In what sustainable, fair, and hospitable way can we accommodate an increasing number of people living in the cities? The urgency of finding a solution to this dilemma is growing as we deal with depleting fossil fuel supplies, and the consequences of climate change, all the while global cities vie to be the liveliest hubs of finance, information, and culture.
Since the 1960s, when few planners or urban designers considered creating cities for people, Jan Gehl and Birgitte Svarre have been researching these issues. But how can we effectively build public infrastructure- which is essential to cities for people to move about or stay in one place-for human usage, considering the erratic, complicated, and transient character of city life?
Five Sections by Gehl and Svarre
A courageous attempt to comprehend the value of monitoring, evaluating, and drawing conclusions from urban public life. There are five sections to the book: the first section is about keeping an eye on how public life interacts with urban features. Since the writers have been directly seeing these cases since the 1960s, living in an urban setting is quite relevant. The next part delves into the behavior of individuals about climate, culture, and geography, as well as the instruments used to document on-site observations. The third portion of the book contains the instruments for keeping track of observations, including counting, charting, tracing, photographing, and going on test walks. Even today, the methodological approaches of documenting, and observing are important for researching public life. The fourth section makes clear the process of turning site observations into hypotheses and theories into actions. The last section highlights the failure of modern city planning policies that did not extend to the street size. Although Jan Gehl and Birgitte Svarre’s uncomplicated approach has been extended to the street level in crowded cities, many of the situations captured in this book are also repeated in other settings.
Gehl and Svarre’s guide
The book by Jan Gehl and Birgitte Svarre provides a welcome guide on how to get the public and design experts to monitor, evaluate, and evaluate their city’s character. The renowned practitioners and founders of the field of public life studies, provide us with a straightforward, step-by-step account of how they evolved their methodology over five decades, and how these seemingly straightforward concepts led to incredibly successful urban life examples in Copenhagen, New York, and Melbourne. This book is a do-it-yourself guide to studying public life in the age of sophisticated technology that collects and filters data to research the populace. The Good City movement has brilliantly evolved due to haptic counting and in-person observation.
Page 40 is the most insightful in the book. Gehl and Svarre are very kind while laying forth the background of the movement that they were instrumental in founding. The chronological arrangement of works about public life studies serves as a potent demonstration of the heritage and coherence of urbanist ideas. The graph places Jane Jacobs, Aldo Rossi, Denise Scott Brown, Steven Izenour, and Robert Venturi as the movement’s forefathers, and places Camillo Sitte, Ebenezer Howard, and Le Corbusier far from the concept of public life studies. The inclusion of the writings of Robert Sommer and Edward Hall, two pillars of the interior design field of human behavior, catches the reader’s attention. The writers integrate all construction arts into public studies using a single, distinct timeframe.
Gehl concluded the book discussion with a narrative about the prevalence of bicycle carriages and the large number of children living in Copenhagen. The well-designed rules that support the city’s robust cycling culture serve as evidence that many children equal a healthy city. A healthy city is balanced by simple commercial strategies like taxis and public transit that can accommodate bicycles; these attributes also make a city profitable and good. Through their work, Gehl and Svarre have individually created such an ideal.
Conclusion
Creating a public area that is welcoming requires a grasp of city life and the elements that either promote or inhibit usage. How to examine public life drawing on their combined five decades of experience, Jan Gehl and Birgitte Svarre offer an overview of the history of public life studies, along with the techniques and resources required to re-create city life as a significant planning aspect. In response to criticism that urban planning had neglected life in the city by several scholars, and journalists across continents in the 1960s, systematic research of this kind got underway.
To place human behavior in the built environment on par with knowledge about urban features like transportation, and buildings, city life studies present information about human behavior in these contexts. Research can be included in general planning, decision-making processes, or specific projects like parks, squares, and roadways. The initial intention, which remains today, was to restore urban life as a significant aspect of planning. This excellent reference offers examples, resources, and inspiration for anybody interested in improving city life.
Reference list:
“How to Study Public Life.” Island Press, 9 July 2015, islandpress.org/books/how-study-public-life#desc. Accessed 9 Mar. 2024.
“Oculus Book Review: “How to Study Public Life” by Jan Gehl and Birgitte Svarre — AIA New York.” AIA New York, 19 Feb. 2014, www.aiany.org/news/oculus-book-review-how-to-study-public-life-by-jan-gehl-and-birgitte-svarre/.
Patel, Shikha. “Book Review: How to Study Public Life by Jan Gehl and Birgitte Svarre.” Medium, 21 Sept. 2020, medium.com/@shikham13/book-review-how-to-study-public-life-by-jan-gehl-and-birgitte-svarre-f0b436855ced.
