I am wondering if Jan Gehl's classification of human's activity in public spaces can be of use in my case? that he divided it into three categories; 1st necessary activities, 2nd optional activities, and 3rd social activities.

A good city should foster social cohesion and build social capital, engaging the community in design, management and maintenance of public space. The public space interdisciplinary and participatory approaches are an opportunity for planners, landscape professionals, architects, technicians and designers to express fully their roles. Public space-led urban development. When planning focuses on providing adequate supply of connected public space with a view to supporting adequate density, it is possible to move forward with infrastructure, land subdivision and development in a more efficient and sustainable way. Public space can lead urban development by ensuring that building will only be permitted if public space has been organized prior to development.

Dear Roja,

I have read something about that issue that may be helpful on Tovi Fenster's works about women experiences in public urban spaces (commitment, attachment and ...). The work from Heidi Kaspar, Elisabeth Bühler and Frank Ostermann uses a classification from activities with cuold be interesting for you (dinamic and static activities).

Good luck and regads,

Alejandro

You can use the "affordance" concept (originally conceived by James Gibson), place-experience research and the transactional approach in Environmental Psychology. Research conducted with children has used affordance taxonomies for distinct categories oto successfully to characterize children's interactions on public space. Check out the following paper http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22548432. You will probably need to check for research where the affordance concept has been used by adults. In Finland there has been work develop on participatory urban planning with adults in order to understand their perceptions of urban space and how they value living space. Check this link: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0169204613000157

Good luck,

Frederico

Gehl`s "life between buildings" answers exactly your question. You may also have a look at Chr. Alexander`s patterns on towns, buildings etc

thank you all for your answers. I have done reviewed some of studies on environmental psychology which concentrate on people-place interactions by Amos Rapoport, Irwin Altman, Edward Relph et. al, and the subject of identity in the place coined as "place identity" by Harold Proshansky... I also read some of Tovi Fenster's works on women, communities and place experience. Gehl's works are also in my mind to differentiate between different activities in public spaces of the city. My approach is qualitative and the methodology that I took to interview with those women as my participants made me to have long semi-structured and unstructured interviews to do the analysis based on their discourses of their everyday life experiences. So now I'm dealing with complex overlapped layers of activities and behaviors in the space, which needs me to go to a clarification. this is why I need to see if there is already any clear categorization of everyday life experience in the city except from the one by Jan Gehl.

People interact with a space suited for the purpose they are out of their home-office, a good thought provoking question here I may attempt to identify the interaction with public space as (a) Transport or transit as place of interaction similarly (b) market or shopping areas/arcades (c) Public building (office, plaza, museum, library etc) (d) local transition spaces (outside houses, streets and place where you can sit on most of times). People behave differently in these space and might define their mood which characterizes the space in general. The interaction with space depends upon age, gender, occupation and leisure time. Context of space also varies with numbers assimilating at particular place, which is public which are crowded, sparse or open. People in urban areas responds differently to spaces, with its 'suitability' as individual, couple or group (family or friends). Different cities and its public spaces receives varied responses and spaces are dynamic in nature. Thanks

Hi Roja

My research has to do with the spatial relationships between workplace and dwelling place in metropolitan regions.  If I were engaging in a gender-based investigation (which I am not yet) I would pursue the two principal categories of how most people spend their time-- that is, work and non work--in terms of urban experience, since it is action within space that shapes spatial experience. 

For a single study, just work alone may probably be sufficiently meaty.

For women this will be particularly interesting because gendered definitions of work differ from those usually ascribed to men; but in an urban context these definitions will be even richer--at least spatially--than in traditional societies that are not usually associated with urban settlements.  In the case of the latter, 'work' would be spatially coterminous with 'dwelling' but we all know that even in so called 'third world' countries women 'work' outside of the home in which they raise children. 

Perhaps it is best first to consider what kind of city to investigate before you settle on what kind of urban experiences to investigate or how to look them.

For instance, whether they are 'global' cities (in which case you would begin with Saskia Sassen's book Global Cities:  New York London Tokyo; later chapters have to do with women who are working in urban settings as part of the global economy supporting elite economic activity and she attaches a great deal of importance to the entirely new role women have as a key element of global urban society, even if they are poor immigrants)  or whether they are traditional cities (such as in South america, Southeast asia, Africa, south asia, china, eastern Europe, in which case the work of that other sociologist, Claude Levi-Strauss, would be good start--see Tristes Tropiques) which are very old and established, but without much technological development in their physical fabric, with more intact family life, more vivid community life, and with less complex and distant relationships to agriculture and other resources.

It is probably less useful to look at temporary urban phenomena such as rock concerts, refugee camps or favelas, unless they have been around for a long time and have well established intergenerational patterns of culture, or unless you have some special personal entrée into the experience of them.

of course for an armature in the study of urban experience, one could easily specify other kinds of activities, for example sport, or study, or migration, or gardening, or exercise, or going to the theatre, or dancing, or driving around, or shopping, or partying, or 'home life', or even sleep.  but in our generation work takes so much time out of ones life and is so subject to so many different external stimuli that it defines living for most people whether they see it as part of life equal to leisure, or not.

Base your choice on what  you can get the best information at the deepest levels for, as well as what you are passionate about.

Dear Roja, 

I would look at the interrelations and assemblages between body, space (materiality), others, meanings and strategies. I observe urban experience from a daily mobility point of view and more than classifying spaces, I try to understand the relations between these different aspects of daily experience.  I hope this helps. 

Regards, Paola

Public spaces - mall, park, gym, school, hospital, spa, theater, museum, etc

Categories (for spatial settings)  - floor area, people density, operating hours, accessibility to multi-mode of transport, unique features

Categories (for clientele) - level of satisfaction on cost/quality of product and services

In an urban setting, a corner store within walking distance can meet basic needs but a specialty store with designer clothes can attract clients miles away. Enrolling children in nursery school within the neighborhood is OK, but maybe not for higher education.