This talk was given by Charlie Tims at the 'Megapolis 2025' event in Helsinki. The talk draws on the Demos report 'People Make Places' which looked at the capacity of public space in the UK to foster sharing and interaction between different groups of people. http://www.demos.co.uk/publications/peoplemakeplacesbook

1. People Make Places
MEGAPOLIS 2025 ’The Rhythm of the City’
Charlie Tims
Helsinki
2010

2. My name’s Charlie.
I’m a social
researcher interested
in public spaces.
I spend most of my
time working here, in
the British Library.

4. The library and the
spaces around it are
used by different
groups of people, for
different reasons.

6. Different times of
the day and different
points in the year
bring different
groups of people
through the library.

8. The library sets the
tempo of how I
experience the rhythm
of the city and
condition how it is
revealed to me.

10. You can learn about a
city by looking at
its public spaces and
what goes on in them.

11. In this photograph,
the different
reactions of passers
by tells you
something about
British people’s
relationship to the
army.

13. Public space is a
powerful device in
news stories about
power and democracy.

20. Controlling the
depiction of public
space is important to
people who want to
convey an image of a
city and its people.

24. Public spaces are
useful to designers
and policy makers not
just because they
reveal a city, but
because they offer a
chance to shape it.

26. They offer an
opportunity to give
power to people, not
just as protesters,
but in their every
day lives.

27. At Demos, in 2005 we
were commissioned by
a charitable trust to
look at the health of
public spaces in
Britain.

29. We found that many of
the squares, plazas
and key-sides, of the
‘urban renaissance’
despite being
labelled ‘public
spaces’ were actually
empty.

31. So our study became
about the places and
spaces that could
actually support
sharing and
interaction between
different groups of
people.

32. Many of these places
weren’t quite what
you might think of as
traditional ‘public
spaces’.

34. a supermarket cafe in
Swindon.

36. a car-boot sale, in
Preston

37. some allotments in
Cardiff.

38. Many forces have
contributed to the
emptying of public
spaces in Great
Britain.

39. Danny Dorling’s work
shows how growing
inequality in Britain is
mapped onto physical
space. The same streets
that were poor in London
100 years ago, remain
the poorest today.

40. The design and governance
of new public spaces in
Britain has largely been
driven by the need to
‘minimise anti-social
behaviour’ and encourage
the frictionless movement
of people to work and to
the shops.

41. Many survey’s report low
levels of trust between
groups of people. Just
half of people in the UK
generally trust the ‘man
on the steet’. It has
been this way since the
early 1980s.

43. New technologies can
enable us to avoid
people who are of no
immediate utility to us
enabling us to imprint
our own self-assembled
digital networks on
public spaces.

45. ‘In the future people will not be
divided from information, they will be
divided by information.’
Perri 6, 2001

48. Despite these obstacles
our research and
experiences show that
spaces that can support
sharing and interaction
by different groups of
people share common
features.

49. Room for self-organisation
All the spaces have obvious
routes to taking control of the
space. Anyone can take a car to
a car boot sale. The library,
the Arts Centre and the
Supermarket we studied all had
obvious points of contact for
visitors that could enable them
to start their own groups and
activities.

51. Props and Permission
People will be more likely to
engage with other people in
public spaces if there is
something that bridges their
experience. People who have
dogs talk to each other in
parks. In the library people
have books. Car-boot sales are
littered with curiosities that
provide talking points that can
bring people out of themselves.

54. Balance between different groups
People don’t like it when a space
is dominated by one group of
people. Spaces that work well, are
able to encourage different groups
of people with different
activities, but without putting up
walls between them. The following
images are taken from two recent
projects - an urban beach and an
urban orchard. Both had prgorammes
of different activities;
discussions, skills swaps and craft
groups.

66. The spaces were also
safe and accessible.
But this was more a
consequence of well-
balanced space than
because they were the
starting-point for
their design.

68. Public spaces that are capable
of working like this need great
managers and designers. The
Beach I mentioned before was
designed by my friend Melissa
Mean who I worked with on
People Make Places. The Orchard
was designed and masterminded
by Heather Ring. Google them!

71. In their work both are able to
create structures that can
provide a home for other
people’s projects. It’s
basically what Charlie
Leadbeater calls ‘The Art of
With’. Google that too. In a
perfect world this type of work
that can provide a home for
collective creativity would be
the starting point for all
future cultural regeneration
projects.

76. It should be the
starting point for
London’s Cultural
Olympiad too.

77. Text
people with learning difficulties
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78. Text
people with learning difficulties
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80. But I’m not hopeful.

82. In Britain the big
new political idea is
the ‘Big Society’ -
we are about to find
out what this means.

84. It could be a nice
way of describing a
country where
government is less
present.

86. Or it could mean a
new way of organising
society and governing
ourselves.

88. If it’s the later,
People Make Places
has three lessons for
The Big Society.

89. 1. A Big Society needs
public spaces that have
the public in them.
Public spaces aren’t
just the theatre of
democracy - they are
also its cradle, its
test bed and its life
blood.

90. 2. Institutions do not automatically
disempower, or empower people, but in
all the public spaces we like,
institutions play a key role. They
create settlement between people who
have power and people who don’t. On the
face of it a project like the Union
Street Urban orchard is a product of
volunteerism - but it still relies on
The Architecture Foundation, The Arts
Council, The Open Spaces Trust (and
many others) to make it happen. The
Big Society isn’t made by removing
institutions, it is made by
institutions who work differently.

91. 3. Public space, when it
works well, is a device for
giving power to people. The
principles that make for
better public space are the
same as those that make for
more democratic
organisations, cities,
campaigns, ngos, libraries,
parties, schools, cultural
organisations etc etc etc etc

92. Charlie Tims:
charlietims@gmail.com
www.demos.fi
www.demos.co.uk/publications/peoplemakeplacesbook
www.biglop.com