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With due consideration to human, cultural, and social factors, the presenter will examine Bollnow’s tenets of experienced space in relation to Jacobs, Whyte, the Project for Public Spaces, and Oldenburg’s assertions for the importance of urban planning and place design.
If you travel to a new city and wonder where you are, you might ask someone to tell you where you are, consult a map, or use a cell phone GPS. Space in this sense refers largely to a geographical location, a place on the planet associated with a set of mathematical coordinates. However, knowing where you are locationally and the lived experiences of space are very different things. “The spatiality of human life” according to Bollnow (2011), “and the space experienced by the human being thus correspond to each other” (p. 24). A person’s experienced space requires four things: a) making a home; b) avoiding isolation in a person’s inner space; c) Inclusion in life exterior to one’s home; and d) having trust in the greater space (p. 288). Space is a lived experience where humans “realize [their] human nature” (p. 289).
The purpose of this paper is to explore space as a lived experience. Specifically, Bollnow’s tenets of experienced space will be explored in relation to the writings of Jane Jacobs, William H., Whyte, the Project for Public Spaces, and Ray Oldenburg – four proponents for the importance of urban planning and/or place design with due consideration to human, cultural, and social factors. Jacobs (1992) asserted: “The more successfully a city mingles everyday diversity of uses and users in its everyday streets, the more successfully, casually (and economically) its people thereby enliven and support well-located parks that can thus give back grace and delight to their neighborhoods instead of vacuity.” Urban design influences social movement, connectivity, possibility, and vitality. In his book The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces, Whyte (1980) summarized the qualities of successful public spaces including the connection of social life and urban design. Whyte influenced the Project for Public Spaces who described placemaking as “building both the settlement patterns, and the communal capacity, for people to thrive with each other and our natural world.” The human stakes for not paying attention to place design and intentionally include “boredom, loneliness, and alienation” (Oldenburg, 2001, p. 13).
An understanding of experienced space increases our capacity to understand leadership specifically the importance of social connections, interaction, and belonging. This discussion informs our understanding of “interdependence” of the social and physical environment (ILA). Finally, this paper will balance philosophical discussion about space with practical design considerations related to placemaking.