Good Public Space
Creating human and kind spaces for all.
Why is Good Public Space important?
Every city wishes to prioritize citizens' well-being when planning its public spaces.
But do we really know how good our parks and plazas are and how to make them better?
At Humankind, we believe public space to be the heart and soul of cities. Their defining element, the public arena where citizens’ life takes place.
Now that over half of the world’s population lives and works in urban areas, more than ever we need to rethink the way public space looks and performs. We developed a simple, all-in-one, human-centric approach for bringing all the necessary insights and lessons together in order to understand what can make our public spaces good. We call it The Good Public Space.
Our definition of Good
Understanding the Dynamics of Public Spaces
Over the years, extensive research, detailed studies, and inspiring lectures have shed light on the significance of well-designed public spaces. We've distilled this wealth of knowledge, transforming complex data and theories into a practical approach. To us, a good public space is simply one that allows a variety of interactions between a user and the space design and serves as a stage for our urban lives.
putting humans at the core
The Good Public Space Model
To place people at the heart of urban planning, we've developed the Good Public Space Model. This model is built on indicators that assess how effectively a public space supports essential activities—those that fulfill our biological, psychological, and social needs. In essence, it measures how well a public space contributes to our overall health and well-being.
Evaluating Public Space Quality
When evaluating the quality of a public space, we consider the specific activity needs of the community listed in our model and how well the space is designed to meet those needs. For example, if a neighborhood has a large elderly population but lacks shaded seating areas where residents can comfortably socialize, our model highlights this as an opportunity for design improvement.
By identifying such gaps, we aim to guide the creation of public spaces that truly serve the communities they are meant to support.
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Are you curious to know more about Good Public Space? Explore the Stories of Good Public Space blog series where we explain our approach in detail
What are the Good Public Space possibilities?
Whether you want to define design principles before a redesign of a park or plaza, lay the groundwork for a participatory process, or zoom out to work better on a strategic plan for an area development, our Good Public Space services help city officials, designers and policy-makers to make better informed decisions about human-centric public spaces.
With the Good Public Space you can be sure to not overlook any dimension of truly good public spaces.
The Good Public Space Workshop
The needs, preferences, and experiences of people who live, work, and visit a public space are central to our goal of putting people at the core of design. However, they differ per person - think for instance of an elderly person living in a neighborhood where a new playground is being built.
Will they be able to appreciate that change in the public space as much as the parent of an energetic child?
These varied, sometimes contradicting visions, can (and have) easily been overlooked during planning processes.
To respond to this, we developed the Good Public Space Workshop. Our workshop uses the Good Public Space model both as a prompt for collective strategy exercises and as a tool to strengthen collaboration between all parties involved in city making, both within one and among different organizations – think municipalities, citizens, developers and more. We help to understand not only what a Good Public Space is, but also what it means for the different people using it.
During the workshop, participants have the opportunity to learn about how to assess the quality of a public space, empathize with other people experiencing it and use innovative tools to visualize their ideas. In collaboration with UrbanistAI, participants are given the opportunity to create AI-generated images that represent their ideas of new designs for public space. In this way, AI is used as a tool in the context of a collaborative exercise, to support and help discuss the potential options of redesign of a specific space.
Structure of the workshop
How do different people experience public space?
EMPATHIZE
The participants are given different prompts and profiles, with which they will be asked to carry out a practical exercise.
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What could a new design for a public space that matches the needs of different people be?
IMAGINE
The analysis is followed by a visualisation moment where that empathy in thinking from someone else’s point of view is to be translated into images: participants are asked to produce visuals that can stir debate about potential futures in the public space in question.
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Does the current design respond to the needs of various users?
ASSESS
The starting point is an analysis of the public area –through a space assessment exercise– from a variety of points of view. The aim is to bring participants to step into other people’s shoes: people with different backgrounds, needs, visions and dislikes about a specific area.
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What do the different ideas mean for different people?
DISCUSS
The session ends with a focus on activation – a collection of the results of the participation exercises and the sketching of a roadmap for future action and execution.
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Are you interested in the Good Public Space Workshop?
Would you like to involve colleagues or partners in analysing the quality and possibilities for redesign of a specific public space?
Learn about what makes a Good Public Space
Deepen your knowledge of what is needed to build a good public space with people at the center.
Understand existing public spaces
Unveil how existing public spaces 'score' for different people and needs.
Start collaborating with stakeholders
An active and inclusive way of collaboration with anyone involved in public space design that provides actionable insights and clarity.
Experience the Power of Human-Centered AI
Visuals are a quick and easy way to envision the future of public spaces.
Discuss future possibilities
Consider, evaluate and analyse the impacts of various choices and engage in a well-founded and clear discussion.
Experience a new approach to city making
Unlock the potential of a completely new way of working based on collaboration, rediscovery and action.
What did the people who have already participated in Good Public Space activities think?
“I learned the integrated use of technology and stepping into someone else’s shoes.”
Participant of the GPS Workshop in Zaandam, organized for Babel Zaans on 24th April 2024.
“What I valued the most about the workshop was seeing the contradictions of what different people want and need and how that affects others.”
MSc Student from AMS Instiute, who has partecipated to the pilot version of GPS Workshop done on 16th October 2023.
“I would recommend this workshop to anyone since the tools are very user friendly and not only for designers. It could be good to try it on a more broad public as a co-designing process and stepping into someone else’s shoes.”
Participant in the GPS workshop with Baltan Laboratories,
has part of their workshop series “AI in the Hood”, in autumn 2023.