Urbanism: urban design, & public art and space quality

Urbanism: Urban Design, Architecture & Public Space Quality is the seventeenth article assessing the dialectic of architecture and urban design in the urbanism field. I will go through this relationship from the top scale of urbanism in the city to the smallest scale of urbanism components of urban space.

This article is focused on the creation of urban public space within urban planning, urban design, and architecture and analyzing the quality of urban public space. Urban planners, regardless of their specialty, define needs when building the local development plan for a town or neighborhood. Within this plan, all public spaces and nodes, people movement, and economic functions are studied and analyzed. In the local development plan, new public spaces are allocated and defined for several functions. Urban designers take their role in studying and analyzing further the allocated urban public space. Urban public space can serve many functions including an open area between buildings and new buildings under construction to create new public transit nodes for metro, train, or bus stations see Figure 1 Tokyo station is surrounded by open area and landscape.

Urban public space is created by urban designers to serve as a development for an area traffic intersection within an existing development or a new proposed urban development. A series of open spaces within the development is connected to a new urban open space identified by urban planners and designers. This open space serves as part of a network of open areas as a movement corridor in the city or town. Urban regeneration programs and development focus on creating new urban spaces either for green landscapes or to create an urban corridor to link the old neighborhoods to each other and transit areas to bring life to the old city. That is to encourage more urban development and attract investment from other parts of the country or world. See Figure 2 the Ciutat Vella urban corridor in Barcelona.

Urban public space is created within the urban renewal programs and projects to revitalize a town or deprived neighborhood to add a social gathering point for the community. A landscaped area within a development could bring life to a derelict town area and become a social gathering urban space. See Figure 3, the botanic garden in Jerusalem.

People gather in many areas in the city such as landscape areas, open spaces near stations and buildings, and water features in the middle of a town, and some areas are created for specific events like avenues for military or public ceremonies. In many areas of the world urban renewal programs reform public spaces to include venues for public events, ceremonies, and private events like fashion and music shows in Paris, Barcelona, Berlin, and other European countries. Urban designers focus on creating urban public space for events in their development plans for towns and cities.

Squares in road networks and even within urban development in old areas of towns and cities are reformed to include memorial sculptures. This status could be a military figure, political figure, scientific figure, people of high contribution to the country, and art people like writers. These memorial spaces are located within a roundabout or open urban space to add a focal point where people gather for socializing, and it becomes a source for conversation inspirations.

Public art become in recent years part and a tool to add attraction to the urban public space. In many countries of Europe, it become a fashion and also a tool to cover deprived areas of the town. Areas of deprived zones in a town that are not included in urban development either lack interest, funds, social value, historical context, or economic value become areas of introducing fashion of art and craft work on walls and alleys. See Figure 4, public art painting on old homes and buildings.

Public art of this type, figure 4, in many cases, does not have any purpose. This type of art does not indicate what type of conversation with the public is targeted and what is the social benefit of it. Public art in urban open spaces is intended to have meaning and to create function whether it is political, economic, social, environmental, and so on. A study should be conducted on the effect of this type of art on the public and the neighborhood it is created.

There are certain criteria to define and plot public art in urban open spaces in a town. Neighborhood, or city. The location of public art is selected depending on the goals of this project and the general criteria of locating public art in urban space. First, the location should have a direct relation to the meaning of the public art. Second, it should have a human function like aesthetic, conversational, and other. Third, public art should fit the context, which means it should have a direct relation to the surroundings not only urban space but physical environment such as buildings and landscape. Fourth, it should be a focal point within the image of the city, it should serve as a landmark to direct social movement in the city.

In this way, public art within the urban space could serve as a memorial incident. For example, a historical memorial could be plotted in many areas of the city. In some countries like France, they chose to locate the Arc de Triumph with the axis between the Louvre Museum and the new Paris Gate. A National Day memorial could be plotted in an urban public space in the center of a city that could be used to hold an event for that day. A large-scale flag on a high steel pole could serve this goal as it is applied in many cities in the Middle East region.

Public art could point to a scientific advance in any field of knowledge like the innovation of the automobile, the invention of the steam engine in Spain, the printing machine in Germany, and the sand clock in Baghdad. See Figure 5, the public art of air compressors in Yokohama Japan.

Many public arts in the world serve to put in memory of the city or town people a memory of disaster this location passed. For example, a typhoon that caused great damage to people, a pandemic that killed lots of people, or a location where a battle happened. two places in the world have this type of public art that served this purpose the 11 September attacks in New York and the Hiroshima and Nagasaki nuclear attacks on the two cities. These two special public arts have had a great effect on people’s emotions to this day.

Public figures are memorized through a public art sculpture in an urban open space whether it’s a roundabout or within an open space fitted to this purpose. The public figures that have contributed to the country in various ways could be political figures like the president of the country, and military figures like Napoleon, a scientist who has introduced a new theory contributing to world knowledge and science.

Finally, public art could be connected to a global event related to the environment, education, industry, and society. For example, in Japan in Kita-Urawa Park there are many public arts in various locations one of which is the Bankara Statue as a sign for people to remember that there was a high school in this place. The statue is a high school boy wearing a school uniform with a hat on his head.