SOCIO CULTURAL APPROACH

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SOCIO CULTURAL APPROACH

● Urban Design’s Social Dimension can be defined as the relationship between space and
society.
● This topic focuses on five key aspects of Urban Design:

o The relationship between people and space

o The concept of the public realm
o Neighborhoods
o Safety and security
o The control of public space

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PEOPLE AND SPACE :

• The relationship between people and their environment starts with architectural or
environmental determinism, where the physical environment has determining the
influence on human behavior.
• By shaping the built environment, urban designers influence patterns of human
activity and thus, of social and cultural life.

• Dear & Wolch (1989) argued that social relations can be:
› Constituted through space – where site characteristics influence settlement form.
› Constrained by space – where the physical environment facilitated or obstructs human
activity.
› Mediated by space – where the friction-of-distance facilitates or inhibits, the
development of various practices.
› The relationship between people and their
environment is best conceived as a continuous
two-way process in which people create and
modify spaces while at the same time being
influenced by those spaces.

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 less interaction due to spatial arrangement

space with few or no street-level doors is less interactive

space with more number of street-level doors is more

interactive more interaction due to the spatial arrangement

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THE PUBLIC REALM:
• The public realm has ‘physical’ (i.e. space) and
‘Socio Cultural’ (i.e. activity) dimensions.
• Public life involves relatively open and universal
social contexts, in contrast to private life, which is
intimate, familiar, shielded, controlled by the
individual, and shared only with family and friends.
Public Realm

Defining Public Space:

“Public space relates to all those parts of the built and natural environment where the public
have free access. It encompasses- all the streets, squares and other right of way, whether
predominantly in residential, commercial or community/civic uses; the open spaces and
parks, and the “public/private” spaces where public access in unrestricted (at least during
daylight hours). It includes the interfaces with key internal and private spaces to which the
public normally has free access.”

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The relative ‘publicness’ of space can be
considered in terms of three qualities:

• Ownership- whether the spaces is publicly or

privately owned.

• Access- whether the public has access to the

place.

• Use – whether the space is actively used and

shared by different individuals and groups.

PUBLIC LIFE:

• Public life occurs in social space used for social interaction, regardless of whether it is
publicly owned or privately owned space, provided it is accessible to the public.

• Public life can be broadly grouped into two interrelated types – ‘formal’ and ‘informal’.

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THE PUBLIC REALM:

The public realm can be considered to be the sites and settings of

formal and informal public life. The concept of physical public realm
extends to all the space accessible to and used by the public, including:

• External public space – those pieces of land lying between private

landholdings (e.g. public squares, streets, highways, parks, parking
lots, stretches of coastline, forest, lakes and rivers.). These are all
spaces that are accessible and available to all.

• Internal public space – various public institutions (libraries,

museums, town halls, etc.) plus most public transport facilities
(train stations, bus stations, airports, etc.)

• External and internal ‘public’ space – although legally private,

some public spaces – university campuses, sports ground,
restaurant, cinemas, theatres, nightclubs, shopping malls – also
form part of the public realm but includes privatized external public
spaces.

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ACCESSIBLE PUBLIC REALM:
• The criterion of universal access (open to all) suggests a single
or unitary public realm.
• A constructivist interpretation, however, suggests there is no
single or unitary public realm since a space that is public for
citizen A may not be public for citizen B.

THE DEMOCRATIC PUBLIC REALM:

The key functions and qualities of the public realm relate to a
notion of a ‘democratic’ (and political) public realm – one that
has a physical or material basis, but which variously facilitates and
symbolizes socio-political activities regarded as important to
democratic citizenship.
THE DECLINE OF THE PUBLIC REALM:

• Use of public realm has been challenged by various developments, such as increased personal
mobility- initially through cars and subsequently through the internet.
• Public realm activities like leisure, entertainment, gaining information and consumption can be
satisfied at home through the television or the internet.
• Domestication of such activities has meant the public spaces are less significant as a focus of
people’s lives.

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NEIGHBOURHOODS:

• Overlaid on the physical and spatial design of a neighbourhood were more

social ideas and objectives, such as social balance (mixed communities),
neighbour interaction and the creation of identity and sense-of-community.

• Three interrelated strands of thinking thus informed neighbourhood design:

 Neighbourhoods have been proposed and/or designed as a planning device – that is,
as a relatively pragmatic and useful way of structuring and organizing urban areas.

 Neighbourhoods have been proposed and/or designed as areas of identity and

character to create or enhance a sense-of-place.

 Neighbourhoods have been proposed and/or designed as a means of creating areas

of greater social/ resident interaction and enhancing neighbourliness.

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SOME WAYS HOW DESIGN CAN SUPPORT NEIGHBOURHOOD DIVERSITY

• by showing how multi-family units can be accommodated in single-family blocks.

• by designing links between diverse land uses and housing types.
• by creating paths through edges that disrupt connectivity.
• by increasing density near public transit.
• by demonstrating the value of non-standard unit types like courtyard housing, closes and
residential mews.
• by fitting small businesses and live/work units in residential neighbourhoods.
• by developing codes that successfully accommodate land-use diversity.
• by softening the impact of big box retail development in under-invested commercial strips.
• by designing streets that function as collective spaces.
• by connecting institutions to their surrounding residential fabric.

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SAFETY AND SECURITY:
• People face a variety of threats in the urban environment – crime, ‘street
barbarism’; acts of terrorism; fast-moving vehicles; natural
disaster/phenomena; and unseen problems such as
air pollution and water contamination.
• Creating a sense of security and safety is an essential
prerequisite of successful urban design.

FEAR OF VICTIMIZATION:

• A distinction should be made between ‘fear’ and ‘risk’- the

difference between ‘feeling safe’ and actually ‘being safe’.
• In response to fear-of-victimisation, many people take precautionary
actions either to avoid the risk or, where risk avoidance is not possible
or desirable, to reduce their exposure through risk management.
• Hence fear-of-victimisation is a cause of exclusion not just from
particular places but from much of the public realm.
• Many people are fearful of certain parts of urban areas, such as
pedestrian subways, dark alleys and areas that are deserted or crowded
with the ‘wrong kind of people’.

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CONTROLLING SPACE: ACCESS AND SOCIAL EXCLUSION

• While by definition, the public realm should be accessible to all, some environments-
intentionally or unintentionally- are exclusionary and are less accessible to certain sections
of society.
• If access control and exclusion are practiced explicitly and widely, the public realm’s
publicness is compromised.

• Lynch and Carr (1979) identified four key public space management tasks:

› Distinguishing between ‘harmful’ and ‘harmless’ activities – controlling the former

without constraining the latter.
› Increasing the general tolerance towards free use, while stabilizing a broad consensus of
what is permissible.
› Separating – in time and space – the activities of groups with a low tolerance for each
other.
› Providing ‘marginal spaces’ where extremely free behavior can go with little damage.

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EXCLUSION CAN BE CONSIDERED IN TERMS OF THE FOLLOWING:

• Excluding conducts: Managing public space

can be discussed in terms of preventing or
excluding certain undesirable social
behaviors. ‘Exclusion Zones’- zones designed
to be free of some undesirable social
characteristics, for example, smoke-free
zones, campaign and politics-free zones,
vehicle-free zones, mobile/cellphone-free
zones, alcohol-free zones etc.
• Excluding people: These kind of
• Exclusion through design: Includes physical exclusions are more active and prevent
exclusion being the inability to access or use the entry of certain individuals or
the environment, regardless of whether or social groups. They include exclusion on
not it can be seen into. Economic access, a the grounds of conduct (behaviour over
form of direct exclusion can be practiced by which people have a choice) as well as
charging an entry fee. Exclusion through on the grounds of status (factors over
design is typically a passive means of which people have no choice- skin
exclusion. colour, gender, age, etc.)

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EQUITABLE ENVIRONMENT:

• If urban design is about making better places for people, then the ‘people’ referred to
are all the potential users of the built environment – old/young, rich/poor, male/female, those
able-bodied and those with disabilities, the ethnic majority and ethnic minorities.
CULTURAL DIFFERENCE AND PUBLIC SPACE:

• The Cultural difference should be celebrated rather than

alleviated.

• As communities have become more ethnically diverse,

these notions of different cultures colliding in the melting
pot of public space can also be extended to how different
ethnic groups use space, and to concerns that these different
patterns of use are inadequately recognized in urban design
processes.
• In urban design it is to be appropriately responsive to the needs of local populations, it is
critical to understand the diversity of views and perspectives among minority groups as
well as among the majority population – though, for a range of religious and cultural
reasons, some minority groups are particularly hard to engage in participatory processes.

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INCLUSIVE DESIGN:

• Whatever the product or the outcome is, inclusive design is not a niche activity, nor one
addressing ‘special needs’, instead, it is about ensuring design outcomes are of greatest
value to the widest possible range of users.

• By its very nature, good design is inclusive and is the responsibility of all built environment
professionals, as well as land and property owners.

• Inclusive design thus aims to:

› Place people at the heart of the design process.

› Acknowledge diversity and difference.
› Offer choice where a single design solution cannot accommodate all users.
› Provide for flexibility in use.
› Create environments that are enjoyable to use for everyone.

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CONCLUSION:

• More than any other dimension, urban design’s Socio Cultural dimension raises a host of
issues concerning values and difficult choices regarding the effects of urban design
decisions on different individuals and groups in society.
• While the aim should be to create an accessible, safe and secure, equitable public realm
for all, economic and social trends can make his increasingly difficult to deliver requiring
urban designers to consider their values and their actions in designing and creating public
spaces.

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THANK YOU

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