps and ramps.

Figure 18: West entrance, linking to Appold Street.

Figure 19: East entrance, linked to Bishopgate by a ramp in a shady area between
buildings.

Figure 20: East service entrance, linked to Bishopgate through the car park and shops of
Exchange Arcade.

Figure 21: Section diagram of the relationship between entrance and site.

Although the visual form of the square and surrounding buildings comes
across as an imported American style to some critics, (19) the landscape
elements of open lawns, fountain, tree avenues, stone walls and the ideal of
the square as an outdoor room are conceptualised from an open space
study carried out by the landscape members of the design team. The study
concluded that there were two predominant forms among open spaces
within the City of London.

1. The tradition of the public garden with its open lawns, fountains and
vivid horticultural displays found within Londons squares and parks;
and
2. the courtyard, "the external stone room", (20) architectonic in nature,
formed in hard durable materials, simply furnished and serving
primarily as a place of movement.

Figure 22: A view over seating terraces, curved wall and grass lawn.
Figure 23: Fountain - natural stone and granite edge.

These two expressions of Londoners habits of using open space are

interpreted by the designers and users in the following ways:

1. A series of interconnecting and overlapping seating terraces (see

Figure 22). Their well-proportioned height and width provides the
major seating for all the formal and informal activities. A central
orientation leads users attention to the green lawn and the raised
circular podium. This is a place where people see others but also
allow themselves to be seen. This may not be seen as being very
English, but young people in London do develop a taste for this Latin
habit in their social lives.
2. A curved red sandstone wall with solid granite top is the main
viewpoint of this square and defines the movement patterns through
the space with ramps, steps and views (see Figure 22). A white tent
structure has been added on to the wall as an after-thought. Although
it decreases the original sense of "the external stone room," it is a
reasonable weather protection supplement to cope with the inclement
weather of London.
3. A simple flat lawn panel with raised solid granite seating edge and a
raised circular podium are the focal points where the arranged events
take place (see Figure 22). However, due to the need to protect the
grass, the lawn is mainly a view aspect, but people are occasionally
allowed onto it for arranged events such as croquet games and
concerts.
4. A fountain of descending sheets of water with natural stone (see
Figure 23). This fountain softens the hard landscape of the square
and provides a visual attraction. In summer, it adds a cheerful feeling
and occasionally it attracts neighbourhood children to play with the
water, although this improper behaviour is soon stopped by security
guards. In a way it also represents as controlled a use as that of the
lawn. The visual landscape is thus controlled by the power of capital
which determines exactly what will be revealed and what will be
concealed in this public space.
5. A tree avenue formed by a double row of twenty-two Aesculus
hippocastanum (horse chestnut trees) (see Figure 24). This is located
in suspended linear trenches in front of Exchange House to provide
 natural elements and to give a good three-dimensional linkage with
the buildings. Attention is paid to the important detail of providing the
trees with a healthy growing environment which emphasises again
the good co-operation between the design and engineering teams
and the capital power. Some wooden benches are placed under the
trees, where they create a secondary but favoured seating place for
people who prefer seeing more than being seen.

Figure 24: Tree avenue, natural stone paving.

Figure 25: Broad Family by Xavier Corbero, 1990.

6. Art works: Broad Family sculpted by Savier Corbero forms an east

axis of entry, and Broadgate Venus sculpted by Fernando Botero on
the west terrace is a focal point at the higher level of the site (see
Figures 25-26). Works of art at Broadgate are the best illustration of
the visual management to gentrify the space and emphasise the
symbolic economy. The developer, Lipton, believes art has an
important role in uniting the estate, therefore, art works are not only
found in Exchange Square, but are alo used at Broadgate Circle,
Finsbury Avenue Square and other small open spaces within
Broadgate. On one hand, it does enhance "the nature of the
environment, providing scale, humanity and the Genus Loci that is the
fundamental ingredient of successful urban design." (21) On the other
hand, some artworks associated with Broadgate have been used
more explicitly in promoting this development, such as Robert
Masons book, Broadgate: Paintings and Drawings 1989-1990, (22)
which benefits Rosehaugh Stanhoope Developments by exhibiting
images of Broadgate at the Guildhall, City of London, the Yale Centre
for British Art, Newhaven, USA and at various venues in Sweden.
Masons images of the estate under construction have also been
used to promote Ashurst Morris Crisp and Miller Construction, one of
the companies contracted at Broadgate. Here, even artworks indicate
form as the frame for making money.

Figure 26: Broadgate Venus, Fernando Botero, 1990.

Figure 27: Low sandstone wall, used as bar table and seating at peak hours.7.Two low
sandstone walls with solid granite tops stand between the west entrance and the curved
sandstone wall (see Figure 27). They define the movement patterns through the space with
ramps and steps, which also provide an emergency and service vehicle access and
subdivide the large square to form the restaurant area. They are also used as bar tables
and even as seating at peak hours, which is an excellent example of unplanned use of this
square.

In addition to the above major landscape elements, there are other

supplementary elements, such as lights, benches, signs, gates, tent
structures and flower containers, which are designed together with the main
landscape elements to create a sense of place by relating the suitable
materials, styles, sizes, numbers and proportions to surrounding buildings.
However, the landscape elements of Exchange Square have provided a
particular attraction through the use of these expensive materials, design
objects, restaurants, and art works catering for the white-collar office
workers taste as well as providing space for meeting and for events. This is
the result of a unique vision for this square, not only in its spatial form but
also in its particular use.

4. Use and Management: symbolic economy and social control

In catering for the particular tastes of the white-collar office workers, the
intended user, the specific visiting hours, the scheduled events and the
security control appear as the special features of this square. Firstly,
according to my observation in 1995, the users are predominantly office
workers. A few families were here for a lunch or afternoon break because
one of their family members worked here or in nearby offices. The success
of the square is due to overflow activities from the surrounding office
buildings, not from spontaneous visitors passing by or coming from the
station.

Secondly, this particular use by office workers is also reflected in its specific
hours of activities and pedestrian movement. The peak time of activity and
pedestrian movement here depends on the office workers schedule,
normally the midday lunch break and the time after work (see Figures 28-
29). The movement is increased by attractions, such as organised events,
performances and bars. However, without office workers, this space
becomes deserted (see Figure 30-31). Even though the seating, restaurant,
bar and arranged events attract people to have their daily social activities
here, this square is empty quite soon after the bars closed and the arranged
events end and not many people come here during the weekend because
this is a place where nobody actually lives. Commercial power may be able
to create a public utopia for a particular group of users, but it can not create
a good public space without people.

Figure 28: Peak time of day on seating terraces (13:00, 17 August 1995).

Figure 29: Peak time of day in restaurant area (13:30, 17 August 1995).

Figure 30: Off-peak time of day on seating terraces (09:30, 17 August 1995).

Figure 31: Off-peak time of day in restaurant area (10:30, 17 August 1995).

Thirdly, although it is sometimes a deserted space the variety of informal

and formal activities is extensive during the periods of inhabitation, because
this square is successful in providing a suitable sitting area, pleasant view
and good maintenance (cleaning and security), to support these activities.
The informal activities, such as sitting, eating, drinking, walking, reading,
watching, napping, waiting and dating, form the social role of the square and
the formal activities, such as music performances, comedy shows, chess
games and a croquet league, provide a point of focus and a diversity of
activities for the public to enjoy. To a certain degree Exchange Square,
which successfully accommodates various activities, has great potential as a
mirror of urban social life as "the greatest major plazas in the world become
civic symbols, not only because of their beauty of design, but because of the
variegated and important civic events which take place in them." (23)

Finally, the maintenance of this square, which is managed by Broadgate

Estates, implies that the success of this space is based on a strict vision of
social homogeneity by:

1. cleaning work performed by a group of ground cleaners who work

every morning and afternoon and a group of cleaners for the windows
 and steel structure of the enclosing buildings, keeping this space tidy
and clean.
2. security work: security guards are around the site from 8:00 am to
8:00 pm and numerous cameras are on the site to provide 24 hour
security.
3. event programme: listed in Broadgate Life (which has been published
monthly between May and September since 1992) and Broadgate
Broadsheet, offering arranged entertainment.

These three points demonstrate the control of the visual landscape by the
capital power which determines exactly what will be seen and what will
happen in this public space in order to attract prestigious clients and other
potential tenants.

Conclusion

Even though Exchange Square is totally controlled, cleaned and

vandalproofed by commercial interests, when the sun comes out, bands play
and hundreds sit in the square, why could not one image visions of the
Piazza del Campo in Siena in the modern city of London? (see Figure 32).
The trialectics of spatial thinking provides a way to detect the spatial story of
Exchange Square from social homogenised space. It allows one to see this
square as a model of privatisation for our commercial culture and an attempt
at combining democratic access with social controls. This private controlled
public space has been employed in many cases, such as Time Square and
Bryant Park in the U.S.A. They may involve a different degree of controlled
power governing the spatiality of public space without social diversity.
Nevertheless, its attempt to make a sense of dwelling for city workers is
successful in creating a type of urban social life.

Figure 32: Family users in the square.

To conclude, Exchange Square represents its spatiality as a place "where

the discourses about POWER and KNOWLEDGE are transformed into
actual relations of power." (24) In Exchange Square, the power consists of
the way one could commercially exploit the public demand and the
aesthetics inherits it. Here design thinking related to historicality, sociality
and spatiality, which may help to avoid social exclusion in future public
space. And the success of this square is totally dependent on the ecnomic
returns to be had. Thus, the social habits of people, spatial design, creative
management and visual control are inseparable. The lesson from this study
illustrates that the development and design of our contemporary city square,
or any public space, are a representation of an all-encompassing urban
analysis and have the potential to develop in cooparation with associated
commercial investments and public concerns. Only designing with a full
consideration of spatiality, sociality and historicality, can we hope to create a
enduring sense of place in our cities.

Acknowledgements

This paper was presented at The Savannah Symposium on the City Square
in Savannah, Georgia, USA, on 24 February 1999. I am very grateful to Dr
P.G. Raman and Professor Iain Boyd Whyte, at the University of Edinburgh,
for kindly reading and commenting on a draft copy of this paper. Many
thanks to Ariyaki Kondo, Clive Fenton and Helen Jackson for their
encouragement.

Figures 1 and 12: Broadgate properties, 1996. Figures 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 and 11:

from Hunting et al., Broadgate and Liverpool Street Station, (Rosehaugh
Stanhope, 1991). Figure 10: from Roy Porter, Gustave Dov's London
(London, 1872). Figure 13: adapted from Bill Hillier, Broadgate Space: Life in
Public Places, (London: University college London, Report for Architecture
Studies, Bartlett School of Architecture and Planning, 1990). Figure 14 and
15: Hanna/Olin Limited, 1988.

Bibliography

Walter Benjamin, "Paris, Capital of the Nineteenth Century" in Reflections,

trans., Edmund Jephcott, (New York: Schocken Books, 1986), 155-156.

A. Heckscher, with P. Robinson, Open Space: The Life of American Cities,

(1977), 145.

Martin Heidegger, Poetry, Language, Thought, (New York, 1971), 157.

Notes and References

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