CHAPTER 3: LITERATURE REVIEW

Chapter 3

Literature Review

Jan Gehl’s – Life between Buildings

“Only architecture that considers human scale and interaction is successful Architecture” Jan gehl

Planning should be primarily considered with day-to-day activities that happen in life. “Life between buildings” is a book written by Jan gehl in 1971.

This book is about social the activities taking place in outdoor spaces that happen within the built environment. Throughout history, human beings have been dedicated to creating small, intimate, safe and friendly environments. It is only in the last century that we have built spaces in faster and bigger ways. (Gehl, 2012)

The book also explores the activities that take place in urban context, how they contribute to the quality of life in the cities, the factors that enhance or hinder this life andthe measure which can take to improve life between buildings and the city life experience.

Jan gehl’s approach of designing always starts with people’s lifestyle and their behavior. In today’s time due to the growth of car and technologies in terms of transport and communication a lot has changed in city and life. But despite of that, our bodies reacts the same way as it used to do thousand years ago. We are designed to walk and our senses functions properly at the walking speed, but lately cities are designed for private automobile and not for pedestrian.

To enable and encourage the social interaction, we need to create such places which are safe, sound and attractive so that people spend their time peacefully and ensure that the environment is conductive to seeing, hearing and talking while walking.

Jane Jacobs– The Death and Life of Great American Cities

“Think of a city and what comes to mind? It’s streets” Jane Jacobs This book deals about how streets in the cities serve many purposes besides vehicles, and city Sidewalks -the pedestrian parts of the streets serve many purposes besides carrying pedestrians. The author also talk about the streets andsidewalks, the main public spaces of a city, are its most vital organs.

The most abundant and distributed of public spaces in cities are its streets and their vitality mirrors the vitality of the city at large. This is what Jacobs (1961) means when she says that when people don’t feel safe in a city or part of it is because they do not feel safe on its streets. But when a “city’s streets are safe from barbarism and fear, the city is thereby tolerably safe from barbarism and fear (p. 106)”. But livable streets and cities are more than just the absence of danger or fear –they are able to meet a diversity ofhuman needs to contribute to a high quality of life.

Jan Gehl’s – Cities for People

The book deals about the issues in urban design which may contribute to creating urban environments that support and enhance walking activity. Walking in the city leaves ample time to experience everything. In this book Gehl presents details for how to design a good cityfor walking, such as acceptable walking distance, providing room to walk freely and unhampered, avoidance of pavements, straight sightlines, and interesting things to see at eye level (Gehl 2010)

Gehl clearly and convincingly makes the case for cities where the human dimension is first and foremost the most important, citing examples how precisely cars and modernist planning have destroyed our cities.

William Whyte - The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces

The book describes cities as inherently messy places, but the human interaction and commerce that takes place on the street cultivates an inviting, engaging environment unlike the bland, car-dominated milieu of the suburbs. “Also,the corner of wall street, is a great place for business conversation (p. 54)”

Whyte described the theory of urban public life in an objective and measurable way. The aim of this research project was to study how people use plaza, people’s activities in relation to constituents in small public spaces, documenting the components necessary for a successful pedestrian environment around the buildings on all four corners, give perfectstudy of the relationship of public open space and buildings around them.

Factors affecting walkability of neighbourhoods (Richa Singh)

The article is about the walking behaviour of pedestrians in a variety of urban built environment.

As concern for future urban sustainability, walking is again become an important mode of urban transport because car dependent cities will not be sustainable in future due to congestion, fuel availability, energy cost and other environmental impacts. Walking can increase personal wellbeingand longevity of good health.

Many researchers like Oscar Newman, William Whyte and Jan Gehl focus their research on the observation of people in real-life situations to determine how the built environment impacts social wellness. The paper also talks about the important role of street and how it’s effecton human lives. Simple leisure such as eating, walking, talking also give a street heterogeneous life. Street enhances walkability, interaction between people and social life.

The article also talks about the building orientation andsetback, the manner by which the buildings are arranged on a site has an effect on where a street and its context fall in the continuum of walkability. Scale also plays major role;the scale of buildings should help define the scale of pedestrian environment.

Gating and Syntactical Analysis of spatial Configuration of Sectors Of Gurgaon, India – Ajay kaushik

This article attempts to draw out the distinction in the changing street pattern through syntactical analysis of street sectors. As gating is one of the contemporary phenomenons’s of urban development. The fundamental goal is to comprehend the configurationally differences in the neighborhood street pattern by using syntactical parameters of street network.

For this objective three different sectors (sector 4, 49 and 56) showcasing various growth patterns have been compared analysed.

According to Abhijit Paul, space syntax is a theory with the help of which we understand spaces at building and urban level. Configuration of spaces, i.e. interrelationship of spaces is the basic primary aspect of understanding a space (Paul, 2011). Thus, "configuration" by definition is a way to relate and understand spaces with respect to one another. The relationship of spaces is not only crucial pair wise but also within the whole pattern. It is also defined as pattern of connection/ links/etc. with other spaces (Kaushik, 2016: 24). The theory of space syntax helps us to identify the constituent elements, their mutual relationship and an overall spatial configuration (Hillier and Hanson, 1984; Hillier, 2007)

Pedestrian Accessibility Index for Transit Stations - Neog, Dristi

This study focuses on the need of pedestrians and public transit users in terms of having effective access to public transit in general and to metro stations in particular. The study concentrates on two folds. First a Pedestrian Accessibility Index (PAI) Secondly, it applies index to two metro stations in Gurgaon, to demonstrate the effectiveness of such index.

The first metro station –IFFCO CHOWK failed to provide safe pedestrian, security and disability infrastructure but did slightly better in terms of safety. Huda City Center, the second metro station failed to impress in terms of quality and safe pedestrian environments.

Both stations failed to deliver much on comfort and pedestrian movements and therefore have potential to improve these existing stations and plan for future ones.