William H. Whyte

"William H.(Holly) Whyte (1917-1999) is considered the mentor for Project for Public Spaces because of his seminal work in the study of human behavior in urban settings. While working with the New York City Planning Commission in 1969, Whyte began to wonder how newly planned city spaces were actually working out – something that no one had previously researched. This curiosity led to the Street Life Project, a pioneering study of pedestrian behavior and city dynamics.
PPS founder and president Fred Kent worked as one of Whyte’s research assistants on the Street Life Project, conducting observations and film analyses of corporate plazas, urban streets, parks and other open spaces in New York City. When Kent founded PPS shortly thereafter, he based the organization largely on Whyte’s methods and findings. More than anything, Whyte believed in the perseverance and sanctity of public spaces. For him, small urban places are “priceless,” and the city street is “the river of life…where we come together.” Whyte’s ideas are as relevant today as they were over 30 years ago, and perhaps even more so.
“Whyte’s work remains a living and usable handbook for improving our cities, our countryside, and our lives.”
– Nathan Glazer, Wilson Quarterly
“Holly always believed that the greatest lesson the city has to offer us is the idea that we are all in it together, for better or for worse, and we have to make it work.”
– Paul Goldberger, Architecture

Biography

Whyte was born in West Chester, Pennsylvania in 1917. He joined the staff of Fortune magazine in 1946, after graduating from Princeton University and serving in the Marine Corps. His book The Organization Man (1956), based on his articles about corporate culture and the suburban middle class, sold more than two million copies. Whyte then turned to the topics of sprawl and urban revitalization, and began a distinguished career as a sage of sane development and an advocate of cities.
In 1969 Whyte assisted the New York City Planning Commission in drafting a comprehensive plan for the city. Having been critically involved in the planning of new city spaces, he came to wonder how these spaces were actually working out. No one had researched this before. He applied for and received a grant to study the street life in New York and other cities in what became known as the Street Life Project. With a group of young research assistants, and camera and notebook in hand, he conducted pioneering studies on pedestrian behavior and breakthrough research on city dynamics.
All told, Whyte walked the city streets for more than 16 years. As unobtrusively as possible, he watched people and used time-lapse photography to chart the meanderings of pedestrians. What emerged through his intuitive analysis is an extremely human, often amusing view of what is staggeringly obvious about people’s behavior in public spaces, but seemingly invisible to the inobservant.
The core of Whyte’s work was predicated on the years he spent directly observing human beings, and he authored several texts about urban planning and design and human behavior in various urban spaces. Whyte served as an advisor to Laurence S. Rockefeller on environmental issues and as a key planning consultant for major U.S. cities, traveling and lecturing widely. He was a Distinguished Professor at Hunter College of the City University of New York. He was a trustee of the American Conservation Association, and was active in the Municipal Art Society, the Hudson River Valley Commission and President Lyndon B. Johnson’s Task Force on Natural Beauty.

Perspectives

The Social Life of Public Spaces

Whyte wrote that the social life in public spaces contributes fundamentally to the quality of life of individuals and society. He suggested that we have a moral responsibility to create physical places that facilitate civic engagement and community interaction.

Bottom-Up Place Design

Whyte advocated for a new way of designing public spaces – one that was bottom-up, not top-down. Using his approach, design should start with a thorough understanding of the way people use spaces, and the way they would like to use spaces. Whyte noted that people vote with their feet – they use spaces that are easy to use, that are comfortable. They don’t use the spaces that are not.

The Power of Observation

Whyte suggested that through observation and by talking to people, we can learn a great deal about what people want in public spaces and can put this knowledge to work in creating places that shape livable communities. We should therefore enter spaces without theoretical or aesthetical biases, and “look hard, with a clean, clear mind, and then look again – and believe what you see.”

Quotable

“What attracts people most, it would appear, is other people.”
“One felicity leads to another. Good places tend to be all of a piece – and the reason can almost always be traced to a human being.”
“It is difficult to design a space that will not attract people. What is remarkable is how often this has been accomplished.”
“We are not hapless beings caught in the grip of forces we can do little about, and wholesale damnations of our society only lend a further mystique to organization. Organization has been made by man; it can be changed by man.”
“The street is the river of life of the city, the place where we come together, the pathway to the center.”
“If there’s a lesson in streetwatching it is that people do like basics — and as environments go, a street that is open to the sky and filled with people and life is a splendid place to be.”
“The human backside is a dimension architects seem to have forgotten.”
“Up to seven people per foot of walkway a minute is a nice bustle”
“There is a rash of studies underway designed to uncover the bad consequences of overcrowding. This is all very well as far as it goes, but it only goes in one direction. What about undercrowding? The researchers would be a lot more objective if they paid as much attention to the possible effects on people of relative isolation and lack of propinquity. Maybe some of those rats they study get lonely too.”
“So-called ‘undesirables’ are not the problem. It is the measures taken to combat them that is the problem.”
“I end then in praise of small spaces. The multiplier effect is tremendous. It is not just the number of people using them, but the larger number who pass by and enjoy them vicariously, or even the larger number who feel better about the city center for knowledge of them. For a city, such places are priceless, whatever the cost. They are built of a set of basics and they are right in front of our noses. If we will look.”

The disturbing and sometimes tragic challenge of walking in America

Kaid Benfield, Better! Cities & Towns 
 
"In much of America, walking – that most basic and human method of movement, and the one most important to our health – is all but impossible. Maybe not literally impossible, but inconvenient at best, and tragically dangerous way too often. Chances are that, no matter where we are from, the stretches of road shown in the photos accompanying this article look somewhat familiar.  They might as well be labeled Anywhere, USA.  The one above is from Denver.  The Google Earth image below shows the US Route 1 corridor in Woodbridge, Virginia, about 25 miles south of downtown Washington, DC.  I'm going to spend some time on Woodbridge today because of some incidents that have occurred there.
   US Route 1, Woodbridge, VA (via Google Earth)
Home to the Potomac Mills discount mega-mall and not far from the Quantico Marine Corps base, Woodbridge is a diverse “census-designated place and magisterial district” whose population is 42 percent white, 28 percent black, and 32 percent Hispanic.  It was mostly farms and light industrial complexes until the 1980s when it began to be more suburbanized.  What you see in the satellite view are, among other things, several auto dealerships and automobile service facilities, some single-family homes, some apartments, a trailer park, and a self-storage facility; all seem sort of plopped down by happenstance.
What you don’t see are any but the crudest accommodations for walking.  This particular part of Woodbridge is a place for being either indoors or in a motor vehicle.  If you were, say, an employee at the Pep Boys auto parts store, didn’t have a car on a given day, and wanted to grab a sandwich for lunch at Wendy’s right across the street, you’d have to walk nearly a mile, round trip, to cross the road with the benefit of a traffic signal.  Even then, half your trip would have no sidewalk.
 looking north on US Route 1, Woodbridge, VA (via Google Earth)
What many people with limited time would understandably do in that situation, instead, is attempt to cross the road using the shortest and most direct route between Pep Boys and Wendy’s, and hope their instincts and powers of observation would enable them to do so without getting hit.  Some people do exactly that, without consequence.
But other pedestrians aren’t so lucky.  If they do get hit by a motor vehicle, under Virginia law the pedestrian is at fault for “interfering with traffic.”  Cars come first in the eyes of the law, and anyone who fails to respect that axiom takes chances in more ways than one.
I mention all this because it’s more or less what actually happens on this stretch of Route 1.  Videographer Jay Mallin has made a video about it.  It’s at the bottom of this post, it’s good, and you should watch it.  But first allow me to take a bit more of your time by setting the context.
 Pep Boys and Wendy's on Route 1 (via Google Earth)
I was reminded of this story while browsing some articles I had saved on my Google Reader, one of which was “How pedestrians interfere with traffic,” written by the astute and prolific David Alpert on the Greater Greater Washington blog.  David was impressed with Mallin’s video, which tells the story of two men who were hit by motor vehicles while trying to cross the road in separate incidents near the section of Route 1 that I marked.  (You can see the Wendy’s in the background of the video.)  Both pedestrians were evacuated to the hospital, and both were charged by police with interfering with traffic.  The drivers were not charged.
Some would-be pedestrians in similar circumstances suffer far worse consequences, unfortunately.  As some readers may remember, in 2011 a working single mother named Raquel Nelson was convicted of homicide after her four-year-old son was killed while both were trying to cross a busy road in suburban Atlanta.  They were on their way home, carrying groceries after getting off the bus at a stop with no convenient crosswalk.  As I wrote then, whatever Nelson’s legal culpability, I find it shocking that Atlanta officials chose to exercise their discretion to prosecute her for homicide under those circumstances.  At least in that case the driver, who had been drinking and taking painkillers, and who had fled the scene, was also charged.
The nonprofit advocacy coalition Transportation for America (NRDC is a member) has found that, from 2000 through 2009, more than 47,700 pedestrians were killed in the United States.  This is the equivalent of a jumbo jet full of passengers crashing roughly every month.  On top of that, more than 688,000 pedestrians were injured over the decade, a number equivalent to a pedestrian being struck by a car or truck every 7 minutes.
   Tom Mason, courtesy of Transportation for America)
Even if you’re not killed or injured, you can't help but find much of suburban America inhospitable to walking.  Just this week, Ben Ross reported in Greater Greater Washington that it took him eight and a half minutes to cross legally to the other side of a Maryland street, traversing 28 traffic lanes along the way.  Two pedestrians had been severely injured at the same intersection earlier this month.  Is it any wonder that, in the US, those with a choice choose to drive even the shortest of distances?
In 1973, sixty percent of American kids walked to school; by 2006, that portion had dropped to a paltry 13 percent.  As a sign that times have changed, a story surfaced a few years ago that a mom and her 12-year-old son in Saratoga Springs, New York, were actually forbidden to ride bikes together to the son’s school, even on a bike path separated from car traffic.  On the other side of the country, Laguna Beach refused to join over 400 California communities participating in International Walk to School Day, a supervised event, because “there are few sidewalks, winding roads with blind corners and a considerable distance for our students to travel and we cannot endorse walking or biking to school.”
In Montgomery County, Maryland, the local Department of Transportation refused parents’ request for a crosswalk linking a large residential development to an elementary school right across the street because “the safest way is to have them bused to school” instead.  If walking is no longer safe and convenient in relatively upscale Saratoga Springs and Laguna Beach, how are we going to fix a suburbanizing place whose residents may struggle to afford cars and arguably are even more in need of good alternatives?
 intersection that puts people first (by and courtesy of Dhiru Thadani)
Jeff Speck’s current book Walkable City provides some answers, but they aren’t going to work everywhere.  His “ten steps of walkability” to create urban environments more conducive to foot travel include such effective measures as placing more housing downtown, restricting free parking, and coordinating transit with nearby land uses.  If we do these things in Boise or Houston or Greensboro or even Bakersfield, it is likely that we will, indeed, make the city more walkable.
But can we have a walkable city where we don’t have a city in the first place?  What if the location is just a “census-designated place” with a bunch of uncoordinated and unplanned properties that somehow ended up near each other along a high-speed road?  The stretch of Route 1 in Woodbridge is not remotely ready for sophisticated measures. 
I suppose one answer is that, as the economy allows new businesses and homes to be built in and around the bad stuff, we gradually can make the newer land uses better and more “walk-ready” over time, so that the place can function better for pedestrians when the good stuff reaches critical mass.  That might take a while, though, because many of these places are not the kind of prosperous communities where change can occur rapidly and with the degree of investment necessary to do it right.
Maybe Jeff could write a sort of prequel to his book (easy for me to say), with ten preliminary steps to get a mess of a place such as Route 1 in Woodbridge ready for the ten steps of walkability featured in his current one.
  Arthur Wendel, courtesy of Transportation for America)
Whatever the right approach, it matters:  a lot of places in America are a lot like Woodbridge.  And, if we don’t start exercising more, including by walking, the prospects for our collective health are daunting.  The single most alarming public health trend in the United States today is the dramatic rise in overweight and obesity, bringing serious risks of heart disease, diabetes and other consequences leading to life impairment and premature death.
While these are complex challenges, and there are many factors at play, our country’s sedentary lifestyle is an important one.  In a massive study of half a million residents of Salt Lake County, researchers at the University of Utah found that an average-sized man weighed 10 pounds less if he lived in a walkable neighborhood – “those that are more densely populated, designed to be more friendly to pedestrians and have a range of destinations for pedestrians” – versus a less walkable one.   A woman of average size weighed six pounds less.   Other research has found that men and women age 50–71 who took a brisk walk nearly every day had a 27 percent reduced death rate compared to non-exercisers.
This isn't the first time I have written on this subject, and it certainly won't be the last.  It's too important to ignore.
Now, as promised, here’s the video:
Kaid Benfield is director of sustainable communities at The Natural Resources Defense Council in Washington, DC. This blog also appeared on NRDC Switchboard where Kaid writes (almost) daily about community, development, and the environment.

For more in-depth coverage: 
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Fonte e imagens: http://bettercities.net/news-opinion/blogs/kaid-benfield/19343/disturbing-and-sometimes-tragic-challenge-walking-america

Manual de Boas Práticas em Espaços Verdes

"Os espaços verdes são concebidos para cumprirem determinados objectivos gerais e particulares considerando as condições físicas em que vão ser instalados e mantidos. Neste capítulo são revistos os aspectos fundamentais a ponderar no processo de concepção dos espaços verdes, incluindo factores económicos, ambientais, sociais e estéticos.

O sucesso dos espaços verdes depende em grande medida de factores ambientais locais, como o solo e a água, porque estes influenciam directamente o estabelecimento e o crescimento das plantas seleccionadas para constituírem a essência desses lugares. São, por esse motivo,desenvolvidos neste capítulo os temas da preparação do solo, rega, drenagem e a selecção e instalação de relvados e de árvores, arbustos e herbáceas. À medida que se expandem para áreas naturais, as cidades podem passar a incorporar alguns dos elementos originais dessas áreas que funcionarão no futuro como espaços verdes.

É apresentado, por isso, neste capítulo um conjunto de indicações muito valiosas quanto à preservação de árvores em locais de construção. Serão finalmente abordadas opções de utilização de materiais inertes, mobiliário, pavimentos e outros elementos.

O sucesso dos espaços verdes depende em grande medida de factores ambientais áreas naturais, as cidades podem passar a incorporar alguns dos elementos originais dessas áreas que funcionarão no futuro como espaços verdes.

É apresentado, por isso, neste capítulo um conjunto de indicações muito valiosas quanto à preservação de árvores em locais de construção. Serão finalmente abordadas opções de utilização de materiais inertes, mobiliário, pavimentos e outros elementos. dos espaços verdes, incluindo factores económicos, ambientais, sociais e estéticos.locais, como o solo e a água, porque estes influenciam directamente



Download de ficheiros.
Glossário (PDF - 418 Kb)
1 Análise do local e envolvente (PDF - 425 Kb)
2 Preparação do solo (PDF - 261 Kb)
3 Rega e Drenagem (PDF - 335 Kb)
4 Selecção e instalação de espécies vegetais (PDF - 1.913 Kb)
5. Sugestão de Espécies Vegetais para as condições da cidade Bragança (PDF -189 Kb)
6. Preservação de árvores em locais de obra (PDF - 389 Kb)



Manutenção e gestão.
Uma vez instalados, os espaços verdes necessitam de um conjunto de cuidados, permanentes ou temporários, destinados a manter as suas estruturas e funções. Estes cuidados consistem em práticas diversas, aplicadas principalmente a árvores, arbustos e relvados, de forma a assegurar a sua vitalidade e sanidade bem como outros aspectos relevantes, designadamente elementos estéticos.

Incluem-se neste capítulo de manutenção e gestão as práticas ligadas à fertilização, rega e drenagem, podas de árvores e arbustos, manutenção de relvados e protecção de árvores contra agentes nocivos. Uma vez que existem riscos associados à manutenção de árvores de grande porte em espaços urbanos, particularmente das mais debilitadas, dedica-se um sub-capítulo à sua minimização.

Outros aspectos fundamentais da gestão de espaços verdes são a manutenção de corredores ripícolas nas cidades, elementos essenciais da sua estrutura e funcionamento, o destino a dar aos materiais resultantes das práticas de manutenção, nomeadamente os resíduos de podas e dos corte de relva, e as regras de limpeza e segurança dos espaços verdes.

São ainda descritos os métodos seguidos na complexa tarefa de recolha, análise de utilização de quantidades muito elevadas de informação relativa aos espaços verdes e aos seus elementos constituintes. tão as práticas ligadas à fertilização, rega e drenagem, podas de árvores e arbustos, manutenção ripícolas nas cidades, elementos essenciais da sua estrutura e funcionamento, o destino a dar aos materiais resultantes das práticas de manutenção, nomeadamente os resíduos de podas e dos corte de relva, e as regras de limpeza e segurança dos espaços verdes.

São ainda descritos os métodos seguidos na complexa tarefa de recolha, análise de utilização de quantidades muito elevadas de informação relativa elementos estéticos.

Incluem-se neste capítulo de manutenção e gestão de relvados e protecção de árvores contra agentes nocivos. Finalmente, dedica-se atenção ao envolvimento e participação da população na gestão dos espaços verdes porque estes só fazem sentido se considerados em conjunto com os seus utilizadores que podem desempenhar um papel fundamental na sua gestão e na sua manutenção nas melhores condições.


Download de ficheiros.
7. Fertilização (PDF - 210 Kb)
8. Rega (PDF - 464 Kb)
9 Relvados (PDF - 611 Kb)
10 Manutenção de Árvores (PDF - 568 Kb)
11 Manutenção de Arbustos (PDF - 663 Kb)
12 Protecção das árvores contra agentes nocivos (PDF - 883 Kb)
13 Árvores de risco (PDF - 604 Kb)
14 Linhas de água e galerias ripícolas (PDF - 224 Kb)
15 Inventário e Gestão da Informação (PDF - 1.523 Kb)
16 Resíduos de Jardim (PDF - 190 Kb)
17 Envolvimento e part. da população na gestão dos espaços verdes (PDF - 249 Kb)
18 Segurança e higiene nos espaços verdes (PDF - 230 Kb)"