“What is a neighbourhood? […] the portion of the town you can get around easily on foot or...that part of the town you don’t need to go, precisely because you are already there. […]”
— George Perec, Species of Spaces and Other Pieces, London, Penguin Classic, 2008
“If facilities are provided for bringing ordinary domestic activities - repairs, hobbies, meal preparations, and meals - out on the public side of the residencies, life between buildings can be substantially enriched.”
Jan Gehl, Life between buildings: Using Public Space, Island Press, 2011
Probably a classic for planners and urban designers, I found this book really enjoyable. Reading it projected me in cafes, pedestrian streets, squares, Scandinavian and Italian cities. It reminded me of the type of analysis that me and my friend undertook at university. We would go around the city and count how many people and cars were passing by the main station square. We would go around the council estates to survey how residents were taking ownership of undefined communal space. There was no such book to inspiring us in observing the life between buildings, only our unconscious interest and curiosity in understanding how people’s life and encounters are influenced by the design of buildings and spaces between buildings.
This book is like a notebook of meaningful observations of the public life! Take the book, sit in a café and you will draw a parallel between the described world and the observed world.
