City: Rediscovering the Center
William H. Whyte
For sixteen years William H. Whyte walked the streets of New York and other major cities. With a group of young observers, camera and notebook in hand, he conducted pioneering studies of street life, pedestrian behavior, and city dynamics. City: Rediscovering the Center is the result of that research, a humane, often amusing view of what is staggeringly obvious about the urban environment but seemingly invisible to those responsible for planning it.
Highlights
Context is all important. How a walkway works depends very much on what is on either side of it. If it is hemmed in by walls it may feel narrower than it actually is. If it is bordered by open space, it may borrow some of the space and feel the wider for it.
Absolute widths are important too. A foot of walkway width on a narrow sidewalk is different from a foot on a wide one. Statistically, the pedestrian density might be the same. The walking experience, however, might be quite different. On the narrow sidewalk there will be less choice; on the wide one, more — more passing lanes, more opportunities for maneuver. Because formulas do not make allowances for such differences, they understate the case for adding width to narrow sidewalks and overstate it for wide sidewalks.
A very wide sidewalk without trees is not a comfortable space. This proved the case with Chicago’s North Michigan Avenue. Along one stretch the sidewalks were made thirty feet wide. This proved such a surfeit of space that it was decided to fill it up a bit. They put in trees and grassy plots with chains around them. They did this so expansively that the walkway width was narrowed to about ten feet.
A good entrance draws people — not just those who mean to go in, but those who do so out of impulse. It draws them not by forcing a decision, but by making a decision unnecessary.
Indentations in building walls sometimes provide wind traps. If they also have the benefit of unobscured sun they can become good standing places. I know of no instance where such niches have been planned, though it would be good if they were. Some bus shelters have been designed with wind partially in mind.
When people start to fill up a space, they do not distribute themselves evenly across it, and they do not head for the emptiest places. They go where other people are, or reasonably close. At Seagram, the most favored spots are the corners of the front steps. This is where the buildup often begins.
One school of thought holds that incentive zoning was a good idea flawed in execution. But the basic flaw has been in the process itself. If people who hold up standards then encourage departures from those standards, exceptions beget exceptions.