Choreography of public spaces

Great article about people's movements through public spaces, and how design facilitates or obstructs it (lost in the Arts section of the New York Times).

The one correction in the article I think worth pointing out is that the example of Channel Gardens at Rockefeller Center, with the tall buildings on either side, were not always an asset - they were once a liability for the space. The configuration is a typical one in many smaller cities, with a small downtown filled with large office buildings. People put in a public space with good intent, but success requires more than physical space set aside. In the mid-1970s, there were "undesirables" inhabiting the Channel Gardens and the small retail storefronts in the channel to fail. PPS was commissioned to figure out what types of spikes to put in around the plantings to protect the vegetation. Instead of spikes, PPS advised putting in benches and created a destination at the end of the garden. This is perhaps too simplistic but the benches compelled people to sit, maybe eat lunch, and people walking down Fifth Avenue saw people eating lunch, looked down the Channel Gardens and saw something else at the end, and then would feel the gravitational pull that the article describes.

These elements probably had more to do with the magnetism of the site than the massing on either side of the Channel Gardens, though today, with all these elements, the massing helps instead of hinders.