ANNUAL CONGRESS 2025

Exploring Livability in Public Spaces of Deregulated Self-organized Settlements between Theories and Human Practices. Lessons from Rome’s Borgate.

Not scheduled

20m

Yildiz Technical University, Istanbul

Poster Track 17 | PUBLIC SPACE

Speaker

Mr Munir KHADER (Université Côte d’Azur, CNRS, UAPV, AMU, ESPACE, France)

Description

Urban expansion often leads to informal settlements on cities’ peripheries, driven by the pressing need to accommodate rapid population growth (UN-Habitat, 2020; Davis, 2006). These settlements are frequently built incrementally to meet the needs of residents, bypassing conventional top-down urban planning directives. While these low-cost developments typically lack essential infrastructure, services, and public spaces, they exhibit notable adaptive capacities to transform available spaces into functional and livable environments. For instance, the absence of formal public spaces has prompted inhabitants to use streets as public areas for social interaction and activities (Dovey, 2013; Roy, 2005).

Defining and measuring livability in public spaces remains a complex challenge, encompassing urban planning, open space design, and socio-cultural dynamics (Gehl, 2011; Lennard & Lennard, 2004). This paper seeks to address pedestrian behavior by focusing on the "life between buildings" as a key indicator of livability in deregulated self-organized settlements. Emphasis is placed on the dynamic interaction between pedestrians and the built environment, with a particular focus on building interfaces (Gehl, 2011).

To address the stated objective, a two-phase methodology is adopted and applied to four different neighborhoods of Rome’s Borgate. Despite differences in urban form, building structures, and historical backgrounds, they share common traits of deregulation and self-organization (Vallat, 1995). Observing them six to seven decades after their establishment and four decades after their legalization offers the opportunity to evaluate their capacity to adapt to 21st-century urban life with different socioeconomic content. The first phase involves an urban morphological analysis (BSB), examining Blocks (B), Street Networks (S), and built-up Areas (B). This analysis contextualizes urban morphometrics and explores their impact on livability (Hillier, 1996; Marshall, 2005). The second phase, Interfaces Analysis (IA), examines pedestrian behavior in response to various building interface types, capturing data on usage patterns, temporal occupation of space, and user demographics at selected observation points (Gehl, 2011).

The empirical findings provide quantitative evidence of the relationship between urban morphology, building interfaces, and pedestrian behavior in deregulated settlements. By synthesizing findings from both phases, analysis reveals that neighborhoods with highly connected street networks and diverse block structures demonstrate 30-40% higher pedestrian activity and diversity levels compared to less-connected counterparts, based on spatial accessibility values and observational surveys. The second phase highlights the significance of active and adaptable building interfaces. Observations indicate that streets featuring informal extensions (e.g., outdoor seating) sustain pedestrian presence 2.5 times longer than streets with inactive interfaces. Additionally, temporal space occupation increases by 60% in areas where ground-floor commercial activities interact with public spaces. Furthermore, setbacks and visibility factors influence engagement. Streets with transparent facades and moderate setbacks exhibit almost 25% more social interaction and activities compared to those with walled or fenced perimeters.

In conclusion, the study emphasizes the dual role of the "urban skeleton" (physical and foundational framework enabling pedestrian circulation) and the "urban skin" (building interfaces and adjacent public spaces) in shaping the quality and dynamics of pedestrian behavior in the public space and their way of creating livable urban environments. Despite some shortcomings inherited from the initial establishment, empirical findings show that deregulated, self-organized settlements in a European context provide valuable lessons for promoting sustainable and livable urban development. This could have important implications for cities in emerging countries, which have so far mainly focused on importing patterns of European planning and neglected the potential of their vast areas of spontaneous, deregulated growth.

References

• Davis, M. (2006). Planet of Slums. Verso.
• Dovey, K. (2013). Urban Design Thinking: A Conceptual Toolkit. Bloomsbury Publishing.
• Gehl, J. (2011). Life Between Buildings: Using Public Space (6th ed.). Island Press.
• Hillier, B. (1996). Space is the Machine: A Configurational Theory of Architecture. Cambridge University Press.
• Lennard, S. H. C., & Lennard, H. L. (2004). Public Life in Urban Places. Gondolier Press.
• Marshall, S. (2005). Streets and Patterns. Spon Press.
• Mehta, V. (2013). The Street: A Quintessential Social Public Space. Routledge.
• Roy, A. (2005). Urban Informality: Toward an Epistemology of Planning. Journal of the American Planning Association, 71(2), 147–158.
• UN-Habitat. (2020). World Cities Report 2020: The Value of Sustainable Urbanization. United Nations Human Settlements Program.
• Vallat, C. (1995). Rome et ses Borgate 1960-1980. Des marques urbaines à la ville diffuse.