Abstract
The global cities of the world are witnessing a visible disconnection of everyday life. In India the Smart City guidelines acknowledge the need to counter the growing social detachment and intolerance by encouraging interactions. They go further in identifying that preserving and creating of open spaces must be a key feature of comprehensive urban development. Most social relations are cemented within open spaces at the neighbourhood level. Previous studies examine the association between the attributes of neighbourhood open spaces and social activity but neglect to view the issue comprehensively. The present study turns to Lefebvre’s Unitary Theory which states that open space is a result of three forces; 1) perceived space which is the physical dimension and material quality identifiable by the senses; 2) conceived space created by planners and other agents as plans and documents; and 3) lived space which is shaped by the values attached and images generated through user experience. For open space conducive to social interactions these three aspects must work in tandem. With this consideration a framework of criteria and indicators is developed and used to measure and compare the open spaces in select neighbourhoods in Europe and India. The investigation thus reveals differences in all three aspects of neighbourhood spaces. It also reveals a discrepancy between the planning standards formulated and employed by the city authorities in providing the spaces and the actual needs of the community. The research aims to address this gap. The study of the Indian cases lays foundation for the use of the framework to measure open spaces in association with social cohesion and thereby contribute to the enhancement of the social infrastructure of the City.
Highlights
Forrest and Kearn [1] acknowledge that the rapid and unplanned urbanization during the first half of the twentieth century produced social order in which the traditional ties of community were replaced by anonymity, individualism and competition
Through a comparison of case studies it is understood that neighbourhood open spaces are produced by forces termed by Henri Lefebvre as perceived, conceived and lived
The neighbourhood open spaces seen in the case studies from U.K. and Norway differ from those seen in Indian neighbourhoods in all three dimensions of space
Summary
Forrest and Kearn [1] acknowledge that the rapid and unplanned urbanization during the first half of the twentieth century produced social order in which the traditional ties of community were replaced by anonymity, individualism and competition. Salama and Ghraib [2] emphasise that traditionally cities or urban spaces were able to evolve over a period of time to accommodate a diversity of activities and provide a variety of experiences. Chen et al [5] identify that the important factors effecting the use of an open space are its attributes, users attributes and the distance between the space and the users. Though these links have been established there is still a gap put forward by Constant [6] who observes the growing discrepancy between the standards applied in allocating urban space and the real needs of the community
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