Pori

“Bare House“ residency Monday 29 March 2010

afternoon
Chair Annu Wilenius
G Cowan -Occupying the Street
Liane Vertrate Eindhoven Other Urbanism
Anthropologist
transmutations of Afrikaanderplein, Rotterdam
Terry Meade Brighton Against House Demolitions
occupied territory - building / demolition / building /
demolition
Keynotes
Prof Andrea Kahn (DesignContent NY)
Apprehending the Site
Delineating the Site
Specificity of Site
Scale(s) of the Site
figure and ground - ground as (suppressed) site
site as a relational construct between general and
specific
transscalar mapping
Alan Dein 1
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Pori
“Bare House“ residency Monday 29 March 2010
afternoon
Chair Annu Wilenius
G Cowan -Occupying the Street
Liane Vertrate Eindhoven Other Urbanism
Anthropologist
transmutations of Afrikaanderplein, Rotterdam
Terry Meade Brighton Against House Demolitions
occupied territory - building / demolition / building /
demolition
Keynotes
Prof Andrea Kahn (DesignContent NY)
Apprehending the Site
Delineating the Site
Specificity of Site
Scale(s) of the Site
figure and ground - ground as (suppressed) site
site as a relational construct between general and
specific
transscalar mapping
Alan Dein 9
10
A night time street scene in London Waterloo area
shows a taxi and bus on a slip road near the train
station. There is a viaduct on the left with a pedestrian
way underneath, and on the right an access ramp
road to Waterloo train station.
The area is well lit and there is a discreet entrance to
a pub on the left side of the road.

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This paper is a report on early work in progress on the
subject of 'occupations of streets in the night time city‘
- politics of urban design
The main issues relate to the question of how we
could better approach the urban design of streets for
the night time city. Streets are distinguished from
roads in that they are urban places as well as being a
means of access from one place to another.
This image shows a road crossing bridge at the
western edge of Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, crossing the
main east-west artery of the city (Enkhtaivnii Gudamju
- "Peace Avenue") where there is also an important
market and suburban shopping centre. On the bridge,
which accommodates a restaurant, shops and small
stalls along the corridor, there is a statue of Chinggis
Khan (Genghis Khan the 13th C emperor, facing
westward toward Europe)
In middle ground is an informal bus stop, where
passengers are boarding for Khanii Materialnii Zak
(Building materials market in the western peri-urban
fringe) and at the right in the foreground, a telephone
stall. 12
Jane Jacobs
key figure in thinking about the street
critic of garden city movement and suburbanisation
driving residents out of inner cities into suburban
estates (advent of the car-based suburbia in post war
USA)
on the other hand her optimistic view of the ballet of
petit-bourgeois shopkeepers,
choreography of the street
Bentley a key text in the field
Comedia a significant independent report on town
centres at night
also recommended that councillors beat the bouns of
their boroughs / electorates annually so they knew the
places they were representing
also recommended ways of ensuring surveillance in
terms of eyes on the street

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Anderson ed 1978
Appleyard 1981 Livable Streets as an innovvator in
the area in the nineteen eighties
Moudon 1999
Hass and Klau - a useful range of continental
European examples as well as examples from Britain
for comparison
Carmona et al ed. 2003
A key textbook for students of Urban Design, taking
the reader through the key issues in a graphically
illustrated way, providing an introduction to Urban
Design
Compare
Greed and Roberts 1998 Introducing Urban Design
and
Roberts and Greed 2001, Approaching Urban Design:
the Design Process

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Bentley et al 1985 Responsive Environments
Responsive Environments
One of the key texts
a manual for designers
takes designers through the processes of analysis
and design and reanalysis in environmental / urban
design

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Bentley, et al 1985 "Responsive Environments"
Permeability and Variety
Office and Residential
Mixed Use
combined blocks

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Waterloo station forecourt at night
Paving
Trees
Lighting of landmark building
Bus stop and shelter adjacent
residence / attached to Pub
Walkway to the right
Street lighting

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Greeting
modes of interaction in public space
Brawling
modes of disorderly interaction in public
asbo has been responsible for improvement of public
behaviour according to a comment from Alan Dein
historian at the conference
modes of social interaction

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Diversity of Night time activity
Going out to a show
working in a 24-hour or late evening economy
supported business eg Tesco
Engineers working on services Lodon Underground /
Rail Works other services down time - traffic is quieter
Shopping for necessities after work 9-5 / 10-7 eg milk,
bread news sweets magazines etc
Parking during off peak time - eg London Congestion
Charging Zone off peak time 7pm - 7am
Binge drinking

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nightlife = alcohol consumption
binge drinking
abandonment = end of week -
milestone celebrations - stag's party - or hen's party
(impending marriage)
entering university (fresher's party US)
birthdays
Football teams celebrations
completing exams
environmental perception is dulled
bright colours are used
architectural taste and discernment of environmental
quality is often reduced

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Rise of youth drinking organisations
http://carnageuk.com/
see tilllate.com
http://uk.tilllate.com/en/event/9056999

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Streets are defined as both 'Link' and 'Place'
combining the spatial qualities of a thoroughfare with
a space which may be 'collectively owned' and cared
for by occupants
density of use
persons per hectare,
possibly mapped over time
local and visiting
phsical height to width ration - contributes to sense of
enclosure / openness
uses / mixed use streets
commercial / shopping -types of shopping eg x-rated
bookstore
entertainment - often alcohol related
theatre
video library
pub, bar, club
performance venue
residential use
social housing
landlord large or small
private ownership 25
Lighting is critical for night activity. Visibility of the
forms of the built environment help to remove
ambiguity about occupation of the street and activity
of occupants. Colour of lighting is also significant.
Energy consumed by lighting is an issue for
environmental and financial sustainability.
Transport varies at different times of day, depending
upon purpose for delivering passengers or freight
directly or indrectly (eg intermodally train-bus-cycle-
pedestrian), and regimes of parking loading and
related times of these activities in the night or day
Accessibility and permeability are key to functioning of
streets for different movement modes
Behaviour in the street by any kind of occupants,
mechanical or otherwise
Civility is important culturally
Intoxication is a related issue which was highlighted
by the recent Carnage student pub-crawl case, where
an intoxicated young man 'unintentionally' desecrated
an urban landmark (urinating on a war memorial)
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voices - interviews
Sound recordings
Video interviews?
actors - workshops - games
Formalised ways of interacting between stakholders
usings participatory techniques
activists - collaboration?
Activism suggests self-conscious and active
stakeholders who purse direct intervientions or
actions in the environment.
professionals - observation / consultation
elected community representatives, politicians,
council officers, planners, architects, social scientists,
play roles in the ongoing negotiation and operations of
the street
agency - collaboration - research
what is the effectiveness of internal and external
actors in the processes of operating the street?
agencies - observation / consultation
which organisations form or transform or persist
historically to operationalse the ongoing life of the
street 27
interest in describing the street scene graphically
figures and grounds
The street environment and its various actors are in a
complex relationship of dependencies.
Theories of environmental science sometime hold that
behaviour can be influenced by environmental design
(eg CEPTED - crime prevention through
environmental design)
Buildings are key figures - defining the street space
physically; their height, transparency and porosity are
important and these are relative to the street width
and activity
Street 'furniture' which broadly interpreted may be
interpreted to mean anything ranging from sofas to
traffic signals, bus shelters, signage, waste bins to
benches and plantings.
Vehicles may range from bicycles and wheelchairs
and mobility scooters to shopping trolleys, road
sweepers, milk floats, passenger cars all terrain
vehicles, vans lorries HGVs and construction
equipment. Police horses are still used in central
London and in my view still provide a form of traffic 28
examples of transport modelling and pedestrian
modelling
disregard for buildings and street scenes
legacy of empirical approach to studying mode conflict
and flows
- safety measured by reduced KSI fugures (killed or
seriously injured)
- traffic signals to regulate behaviour
- pedestrians as natural (primal corporeal) users of
the street behave more viscerally
minimising potential of conflict - possibility for positive
contact?

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elements of a city street
buildings
carriageways
footways
landmarks

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Key Themes
Fear and Pleasure
what instills fear -
threat of violence
sexual threat
alcohol
what allows pleasure
convivality
entertainment
alcohol
urbanity
sociality
Comments and Suggestions / AHRA Nov 09
Postcode wars / turf wars / territoriality of parts of
streets
Modelling
(Forensic) Pedestrian Modelling of Kings Cross fire
1987 (www.casa.ucl.ac.uk/kxpem/lu.htm)
Gender Safe / Unsafe
porosity homelessness in the street
Delimiting space of the Street - see Nils Norman
(artist) 31
 Ben Highmore York / Essex
www.yorku.ca/cities/city/news/files/night&city.doc
City Scapes 2005
Ch 2.
Street Scenes - Circulation, Crowds, and
Modernizing London
Katarina Loew - Soziologie der Staedte 2008-9
recomm by Sebastian Schmidt-Tomczak
Schloer Night Time in the Big City
Francis Alÿs: the clandestine way
Pedestrian everyday under CCTV or How to walk the
path of least surveillance
http://www.msdm.org.uk/archive/FrancisAlys-
PaulaRoush.pdf

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