4 Shaped public space forming living centers

Positive space, solid space

Each part of the downtown, and each part of each neighborhood, is to be a strong center. In our ideal city, when we are finished, there are to be no places that are not living centers. This will be true of each part — each center — in the downtown area; there is to be nothing left over.

The void is itself a place

Even the void is itself a place — solid, continuous, empty, bounded, visible, and felt as the void.

The right kind of space for cars

Our modern destroyed space has come about largely because with the onset of cars, 2000 years of tradition about forming pedestrian, horse and carriage space, suddenly dissolved — became irrelevant — and we have hardly yet found a new tradition in which the rules of the game — the patterns, the generic types of centers for parking, cars, movement of cars, deliveries, is clear and worked out in relation to the hulls of public pedestrian space.

Undoubtedly, the pure pedestrian space in which there are no cars is also vital, allowing us to walk, dream, play, unhurried and uninterrupted.

#book/The Nature of Order/3 A Vision of a Living World/3 The hulls of public space#