DAUP – Department of Architecture & Urban

Planning
ARCT421- Introduction to Urban Design and
Planning

DESIGN OF SPACES
BY WILLIAM W WHYTE

Sunday 22 March 2015 Submitted

Instructor:By- HarshGrichting
Dr. Anna Dadheech - TA: Arch.
Luzita ball No.-18001234
Enrollment Presented by Somaia El-Sherif
Content page
 About the Author
 The street life project
 Project methodology
 How cities use economic incentives?
 The problem and start of the project
 Effect of demography on the use of spaces
 What attracts people in parks ?
 Seating
 Pedestrian and activity zoning
 Accessibility
 Relevance to the city of Doha
 Doha Public Parks
 List of References
About the William W Whyte
Author
(October 1, 1917 — January 12,
1999)
 American urbanist,
organizational
analyst, journalist and people-
watcher
 He is considered the mentor for
Project for Public Spaces because of
his seminal work in the study of human
behavior in urban settings
 While working with the New York City
Planning Commission in 1969, Whyte
began to wonder how newly planned
city spaces were actually working out –
something that no one had previously He always believed that the greatest lesson
researched. This curiosity led to the the city has to offer us is the idea that we are
Street Life Project, a pioneering study
of pedestrian behavior and city all in it together, for better or for worse,
dynamics.
About the William W Whyte
Author
For sixteen years William Whyte walked the streets of
New York and other major cities. With a group of
young observers, camera and notebook in hand, he
conducted pioneering studies of street life, pedestrian
behavior, and city dynamics.
 Whyte and his team trained Super 8 cameras on
plazas, streets, playgrounds, and other small urban
spaces and simply watched, via time-lapse
photography, what people actually did.
 What they found led to changes in the way we view
the social settings of cities.

City: Rediscovering the Center is the result of that research, a humane, often amusing
view of what is staggeringly obvious about the urban environment but seemingly invisible
to those responsible for planning it.
The street life project
 Produced exceptional study of How
people used urban spaces
 Provided set of urban design guidelines for
New York and have been used in many other
cities
 Project Methodology
 An Excellent example of how to do an urban research

•Observation •Gender
•Checking against hypothesis, previously •Couples or in groups
set •Where did they sit ?
•Filming •Interviewing people :
•analyzing the films (Time-lapse videos) •Where they worked ?
•Creating circulation pattern from dawn to •How frequent they used the
dusk plaza?
•Charting how people used the spaces •What did they thought of
•Taking notes during different times during
it ?
the day / all over the year
How cities use economic
incentives ?
 There is a strong market for additional office spaces in the
central businesses districts of many cities
 Zoning ordinances set limits on height and bulk of office
buildings
 Permission to build more office space than zoning
allows is
worth money for developers
 New York city awarded developers “Density Bonuses”
allowing them to build more office space if the private
developers agreed to provide park and plaza space at the
street level
 While some developers worked hard to design attractive
The problem and start of the project
 On most plazas there were few people
 In the middle of the lunch hour on a
beautiful day the number of people sitting
on plazas averaged four per thousand
square feet of space – an extraordinarily
low figure for so dense a center
Effect of demography on the use of
spaces
 A good new space builds a new constituency,
it gets people into new habits and
encourage them to use new paths
 The best-used places tend to have higher
than average proportion of women
 What attracts people in parks ? (FACTORS)

• Major avenues, attractive side views, close to bus stations,

1. Location pedestrian sidewalks huge flow

2. Sun & • Wasn’t a major factor in concluding popularity of plazas

aesthetics

3. Amount of • Not a major factor as well , refer to graphs

space and its
shape
• Whatever were the attractions, it will never induce people
4. Seating to use the space if there’s no spaces to sit
area
 What attracts people in parks ?
Amount of space Location

Retrieved from “The city: rediscovering the center” book

Seating
 Integral seating
The basic kind of seating built into place such
as steps and ledges
 Sitting height

 Benches

 Chairs
1. Integral seating
Railing placed to hit your back !

Horizontal metal strip

Jagged rock set into with saw-tooth
concrete points
2. Sitting height
 Thanks to slopes , ledges
usually have different height
 Conclusion showed that people
will sit at any height ranges from
30 cm to 90 cm , specified in
the zoning (considering different
age groups)
 Human backside dimension ,
Ledges to be double-side used
3. Benches
 Most often fitted in modular
forms, spaced equidistant
from one another, that
looks pleasant in plan view
 How benches fill-up ?
 First
arrival takes the first
end, second arrival takes
end of another benches, the
subsequent arrivals will
take any end spots that are
vacant
 1

4. Movable Chairs
2
 The possibility of choice is
important as much as the
exercise for it
 Moving for shade or for 3
privacy
 Grass, for picnicking,
napping or sun-bathing
4
and psychological benefits
 Pedestrian and activity
zoning
 Old NYs’ zoning codes called for
“Pedestrian circulation
areas” away from “activity
areas”
 Sunken and elevated plazas
tend to attract low flow of people
> new code called for 3 feet
difference
 More east the flow between the
street and the plaza the more
easy people will go to sit
Accessibility
 Handicapped facilities , Drinking-Water
fountains
 Back rests for seats
 Public outdoors parks and plazas observation of types of seating and activities

MIA park movable chairs and view to Fixed chairs and tables at Al-Ruwais Park
Barzan Olympic Park ledges and wooden benchesWestbay towers

Benches at the
pathways and at
the nodes of
passages at
different parks
 Parks for a comfortable weather day, benches with no shading canopies at Al Khesah Occasions Square at the right and the
green carpet park “Al-Bossat AL-Akhdar” to the left, what makes them special is the large space of green grass with little paved
walkways passing through

Abu Dhalouf Park provides Beach, barbeque and a Al-Morona and Al-Moroub parks are attracting male visitors.
boat ride as well as shading canopies without fixed Activities such as football playing and workers usually taking nab
Colorful circular fixed seats oriented to have a full view of Benches at Park 65 works as waiting area, park is more of
different parts of the park urban playground to different age groups

Al-Rumiela park, benches to the back of the water feature Benches at Onaiza Park, shaded by trees, not considering
looking towards stalls and shops the back side & not comfortable for waiting for so long
 The Huwaila Four park & Dahl El-Hamam parks

Fixed benches at corners and meeting points Benches looking to each other more for friends and family
gatherings

Fixed seating area under canopies, zoning for privacy Theatre fixed space for family events
 Aspire park
 Fixed sophisticated
benches oriented to
best views are not
used much by
people
 Groups tend to sit on
the grass or families
bring their own
Katara cultural village

High-back traditional benches aligned Coffee shop tables and chairs

with the esplanade on the beach

Benches along the secondary Tourists using the theatre low-rise

shaded streets walls for sitting
List of References
 http://www.pps.org/reference/wwhyte/
 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_H._Whyte
 http://www.outwalking.net/architecture_and_design/
 Whyte, William H.. City : Rediscovering the Center. Philadelphia, PA, USA:
University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 6 March
2015.
 https://verdantcities.wordpress.com/2011/01/18/40180658/
 http://www.justhere.qa/category/make-it-home/parks-recs/page/2/