Thanks to John from my post the other day on shared spaces for providing the link for this video. It is just under 60 minutes long but well worth watching. It is described as:
Small fragment of William H. Whyte’s witty and original film about the open spaces of cities and why some of them work for people while others do not.
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Love Whyte. This video has a companion book: The Social Life of Small Places.
http://www.scribd.com/doc/32984768/The-Social-Life-of-Small-Urban-Spaces
Down to earth and fascinating – the performativity and patterns of the banal street spaces. Such a retro film – I wonder if someone made a film on the same subject now, how different would it be to this 1980 analysis?
Here are some changes I would expect to see, mostly obvious but it’s fun to think about it:
-the ubiquity of mobile phone use
-the reduction in smoking and associated behaviour patterns
-probably a decline in informal street businesses, depending on locale
The seating/social patterns and tendency of people to attract other people is pure anthropology 101 and will not change.
I picked up the book when I was living in Montreal. Great book – I still have it.
Interesting. Yes plazas essential for great city. Places to meet and watch. Best spot in Auckland CBD would be Freyberg……few other close runs. Can see why the Newmarket station plaza is a fail. Does any plaza in auckland have moveable chairs? Those one’s in Wynnard still there?
Takutai Square has moveable beanbags…
And we see that the office building plazas or ‘public spaces’ created as part of floor spaces bonus schemes (2min 45sec) are consistently dead zones. The ASB building and the old Vodafone/ARC building on Pitt and Hopetoun are good examples.