New City Spaces [ALBUM: Reviving Urban Open Space (Review)]

A L B U M Review: If You Build It ... Jan Gehl and Lars Gemzoe, New City Spaces, (Copenhagen: Danish Architectural Press, 2000) There seems to have been no shortage of hand-wringing in recent years about the decline of public open space—the plazas, squares, parks and streets that are the classic elements of the tra- ditional public realm—and public life. Yet few debates have been characterized by the confusion of passion, romanticism and multiple reference points as this one has, especially in regard to American cities. The basic construction of the argument sug- gests that there was a golden age of public space and public life to which we might return, or at least refer, though when that might have been is rarely stated explicitly. In fact, it might be more constructive to regard public space and public life as evolving conditions, and to hope always for spaces that expand, rather than contract, possibili- ties for public life. In New City Spaces, Jan Gehl and Lars Gemzoe, students of and advocates for the remarkable transformation of Copenhagen’s downtown streets and squares over the last thirty years, offer an updated assessment of urban public spaces, primarily in Europe. (Their previous book, Public Spaces, Public Life, won an edra/Places Award for Place Research in 1998). In the context of this debate, Gehl and Gemzoe’s book makes important contributions. First, the authors set forth clearly and succinctly what they consider to be the fundamental roles of public space—meeting place, market place and thoroughfare—attributes that provide a sound starting point for any discussion about what’s happening to the public realm. Second, and just as importantly, the authors re-assert the critical relationship between public space and pedestrian life. They argue convinc- ingly that the force acting most persistently against the cultivation of good public space is “car culture” (not the privatization of public space nor the exponential increase in telecommunica- tion), precisely because it so thoroughly destabi- lizes pedestrian life. Conversely, the authors demonstrate the powerful ways in which good urban transit, which turns passengers into pedes- trians at both ends of the trip, supports street life and public space—especially when coordinated with land-use policy. Furthermore, Gehl and Gemzoe provide a useful description of the relationship between car culture, urban form, pedestrian life and public space by suggesting clear distinctions between traditional cities, “invaded cities” (whose urban pattern was established before the automobile but have been invaded by cars) and “abandoned cities” (whose physical form was established largely after the advent of automobiles, and which therefore PLACES 14:2