ARCHITECTURE URBAN PLANNING

For more than forty years Jan Gehl has helped to transform urban environments around the world based on his research into the ways people actually use’or could use’the spaces where they live and work. In this revolutionary book, Gehl presents his latest work creating (or recreating) cityscapes on a human scale. He clearly explains the methods and tools he uses to reconfigure unworkable cityscapes into the landscapes he believes they should be: cities for people.

Taking into account changing demographics and changing lifestyles, Gehl emphasizes four human issues that he sees as essential to successful city planning. He explains how to develop cities that are Lively, Safe, Sustainable, and Healthy. Focusing on these issues leads Gehl to think of even the largest city on a very small scale. For Gehl, the urban landscape must be considered through the five human senses and experienced at the speed of walking rather than at the speed of riding in a car or bus or train. This small-scale view, he argues, is too frequently neglected in contemporary projects.

In a final chapter, Gehl makes a plea for city planning on a human scale in the fast- growing cities of developing countries. A “Toolbox,a presenting key principles, overviews of methods, and keyword lists, concludes the book.
The book is extensively illustrated with over 700 photos and drawings of examples from Gehl’s work around the globe.

What would a modern city look like if it was designed around people instead of traffic, around public spaces instead of roads? Why are some European cities so full of people walking and cycling? Architect and author Jan Gehl presents a convincing proposal for how to make desolate urban spaces attractive to people by using the physical limitations of the human body, or, as he puts it, “the human dimension.”

Gehl argues that because humans look straight ahead most of the time, what’s at eye level should catch a pedestrian’s interest enough to want to linger a while on a city street. Such spaces must also be safe, sustainable, and healthy for human occupation. Flat walls of glass and buildings higher than four stories are not only uninteresting (except perhaps for touristy gawks at skyscrapers) but cold and uninviting. Such areas make people want to hurry past instead of stop and look around. Gehl notes that urban areas built with cyclists and pedestrians in mind first are more often used than those with motor vehicle traffic patterns as the foundation of their design.

Gehl has spent the last four decades studying how people use public spaces in cities, as well as the potential for increasing the utilization of those spaces. His designs have revivified urban areas in Melbourne, Copenhagen, London, and New York City as well as others. His previously published books include Life Between Buildings: Using Public Space and Public Spaces, Public Life.

Cities for People delineates an important dynamic for urban life: a city survives only if its residents make use of its public spaces on an ongoing basis, and those residents will only do so if the city feels clean, safe, and interesting to them. Gehl’s emphasis on starting with people instead of traffic when designing or redesigning urban areas makes eminent sense.

Gehl’s prose is easy to follow, with few technical terms. Students of architecture, urban planners, or anyone interested in how human activity centers—small downtowns and metropolises alike—could be improved should find a lot to ponder in these chapters. Plentiful illustrations illuminate Gehl’s points in each chapter, and a “Toolbox” section functions as a kind of starter kit for city planners.

First Edition. pp. x, 269 illusts. #301224 (Name on fep, otherwise pristine.)