Abstract
The focus of this research is to explore the urban landscape through the promenade notion and contemporary walkability strategies to connect open spaces into a walkspace system. The research on urban public spaces seen as a walkspace system points out specific models of alternative urban heritage. These models are characterised by the presence of diverse cultural heritage and pedestrian connections which should be recognised in current design and city planning procedures. The aim is to create awareness of heritage values in practices of everyday life using public space as a mediator and spatial networking as a planning criterion. The identified walkspace models came out of case study comparisons in five cities: London, Barcelona, Budapest, New York and Madrid. The case studies represent diverse urban landscapes as pedestrian streets, boulevards and linear urbanscapes. These examples confirm that streets are not just traffic corridors and show ways in which streetscapes form walkspace systems in different scales. Pedestrianisations, landscaped streets, historic park streets and urbanscape parks are strategies which interconnect cultural heritage and create new heritage of contemporary promenades through public space design. Walkspace systems are the basis for heritage urbanism approach as means of achieving vitality and quality of public space in heritage revitalisation.
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Notes
- 1.
UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development was adopted at the UN Summit in September 2015 with 17 Sustainable Development Goals among which is goal 11 to make cities inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable with the 11.4 target to strengthen efforts to protect and safeguard the world’s cultural and natural heritage.
- 2.
Conferences such as Walk21 which is held annually since 2000, Future of Places Conference which is held annually since 2013 or City Street Conference which is held annually since 2016.
- 3.
List of projects can be followed online on landscape magazines such as Landezine or Project for Public Spaces websites.
- 4.
Field research on case studies in London (2016 and 2017), Budapest (2016), Barcelona (2015) and Madrid (2015) was done under the thematic unit called ‘Urban public spaces of connecting the city’ by the researchers Prof. Bojana Bojanić Obad Šćitaroci, Ph.D., and Tamara Zaninović, Ph.D. student, and it was partially financed by Croatian Science Foundation under the project ‘Heritage Urbanism (HERU)—Urban and Spatial Models for Revival and Enhancement of Cultural Heritage’ (period 2014–2018, project number HRZZ-2032 and leading investigator Prof. Mladen Obad Šćitaroci, Ph.D.).
- 5.
Field research on case studies Barcelona (2012) and New York (2013) was done by Tamara Zaninović, Ph.D. student, under the Croatian scientific project called ‘Urban and Landscape Heritage of Croatia as a Part of European culture’ (period 2006–2013, number 054-0543089-2967 and the head of the project Prof. Mladen Obad Šćitaroci, Ph.D.).
- 6.
Locus amoenus is a Latin for ‘pleasant place’, and it refers to literary topos which is idealized place of safety and comfort with three basic elements: trees, grass and water.
- 7.
Historic landscape characterisation is a programme developed in the 1990s by English Heritage for historic environment conservation and spatial planning where the time depth of cultural and historical processes plays the key role in understanding and managing landscapes.
- 8.
Here, the lengths are given for the parts of the walkspace system La Rambla 1.2 km and Rambla Catalunya 1.3 km, while in the table length is the sum of its parts; therefore, with squares it is a 3-km walkspace system for this case study.
- 9.
Váci Street is therefore through Vörösmarty tér in the north connected into a larger walkspace system which consists of: Vigadó tér, which is from the Vörösmarty tér located to the west on the coast and part of Danube Banks system as well; József Nádor tér and Hild tér located both to the north; Erzsébet tér in the northeast at the beginning of Andrássy út; Városháza park to the east; Szervita tér to the southeast; Széchenyi István tér placed at the coast northwest from the Vörösmarty tér and connected to the Szent Istvan tér with Szent Istvan Basilica through pedestrian street called Zrínyi utca.
- 10.
The plans are there but have not been implemented yet, and it is uncertain if they will.
- 11.
The media announced plans to pedestrianize the main shopping street in Madrid, and this is currently in testing phase of analysing the last traffic restrictions from December 2017.
- 12.
NYC Department of Transportation has been working on the pedestrianisation of Broadway Boulevard since 2009 through a series of projects which have been advocated by the Project for Public Space and its partners in the New York City Streets Renaissance since 2006.
- 13.
Foster+Partners, authors of Millennium Bridge in London, cited on their website the Evening Standard newspapers as a positive fact that the new bridge is a combination of design and construction pleasant as a view and for walking: “Something wonderful has happened. A British architect and a British engineer have built a confident, intelligent, striking, graceful, even playful structure in the shadow of St Paul’s. Whether you’re walking on it or simply looking at it from the banks, it gives deep satisfying pleasure”.
- 14.
Andrassy Avenue is 2.3-km long, and La Rambla’s walkspace system is 3-km long (including Rambla de Catalunya and Passeig de Gracia).
- 15.
Selection criteria: (ii) to exhibit an important interchange of human values, over a span of time or within a cultural area of the world, on developments in architecture or technology, monumental arts, town-planning or landscape design; (iv) to be an outstanding example of a type of building, architectural or technological ensemble or landscape which illustrates (a) significant stage(s) in human history.
- 16.
Power to re-generate urban parts meaning to give and create urban values, producing a city, fabricating a city, modelling a city, constructing a city, to mould a city is a notion translated from Croatian term which is both adjective and noun: „gradotvornost“—defined by authors prof. Mladen Obad Šćitaroci, Ph.D., and prof. Bojana Bojanić Obad Šćitaroci, Ph.D., in the paper called “Gradotvornost perivoja i pejsaža - Re-interpretacija perivoja - konstelacija suvremenih tema/Re-interpretation of Urban Gardens and Landscape”.
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Acknowledgements
The research is a part of the scientific project ‘Heritage Urbanism—Urban and Spatial Planning Models for Revival and Enhancement of Cultural Heritage’. It is partially financed by the Croatian Science Foundation [HRZZ-2032] and carried out at the University of Zagreb, Faculty of Architecture.
This research was also part of the research entitled ‘Urbanscape Emanation’ financed by the University of Zagreb and carried out at the Faculty of Architecture.
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Zaninović, T., Palaiologou, G., Bojanić Obad Šćitaroci, B. (2019). Walkspace as Cultural Heritage Within Urban Landscape. In: Obad Šćitaroci, M., Bojanić Obad Šćitaroci, B., Mrđa, A. (eds) Cultural Urban Heritage. The Urban Book Series. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-10612-6_19
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