Thursday, November 18, 2004
Predict and provide?
There's an interesting article in the December issue of Prospect (paying subscription required) on the work of Danish architect-town planner Jan Gehl.He always starts his lectures with the same story, about the English architect Ralph Erskine, resident in Sweden for several decades now. When asked what makes a good architect, Erskine replied, "First of all, you must love people." Gehl claims that all his work is dedicated to making cities places in which people want to live, work and play. To that end, he's convinced Copenhagen to increase pedestrian space from 15,800 square metres to over 100,000, gradually remove car parking by taking away a few spaces at a time...Copenhagen now has more outdoor seating than Melbourne or Perth.
I like the story that he tells about skunks: It concerns a man living in a small town in midwest America who finds a skunk in his basement one morning. He asks a neighbour for advice on how to get rid of it. "Easy: lay a trail of breadcrumbs from the basement back out into the woods." The following morning he has two skunks in his home. There's a lesson here for doing research rather than trying to predict, or rather guess. People - and skunks - need to be studied to see how they really behave.
Gehl wrote a report for Transport for London this summer, Towards a fine City for People.
11:53 AM|
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