Safe places - outdoor rooms

 

Designing outdoor "rooms" - a building at the end of the street frames the space

GUEST BLOG – Carl Bray is a member of the SafeGrowth Network and an urban designer teaching at Queen’s University in Kingston, Canada. He runs Bray Heritage Consulting and is co-author of a forthcoming book on SafeGrowth and neighborhood safety. In this article, Carl offers some architectural observations on the concept of community-created and safe outdoor places. 

Municipalities can go far beyond basic security measures such as improved lighting and sight lines, the first steps in CPTED, to improve public safety. And it can also be a community initiative to create such spaces, something that is the essence of SafeGrowth. Whoever does it, making “outdoor rooms” is a creative and practical way to strengthen neighbourhoods and improve stewardship of place. 

Why is it that some places outdoors feel inherently comfortable, and others don’t? Maybe it is because the most comfortable share most of the features that a room has  – a floor, walls, and a ceiling – all at a human scale. We decorate rooms to suit our personal tastes, and we spend a lot of time in them. They are where we often feel safest.  

Walkways can contribute, or detract, from the outdoor room effect

DESIGNING OUTDOOR ROOMS

A skill known and practised for centuries but only now being rediscovered is designing outdoor spaces that are room-like. In some cultures, people can literally create a room outdoors by moving their rugs, chairs, and tables onto the street or square to enjoy a special event or even to relax in cooler night air. 

Some large cities went further and converted streets into outdoor plazas: Times Square in New York City is one example. And during the pandemic, many places moved seating into on-street parking spaces to expand sidewalks and add to adjacent restaurants (some of these adjustments have been made permanent). 

But mostly it is everyday activities such as walking down a main street or through a neighbourhood when we feel as though we had entered what feels like a room. 

Redesigned public access bleacher in New York Times Square
- photo Jim Henderson, Creative Commons

Take a main street, for example. It often feels most comfortable when the street (floor) is about one and a half to twice the height of the flanking buildings (walls). In that case, the “walls” remain in our peripheral vision but we don’t feel confined. Walls are “decorated” with the details of individual buildings and the “ceiling” is defined by rooftops, towers as well as tree canopies, lighting, and signs (as well as, of course, the sky). 

Framing a street with murals and a building at the end

In a neighbourhood, it is the street trees and front yard plantings that add to the details found in building facades. If the street is narrow enough – say, around equal to the height of the buildings – the street tree canopies arch over the street and partially define the “ceiling”. There is even recent research suggesting tree canopies over sidewalks has a crime-deterrent effect.

While most of us live in places that have a pattern of straight streets along the edges of square or rectangular blocks, some places slant the grid and create what is known as deflected vistas, where the view along the street angles off to one side so that what is in the distance isn’t visible until you come around the corner. Even more, room-like is what’s known as a terminated vista. 

For example, a building sits at the end of the view, usually on the far side of a cross street, and defines the end wall of the outdoor room. Extrapolate that to the scale of a public square in Europe, for example, where all four sides of the square are framed by buildings, and you have a complete outdoor room. 

Street furniture and roads as walkways
- a more common practice after Covid

FEELING COMFORTABLE MATTERS 

What all of these spaces have in common is an ability to make us feel comfortable and secure, even if it is at a subconscious level. An outdoor room attracts people to use it, with the result that it becomes safer. By creating and furnishing outdoor rooms, and making them work well, municipalities can go far beyond basic security measures and elementary CPTED steps, such as improved lighting and sight lines. It can also be a community initiative to create such spaces, something that is the essence of SafeGrowth. Whoever does it, making outdoor rooms is a creative and practical way to strengthen neighbourhoods and improve stewardship of place. 

While much of this relies on empirical observation, not scientific research, more methodical approaches, and precise data may soon be available to support these notions. Historical precedent certainly suggests that such places succeed. In the meantime, I encourage you to go outdoors and test these ideas for yourself.