MODULE-2

Social cultural Approach: study of social and cultural layer that influence urban design and
architecture.
Sub Module: Theories / approach by Jane Jacob, Kevin Lynch

Space and society are clearly related it is difficult to conceive of space as being without social
content and equally of society without a spatial component.

The six key aspects of the social dimension of urban design are
 The relationship between people and space
 the concept of the public realm
 neighbourhoods
 safety and security
 the control of public space and
 equitable environments

The relationship between people and space

Understanding the relationship between people and their environment is an essential component of
urban design.
The physical environment has a determining influence on human behaviour. People influence and
change the environment as it influences and changes them. It is thus a continuous two way process
in which people create and modify spaces while at the same time being influenced in various ways
by those spaces.
By shaping the built environment urban designers influence patterns of human activity and thus, of
social life.
Designers can manipulate functional and cognitive cues to increase the probability of good/better
behaviour in public spaces, what can be achieved through design is limited.

The concept of the public realm

The public realm has physical and social dimensions. Public space is an integral part of public realm
The relative publicness of a space can be considered in terms of three qualities.
1. Ownership: whether the space is publicly owned
2. Access: whether the public has access to the space.
3. Use: whether the space is actively used and shared by different individuals and
groups. Public life is traditionally associated with public space.
Pubic life can be broadly grouped into two interrelated types formal and informal
Urban design is more concerned with informal public life which occurring beyond the realm of formal
institutions entails choice and voluntarism.
The public realm
The concept of public realm extends to all spaces accessible to and used by the public including
External public space: those pieces of land lying between private land holdings. Ex : public squares,
streets highways parks parking lots forests lakes rivers
Internal Public space: various public institutions like libraries museums bus stations airports etc
External and Internal Quasi Public spaces: University campuses sports grounds restaurants cinemas
theatres shopping malls. As the owners have the right to regulate access and behaviour within these
spaces they are only nominally public
Accessible public realm and democratic public realm is a requirement for any public space to work
well
If people use public space less then there is less incentive to provide new spaces and to maintain
existing spaces. Use of public space is also a function of its quality and the extent to which it provides
a supportive and conducive environment.
Four desirable qualities of public realm
 Universal access - open to all
 Neutral territory- free from coercive forces
 Inclusive and pluralist - accepting and accommodating differences
 Symbolic and representative of the collective and of sociability - rather than individuality and
privacy

Neighbourhoods:
Clarence Perry's neighbourhood unit developed in the U.S in the 1920's has been one of the most
influential neighbourhood designs. Perry's ideas were developed as a means of organizing and
developing parts of a city in a systematic and logical fashion.

There are three interrelated strands of thinking involved in neighbourhood design.

Neighbourhoods have been proposed as a planning device, a relatively pragmatic and useful way
of structuring and organizing urban areas.
Neighbourhoods have also been proposed and or designed as areas of identity and character to
create or enhance a sense of place.
Neighbourhoods have been proposed or designed as a means of creating areas of greater social
resident interaction and enhancing neighbourliness
The central issues regarding neighbourhood design concepts can be reviewed under four headings
1. Size
2. Boundaries
3. Social relevance and meaning
4. Mixed communities
Size: the size of a neighbourhood is generally expressed in terms of area or population or sometimes
both. The preferred area is often limited to what is considered to be comfortable walking distance.
This is either 5 min or 10 minutes or 300 to 800 m
The preferred size is also derived from the catchment population for a primary or elementary school
or in the case of transit oriented development the population required to make public transit viable.
Jane Jacobs on the other hand had a different definition of a neighbourhood
The city as a whole
The street neighbourhood and districts of large sub city size composed of 100,000 people or more i.e
large enough to be politically significant.
Boundaries: a prevalent idea has been that clear boundaries to neighbourhood will enhance
functional and social interaction sense of community and identity within those boundaries. However
this has been argued against by many.
Jane Jacobs argued against identifying boundaries because where neighbourhoods worked best
they had no beginnings or ends and their success depended on overlapping and interweaving.
Christopher Alexander argued that cities should not be designed like as neatly branching tree like
structures and condemned city plans establishing discreetly bounded neighbourhoods and or
functionally zoned areas.
Lynch argued that planning a city as a series of neighbourhoods was either futile or alternatively
would support social segregation because any good city has a continuous fabric rather than a
cellular one.
Social relevance and meaning: Neighbourhoods should provide opportunities for mobility and
networks of friendship and allow people to find their own balance neighbourhoods are also places
with distinct characters that residents can identify with and that offer where sought or desired a sense
of belonging
Mixed communities: Mixed use neighbourhood design concepts are considered to be valuable for
environmental and social sustainability purposes.
A variety of house prices and tenures are a requirement to ensure people do not move out of
neighbourhoods
Avoid monotony by concentrations of housing of the same type.
Assisting surveillance through people coming and going throughout the day and evening.
Mixed neighbourhoods also provide a greater diversity of building form and scales which makes the
neighbourhood more interesting and provide greater scope for local distinctiveness and character.

Safety and Security

Variety of threats in the urban environment:
Crime, street barbarism, acts of terrorism, fast moving vehicles, natural disasters/ phenomena and
unseen problems such as air pollution and water contamination.
Urban design can address crime safety and security and particularly their relationship to the public
realm. Road and pedestrian safety comes under a different dimension of urban design (functional
dimension)
Lack of safety perceptions of lack of safety and fear of victimization are threats both to the use of the
public realm and to the creation of better places.
Creating a sense of security and safety is thus an essential prerequisite of successful urban design.
Perception of safety as against being safe. In terms of impact the perception of crime can be as
instrumental as its actuality. Hence fear of victimization is a cause of exclusion not from just particular
places but from much of the public realm.
Thus if people chose not to use certain places because of the perception of lack of safety or
because they are afraid or feel unsafe, the public realm is impoverished.
Ex subways, dark alleys, areas that are deserted or crowded with the wrong kind of people etc
Hence fear of victimization rather than actual levels of crime are often the drivers of privatization of
parts of public realm, segregating communities in the process. Example Gated communities.
Crime is different from safety. Crime is about offenders and safety is about the victims.
In public spaces it is often disorderly rather than criminal behaviour that is problematic.
Crime is breaking of law a cognizable offence where as disorderly conduct and anti social behaviour
are more of an incivility than crime.

Approaches to crime prevention:

Dispositional and
Situational
Dispositional : involves removing or lessening an individual motivation to commit criminal acts through
education and moral guidance sanctions and penalties as deterrents and or social and economic
development.
Dispositional approaches are generally outside the scope of urban design.

Situational: once a decision to commit crime has been made by the offender . then the techniques
make the commission of that crime in that particular place more difficult.
Situational measures manipulate not just the physical but also the social and psychological settings
for crime. There are four opportunity reduction strategies.
 Increasing the perceived effort of the offence
 Increasing the perceived risk of the offence
 Reducing the reward for the offence
 Removing excuses for the offence.

Reduce the opportunity to commit crime is more practical and doable than compared to reducing
the offenders motivation to offend. Thus opportunity reduction methods are justified on practical
grounds.
Opportunity reduction methods: This can be done through
 Increased activity
 Surveillance
 Territorial definition and control

Increased activity: continuous occupation and use hence they should be better integrated with
regard to the movement systems.
Jane Jacobs stressed the need for activity to provide surveillance and for sufficient territorial
definition to distinguish between private and public spaces. Argued that public peace was kept by
an intricate network of voluntary controls and standards and sidewalks adjacent uses and their users
were active participants in the war between civilization and barbarism.
Oscar Newman developed Jacob's ideas further.
Identified three factors that increased crime rates in residential blocks:
 Anonymity: people did not know their neighbors
 Lack of surveillance: making it easy for crimes to be committed unseen.
 Availability of escape route: making it easier for criminals to escape from the scene.
From these he developed the concept of defensible spaces. The idea is that the physical
environment can be manipulated to produce behavioral effects that would reduce the incidence of
fear of crime by reducing the propensity of physical environment to support criminal behaviour
thereby improving the quality of life.
CPTED(crime prevention through environment design): argues for reduced through movement and
hence reduced levels of activity. Example more cul de sacs and discontinuous roads and street
layouts.
Space Syntax by Bill Hillier argued for areas being in continuous occupation and use thus integrating
them better with regard to the movement systems.
Surveillance: Need for eyes on the street belonging to the natural proprietors of the street and
enhanced by a diversity of activities and various functions that naturally create peopled places. The
capacity of the physical design to provide surveillance opportunities to residents and their agents.
Jane Jacobs: eyes on the street. Enhanced by a diversity of activities and various functions that
naturally create peopled spaces.
Oscar Newman: Capacity of physical design to provide surveillance opportunities for residents and
their agents.
CPTED: natural surveillance as a result of the routine use of property.
Space syntax: surveillance provided by people moving through spaces.

Territorial definition and control: clear demarcation between public and private spaces. Spaces
integrated with other spaces so that pedestrians are encouraged to see into and move through
them.
Jane Jacobs: clear demarcation between public and private spaces.
Oscar Newman: Territoriality - capacity of the physical environment to create perceived zones of
territorial influence including mechanisms symbolising boundaries and defining a hierarchy of
increasingly private zones.
CPTED: natural access control aimed at reducing opportunities by denying access to the crime
target. Creating or extending a sphere of influence so that users of a property develop a sense of
ownership.
Space Syntax: spaces are integrated with other spaces so that pedestrians are encouraged to see
into and move through them.

The control of public space: Access and Exclusion

Lynch and Carr four key public space management tasks
Distinguishing between harmful and harmless tasks and controlling the former without constraining
the latter.
Increasing the general tolerance towards free use, while obtaining a broad consensus on what is
permissible.
Separating in time and space the activities of groups with low tolerance for each other.
Providing marginal space where extremely free behaviour can go with little damage.
Exclusion can be considered in terms of
Excluding behaviour or conduct: example smoke free zones, cellphone free zones etc
Exclusion through design:
Visual : important for people to feel free to enter a space. Visibility is required for this to happen.
Physical access: where space is physically available to the public or where inability to access the
environment.
Methods include using gates or security checks, monitoring and surveillance that can cause
discomfort. Missing paths or approach roads can also exclude access.
Economic exclusion is another form of access denial.
Excluding people: private ownership excludes people who are undesirable. Excluding people of
certain age. Religion, gender caste, social status etc.

Equitable Environments:
Equitable : the design should be usable by people with diverse abilities and appeal to all users
Flexible: the design should cater for a wide range of individual preferences and abilities
Simple and intuitive: use of the design should be easy to understand regardless of experience
knowledge language skills etc
Perceptible: the design communicates necessary information effectively to the user.
Tolerance for error: minimizes hazards or unintended actions
Low physical efforts: should be used with a minimum of fatigue
Size and space for approach and use: appropriate size and space is provided for approach
regardless of body size posture and mobility.
Mobility, wealth and exclusion
Mobility can be car based or non car based
Wealth implies exclusion of groups that use public transport and cannot afford automobiles, gaps in
journeys create unsafe areas for the users.
Cultural difference and Public Space:
Celebrating cultural differences. Inserting elements into public realm that symbolize another culture,
experiential reference that can be done through exotic planting evocative of overseas landscape.
Gender perspectives: how certain designs are not women friendly. This could be in the form of lack of
adequate:
toilets, lighting in streets, adequate surveillance n design decisions on different individuals

More than any other dimension the social dimension raises a host of issues concerning values and
difficult choices. Regarding the effect of urban design on different individuals and groups in society.
The social dimension thus involves challenging questions for urban designers, while the aim should be
to create an accessible safe and secure equitable public realm for all economic and social trends
can make this increasingly difficult to deliver.

Jane Jacobs and the generators of Diversity

To generate exuberant diversity in a city's streets and districts four conditions are indispensible:

1. The district and many of its internal parts must serve more than one primary function, preferably more
than two. These must insure the presence of people who go outdoors on different schedules and are
in the place for different purposes but who are able to use many facilities in common.

2. Most blocks must be short, that is streets and opportunities to turn corners must be frequent

3. The district must mingle buildings that vary in age and condition including a good proportion of old
ones so that they vary in the economic yield they must produce this mingling must be fairly closely
grained.

4. There must be a significantly dense concentration of people, for whatever purposes they may be
there this includes dense concentration in the case of people who are there because of residence.