Eddy Spaces
Placemaking Trade Secret #18
Most streets have ‘eddy spaces’, which are perfect places to locate linger nodes.
Whenever I do a street walkabout in a town centre with residents and city officials, I hear the same thing over and over: there are no spaces in which we can do placemaking. What these people are looking for is a big dedicated public space, such as a town square or a park of the kind you find in Europe.
But most town centres in places like Australia, New Zealand and North America lack these dedicated public spaces. In these kinds of town centres, you have to focus on eddy spaces. These grossly under-utilised resources are the small spaces on a footpath/sidewalk that are out of the mainstream flow of people — for example, a space between a tree and a rubbish bin on the side of the footpath (see the diagram below).
In many ways, eddy spaces are more valuable than a large dedicated public space. Because they are located right beside the main pedestrian flow, they are much more likely to be used than a space that people must make a choice to visit. They also promote a greater number of spontaneous encounters, the lifeblood of a public space. In addition, they reduce the amount of empty space, increasing the density of people activity.
We start all our makeovers of town centres by identifying the eddy spaces and imagining what kind of linger nodes we can put there. For example, in a recent makeover of Wellard Village in Western Australia, we turned two of these eddy spaces into nature play areas for children.
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Don’t allow the lack of a dedicated public space to cloud your vision of what’s possible. We work on a simple principle: use the resources you already have and don’t be paralysed by what you wish you had. And most town centres have lots of eddy spaces.
Where are your existing eddy spaces?
What linger nodes could we put in these eddy spaces?
This article is adapted from Revitalise Your Town Centre in 7 Weeks or Less which is only available from here. https://www.creativecommunities.com/book-revitalise-your-town-centre
Deputy Director Planning & Building Quality GCSP & 3CBC
10 个月Simple and effective
Helping Communities Do More with Less in Uncertain Times | Downtown and Neighborhood Planner | Focused on Implementation
10 个月“Find underutilized spacea and give them to people” should be considered of the core principles of placemaking.