Christopher alexander - A pattern language

This simple and obvious conflict has almost never been effectively resolved. On the one hand, we have shopping strips. Here the shops are arranged along the major traffic arteries. This is convenient for cars, but it is not convenient for pedestrians. A strip does not have the characteristics which pedestrian areas need.

Shopping strip—for cars.

On the other hand, we have those “pre-automobile” shopping streets in the center of old towns. Here the pedestrians’ needs are taken into account, at least partially. But, as the town spreads out and the streets become congested, they are inconvenient to reach; and again the cars dominate the narrow streets.

The modern solution is the shopping center. They are usually located along, or near to, major traffic arteries, so they

SUMMARY OF THE LANGUAGE

between the house clusters, around the centers, and especially in the boundaries between neighborhoods, encourage the formation of work communities;

41. WORK COMMUNITY

42. INDUSTRIAL RIBBON

43. UNIVERSITY AS A MARKETPLACE

44. LOCAL TOWN HALL

45. NECKLACE OF COMMUNITY PROJECTS

46. MARKET OF MANY SHOPS

47. HEALTH CENTER

48. HOUSING IN BETWEEN

between the house clusters and work communities, allow the local road and path network to grow informally, piecemeal;

49. LOOPED LOCAL ROADS

50. T JUNCTIONS

51 . GREEN STREETS

52 . NETWORK OF PATHS AND CARS

53 . MAIN GATEWAYS

54 . ROAD CROSSING

55 . RAISED WALK

56. BIKE PATHS AND RACKS57 - CHILDREN IN THE CITY

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Old shopping street—inconvenient for cars and people.

are convenient for cars; and they often have pedestrian precincts in them—so that, in theory at least, they are comfortable and convenient for pedestrians. But they are usually isolated, in the middle of a vast parking lot, and thereby disconnected from the pedestrian fabric of the surrounding areas. In short, you cannot walk to them.

Nevu shop-ping center—only for cars.

To be convenient for traffic, and convenient for people walking, and connected to the fabric of the surrounding town, the shops must be arranged along a street, itself pedestrian, but opening off a major traffic artery, perhaps two, with parking behind, or underneath, to keep the cars from isolating the shops from surrounding areas.

We observed this pattern growing spontaneously in certain neighborhoods of Lima, Peru: a wide road is set down for automobile traffic, and the shops begin to form themselves, in pedestrian streets that are perpendicular off-shoots off this road.

Shopping streets growing spontaneously in Liuia )Peru.

This pattern is also the form of the famous Stroget in Copenhagen. The Stroget is the central shopping spine for the city; itis extremely long—almost a mile—and is entirely pedestrian, only cut periodically by roads which run at right angles to it.

Therefore:

major road
	shopping street

Encourage local shopping centers to grow in the form of short pedestrian streets, at right angles to major roads and opening off these roads—with parking behind the shops, so that the cars can pull directly off the road, and yet not harm the shopping street.

Treat the physical character of the street like any other pedestrian STREET (100) on the NETWORK OF PATHS AND CARS (52), at right angles to major parallel roads (23) ; have as many shops as small as possible—individually owned shops (87) ; where the shopping street crosses the road, make the crossing wide, giving priority to the pedestrians— road crossing (54) ; parking can easily be provided by a single row of parking spaces in an alley lying behind the shops—all along the backs of the shops, off the alley, with the parking spaces walled, and perhaps even given canvas roofs, so that they don’t destroy the area—shielded parking (97), canvas roofs (244). Make sure that every shopping street includes a market of many shops (46), and some housing IN BETWEEN (48) . . . .

33 NIGHT LIFE*
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179

. . . every community has some kind of public night life— MAGIC OF THE CITY(io), COMMUNITY OF 7OOO(l2). If there is a promenade in the community, the night life is probably along the promenade, at least in part— promenade(31). This pattern describes the details of the concentration of night time activities.

This pattern is drawn from the following seven points:

1. People enjoy going out at night; a night on the town is something special.

2. If evening activities such as movies, cafes, ice cream parlors, gas stations, and bars are scattered throughout the community, each one by itself cannot generate enough attraction.

One bar by itself is a lonely flace at night.

3. Many people do not go out at night because they feel they have no place to go. They do not feel like going out to a specific establishment, but they do feel like going out. An evening center, particularly when it is full of light, functions as a focus for such people.

4. Fear of the dark, especially in those places far away from one’s own back yard, is a common experience, and quite simple to understand. Throughout our evolution night has been a time to stay quiet and protected, not a time to move about freely.

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A cluster of night sfots creates life in the street.

5. Nowadays this instinct is anchored in the fact that at night street crimes are most prevalent in places where there are too few pedestrians to provide natural surveillance, but enough pedestrians to make it worth a thief’s while, in other words, dark, isolated night spots invite crime. A paper by Shlomo Angel, “The Ecology of Night Life” (Center for Environmental Structure, Berkeley, 1968), shows the highest number of street crimes occurring in those areas where night spots are scattered. Areas of very low or very high night pedestrian density are subject to much less crime.