Click here for a printable version

 The public realm comprises those areas of cities, suburbs, and towns that are open and accessible to the public. These areas include not only a community's parks, squares, and public buildings, but also its streets. The public realm is in essence a city's "living room." It lends character to a community and is often what we remember most about a city after having visited there. How would we remember London without its bustling streets, full of tourists and businesspeople alike? How would we remember San Francisco without its sidewalks climbing up steep hills?

The public realm works best when it provides for diverse uses and activities. For example, streets are conduits for move­ment and circulation, but the best streets in the world are also pleasant places along which to walk and to socialize. A great public realm can also bolster the local economy by providing a setting for a variety of activities from concerts to commerce.

By contrast, roads in most dispersed areas generally only carry automobiles. Bicycling and walking are not taken seri­ously, partly because they are not viable ways of getting around-everything is too far apart. It is nearly impos­sible to shop on foot along a suburban road because the stores are set back too far from the road's edge and placed too far from each other.

Most planning in the past 70 years has not recog­nized the importance of the public realm or even under­stood how it functions. Instead, many communities are planned so that all of their uses are set apart from each other: there are separate areas for stores, offices, homes, recreation, and industry. So if you work in an office park, you cannot walk to a local sandwich shop to buy lunch-you must drive to the nearest shop because it is either too far, too unpleasant, or too inconvenient to walk.

The public realm is more than just a physical lay­out of sidewalks and parks. It works best when it in­teracts with the different uses and destinations around it-the homes, shops, offices, schools, etc. A great pub­lic realm supports and is supported by complex com­binations of different uses and destinations in close proximity. A sandwich shop close to the office, a drug store close to homes, a public park close to a school and a movie theater close to restaurants are examples of interdependent proximities contributing to a great public realm. They generate the surefire ingredients of a successful public realm: people and combinations of different destinations. A successful shopping mall is analogous to a successful public realm.

while Alex Garvin & Associates emphasize the pub­lic realm above all else, this is not the standard practice in planning today. It is far more common for planners to focus on regulating private development, attempting to impose conditions on the level of density allowed, the uses that developers can build, or the design and mate­rials of buildings. Instead, planners should begin with public realm improvements and regulate private prop­erty only insofar as those regulations enhance the public realm and prevent any negative impact on it.

The framework for all private development is the public realm. Private development responds to the public realm and builds around it: fine houses line leafy drives; retail stores lie along well-traveled arteries; warehouses are located by highways; small shops serve walkable pedestrian neighborhoods. The commercial development in lower density areas usually consists of strip retail fronted by parking lots along regional traffic artery with lots of cars and very few pedestrians, rather than a neighborhood asset.

Wise investments of both time and money in the public realm by local governments are generally far more efficient than the workings of the private market. Devel­opers can demolish and rebuild their properties based on their own priorities, but the public controls public land. The public realm remains in place much longer than pri­vate properties, which are often redeveloped every couple of decades. Thus, repeated waves of development are shaped by public realm decisions made decades before.

Too often, planners apply formulas to work out how things ought to be-a technique commonly known as "needs analysis"-and then shake their heads in dis­may when, invariably, the world doesn't behave as it ought to. But planners are most effective when they find things that can happen. Consequently, we advo­cate seizing opportunities that can improve the quality of life by investing in the public realm.