Beyond Public & Private: Spectra’s Multilevel Streetlife Concept
This post is part of Spectra Cities’ “Ten Stories of Urban Design” series. Explore our Spatial.io spaces for a first-person experience of these stories on mobile, desktop, or headset. Join our Discord to become a member of the Spectra community. Follow along on Twitter for daily updates and events info.
Public Space in Cities Today
How rare are safe public spaces in cities?
If you live in or have lived in a city, take a minute to think about the last time you visited a park, plaza, or other public area. Or, maybe just think about a city that you visited recently.
If you walked there, how many streets and parking lots did you have to cross? Would you have been able to get there via a bicycle, scooter, or wheelchair?
Was your destination on the ground floor or part of a multistory building complex? What amenities did it have?
In most cities, public space usually stops at the ground floor, and pedestrians must compete for space with dangerous high-speed vehicles, affecting their safety — especially for children and the elderly. This may be similar to what you pondered a second ago.
The prevailing practice in these cities is to prioritize and accommodate cars. Sidewalks and bicycle lanes are dominated by automobile lanes. Up to 50% of most city land, which could be used for residential units, safe green public spaces, and other human needs, are instead allocated to roads, parking lots, garages, gas stations, and driveways.
In fact, some of the most expensive, central, and attractive real estate space is reserved for cars. Cars which spend 92% of the time parked, 1.5% stuck in congestion, and 1.5% looking for parking. Humans and nature have been relegated to the sidelines.
Expanding Vertical Public Space in Spectra Cities
These are some of the questions and issues we reflected on when prototyping the initial designs of the urban environment in Spectra Cities.
We believe that cities — as the home of the majority of all people on Earth — should facilitate joyful, enriching, and sustainable lifestyles. A “livable city” is one in which its residents are able to safely, conveniently, affordably, and sustainably meet the majority of their daily needs within their local neighborhood. Usually, within a 15-minute commute.
As such, public life in Spectra is ample and spread across three vertical layers for public and semi-public programming: the open ground floor, the rooftops, and Spectra’s “L2”, a connected network of courtyards on the second floor.
We saw a big opportunity with the L2 to expand the city’s public life and provide a calmer, shared space that connects directly to the block courtyards. L2 hosts common spaces for residents, such as remote working areas, small conference rooms, and fitness areas. Some courtyards are designed as grassy spaces for recreational sports, while others are have gardens, small boutiques, pools, and child-friendly playgrounds.
According to the WHO, green spaces — such as parks, playgrounds, and residential courtyards — can promote mental and physical health and reduce morbidity and mortality in urban residents by providing relaxation and stress alleviation, stimulating social cohesion, supporting physical activity, and reducing exposure to air pollutants, noise, and excessive heat.
Shared Street Concept
Based on the European shared street concept, the ground level streets mix pedestrians, bicycles, scooters, other manually operated devices and/or motor-assisted vehicles, and small golf-cart-sized electric vehicles (EVs). Here, the design accommodates faster, direct connectivity across the city.
Additionally, on L2, we have a mostly pedestrianized zone with limited cycling. The L2 concept presents a garden city experience situated within a block system with elevated connectors and programmed courtyards. A pedestrian can navigate leisurely from gardens to playgrounds to shared workspaces and completely avoid the traffic on the ground if they so choose.
Several stairways and elevators are available in every block, with at least one set dedicated to public access.
Community-Led Spaces
Spectra’s abundance of public and semi-public space is deeply connected to the community-led block and courtyard system. The way residents shape and connect their blocks will test the performance, flexibility, and potential uses of vertical streetlife in Spectra.
The rooftops, in particular, showcase this connection as block residents can collectively decide to design their rooftop spaces with gardens, aquaponic systems, cafes and bars, and a variety of other mixed uses.
Modeling Public Spaces in Virtual Reality
As always, the process of co-designing these multilevel streets and public spaces started in VR and will eventually transition to an IRL physical project. The ideas presented here are open to change and VR is our shared planning space for discussion, experimentation, and play.
If you’d like a say in designing the streets, public spaces, or any other part of Spectra’s urban environment, consider joining our Discord and attending one of our weekly community events on Spatial.io!
All of the assets in our Source City Toolkit are free to use and share under a Creative Commons license. Files can be downloaded for Rhino, Blender, Unity, and Spatial.
