All organisms, including human beings, interacts with its environment. Our built environment refers to buildings and public spaces. The public space must be built with the concept of ‘we’ and our collective concerns. Now what does it mean for a public space to be “well-designed”? Is it about how it looks? Or how it works? Or how it feels to be in it? And for whom is it designed for? All of these questions must be considered.
“A city’s environment is not only shaped by people who have an important influence but by everyone who lives or works there.” – Robert Cowan
So a city is a place about its people and so are the public spaces. A public space should be ‘shared’, ‘communal’, ‘inclusive’ and ‘accessible’. The spaces that ‘work’ because people of all ages and backgrounds use them, they feel comfortable there, are apt to linger and to congregate, not only as a mass, but alone or in clusters of family and friends. These are places where the unplanned, informal, and theatre of the street finds life. In physical terms it is the core of society, and that core should be inclusive in order to work.
Social inclusion is one of the key factor for the public spaces to work. But with the increase diversity in human race and people with different enabling powers, inclusion in public spaces is suffering. Many people experience barriers within the built environment due to environmental restrictions. Barrier means any obstacle that prevents people from fully participating in all aspects of public space and their ability to move independently. This is where the public space is losing its inclusivity to these barriers.
In order to ensure the inclusivity in public space, the barriers that create undue effort and separation should be removed. It enables everyone to participate equally, confidently, and independently in everyday activities. By identifying specific barriers and removing them, opportunities for inclusion may arise. In doing so, it provides change in values, attitudes, offers dignity, and allows a sense of belonging to people. It acknowledges diversity and differences that accommodate a larger population and create an environment that provides social justice and empowerment.
The three major aspects for social inclusivity are visual inclusivity, non-visual inclusivity and socially secure inclusivity. Visual or physical inclusivity accommodates visual barriers that prevent someone to fully participate in a public space. Vision is the most primary sense, built space is visible to the eye providing knowledge about the physical environment. If any public space has high barricaded walls, it will create the barriers for the vision that further forms the mental image of non-welcoming or dangerous space even if that space is open for all. For example, the Punjab Assembly in Lahore should be approached by any citizen because of Pakistan being a democratic country and assembly building listing as a public building. But the high barricaded walls around the assembly by the Government makes it impossible for the citizens to ever even think of approaching the building.
As a public space, there should be no visual barriers, instead there should be a welcoming impact. Also, inclusively designed spaces must be fully accessible for people to use, regardless of their age and abilities. While talking about abilities, there are people in the public with different enabling abilities. For example providing a staircase instead of a ramp/slope in a public space is also a visual barrier for wheelchair users, mothers with strollers or an old person with cane. If ramp is provided in a public space than anyone can transverse through that including the differently able people without need for any instructions. Because the staircase is for a specific type of public and not a solution for all.
The second aspect for the inclusivity is non visual or psychological aspect of public spaces. Human beings have five different senses in total. Their abilities to sense the surrounding are all connected to the mind and interpretation of information in surrounding is different for all. Firstly, people use their senses to search for cues, which are visual and non-visual clues as information of our surrounding. Access to information is necessary for the general population to provide knowledge and control of the environment. So when someone is walking on the street and there is some perfect mannequin wearing a perfect dress in the large glass window of some shop, it makes the person feel that he/she is not enough, never be that perfect. This is what a non-visual barrier is, that hinders the person to fully participate in his/her surroundings. Look out for these non-visual barriers as human mind can be tricked to process through those barriers.
These non-visual barriers can be comprehend with celebrating the diversity and providing the ownership and comfort to a person in society. The general point is that certain kinds of spaces encourage encounters while others do not. Open plan offices, for example, encourage more interaction. Instead, the removal of physical walls tends to make people put up psychological and communicative barriers in their place – people become ferociously protective of ‘their’ cubicle and communicate less often than when there are walls and doors that people can pass in and out of and engage in a more intimate and controllable fashion. Similarly in a blank public space, people find no means or motivation to interact.
According to Sennett (2002): encounters are encouraged not by a blank canvas but by furniture and ‘breaks’ that encourage people to stop, sit, and take in their surroundings. These breaks can provide through different cultural ownership values. An example of active inclusion comes in the shape of the US National Statuary Collection in the Capitol Building, Washington, DC, and a collection that depicts two worthies from every state. American visitors seemed most eager to find out which statues belonged to their home state, and thus gain a sense of their own presence in such august surroundings.
The third main aspect for the social inclusion is secure public space or secure interaction. This aspect is a combination of visual and non-visual inclusivity. For example if a visual sense of a person sees a security guard in a public space, then that person would be comfortable to dwell in that space and this ensures the inclusiveness. If a public space is notorious for being racist, the person with racism complex would never feel secure to dwell in that public space. That is how a public space not being a secure enough forms a barriers for people to dwell.
Public spaces must tune into how people of different gender identities and expressions navigate and use a public space in order to understand the best ways to make all people feel welcomed and safe. The topic of safety tends to dominate any discussion around gender-inclusive spaces. While features like clear entrance and exit paths, visible wayfinding, and unobstructed lines of sight into a public space can make everyone feel more at ease in a park or plaza. To make a place for people of all gender expressions and sexual identities, the key is making a space feel not only open, but also exciting. For example a public space is where everyone have something of their interest can results in inclusive public space.
In public spaces, one size most certainly does not fit all. The replication in public spaces is common but repetition results in “aggressive blandness.” To counter this situation, a public space should do the outreach process, tapping into the values and uses of different groups and by providing amenities for different cultural activities. This is how the social inclusivity in public space forms with maintaining a mindset of deep listening, to ensure that a space is always a place of genuine cultural exchange.
The design of a place can evoke strong feelings, from aversion to attachment. A key purpose of a public space is to create room for people to take part in civic, physical, and social activity, and each aspect of public space should consider how to extend that function to as many members of the community as possible. As Stephen Frost said,
“Unless you consciously include, you will unconsciously exclude.”
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