What is space?

So this is one of the last blogs that I am going to write here, so I think that it is appropriate to break down what I have found regarding space. What is space within the city? What makes it work? Is all space good? Does “green” or plants always make it a better space? These are all questions I asked myself at the beginning, and now feel that I have enough of a grasp from research and analysis to at least try to answer them.

What is space within the city?
Space is any form of relief from the urban fabric in which people can utilize in whatever form they need. Sometimes it is a situation in which people use as a gathering space to meet and move on to the next event, other times it is somewhere where people can sit and remove themselves from the density and way of life in the city. The first can be such places as the intersections of the Cerda block in Barcelona, which were designed with chamfered corners to create a figural void that can be used for gathering or green space, or even the left over spaces when multiple city grids come together and are combined with a concrete plaza space. The later can be such places as parks, a beach, or large open spaces. They tend to be green, or surrounded by the feeling of nature, as that can engulf the person and make them truly feel like they have left the city even when they are in the middle of it.

What makes it work?
The main thing that makes a space within the city work is merely that it meets the needs of the people who live/work around it and use it. It doesn’t need to have anything in particular, just simply be utilized. That sounds so simple, but as an architecture student I was searching for something, and object or an event, that makes a space work. But there is no overriding object or event that makes every space that it exists in work. It is the people, and an unsuccessful plaza is one in which the people that are around it and using it see no way in which to utilize it and move on to the next space. When the people don’t use it, it goes into disrepair. This is when you see such events and unkempt green spaces, building facades falling apart, and spaces that turn into parking lots because that’s the only thing people will use it for. This is what the space behind the Boqueria has turned into, as well as what Plaza Reial had become before the renewal.

Is all space good?
This question is kind of a double edge sword. In one respect any relief from the urban density is good. It creates at least some form of open space in which the monotony of city blocks can be broken. But space must be planned accordingly with its surroundings. To many open spaces within a small area makes for some bad spaces. Some of the spaces will not be utilized, and fall into disrepair. There are also situations in which it is a poorly planned space or its surroundings. Some spaces I have come across were not thought out with regards to their users, which made them bad spaces.

Does “green” or plants always make it a better space?
This was a shock to me. At first I believed that putting greenery into a space immediately made it better. But in seeing multiple urban spaces, I realized that there are many extremely successful spaces that have no greenery as well as spaces that have greenery but are very unsuccessful. But I also realized that what made the spaces with greenery unsuccessful was not the greenery itself, but the effect that I explained earlier about an unused plaza that falls into disrepair because no one will take care of it. So, again, I found out in my research that it is not about whether the green space is there or not. It is about whether the plaza as a whole meets the needs of the people around it and using it. Sometimes those people need a space with greenery in which to feel a hint of nature within the city, but in other situations they need a place to meet with friends or family and to simply get outside and sit on a bench and watch the people go by.

So it ended up that all of these questions pretty much come to one answer. People the success of a space, the space does not govern what the people do. So analysis of space on a more specific level needs to involve sitting on sites and observing what the people do, and seeing what the area is in need of. It becomes important to ask questions such as what do people do here, and does it provide the situation in which they can do it in. This, as I came to find out, is a very difficult topic to actually study. It has so many layers, one must look at use and then what could further facilitate that. Sometimes it is grass and trees, other times it is a stone plaza with benches and a fountain. It is different for every city block you walk, as well as different by the types of plazas that surround it.