INTERPRETATION OF HUMAN CENTERED PUBLIC SPACE DEVELOPMENT PRACTICES ALONG WITH CRITICAL SOCIAL THEORETICAL THOUGHTS

Abstract

In order to have liveable and socially successful cities it is necessary to have public spaces with good physical and social content. The critical social theory and public space research serves as a useful tool for it. At first it is often hard to implement such theories in practice, fortunately this task does not fall on the leaders. Their role is to pick the right tool. In my paper I present two such tool and I reveal the theoretical thoughts behind them. I do it by grabbing the main statements of the methods and pairing them with relevant critical theoretical thoughts. The first tools is the movement of Project for Public Spaces which is a bottom-up method and it explicitly focuses on the needs of local communities, develops them and their members to active citizens. My second example is the practice built around the conception “cities for people” branded by the name of Jan Gehl Danish architect. This is a top-down development approach on settlement council scale which is on one hand based on the observation of public space’s physical and social features. On the other hand it takes the human physiological needs as the base of planning. In my work I present how these two methods can result in vibrant and well-functioning public spaces. But what is more important how they can have beneficial effect on the settlement’s society. The main impacts can be the improvement of communication between social classes, the ensuring of more just access to common goods, and making the allocation of resources more democratic by enhancing people’s interest representation.