Book Review: Social Life of Small Urban Spaces by William H. Whyte

The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces Book Review

Student Name: Tarek Fouani Student E-mail: Tarek.fouani.2018@uni.strath.ac.uk

Book: The Social life of Small Urban Spaces Writer: William H. Whyte Edition: Second printing Year of Publication: 1980 City of Publication: Tuxedo, Maryland Publisher: The Conservation Foundation Pages: 125 ISBN: 0-89164-057-6 Paperback

William H. Whyte, an American journalist and urbanist, released his latest book in 1980 under the name of “The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces”. The book records in detail his research method of peoples’ behavior in small public spaces in New York City. This method is based on time lapses and close live observation of everyday life in these spaces while paying attention to small details and recording every movement and every behavior. The book walks the reader through Whyte’s process of researching in a journey of all the successful and unsuccessful hypothesis he evaluated.

The book was written in a period where NYC was associated with dirt, decay, grime, and fiscal crisis (Reilly, 1975). Moreover, in that period and since 1961, the zoning provisions of the city allowed office buildings to increase their exploitation rate in exchange for public plazas in front of them; as a result, more plazas in NYC started to form, but only few were used. This triggered the need of such a research and such a book that deals with a detailed analysis of public spaces and why some are successful while others are not. The book was of an interest to The Conservation Foundation as stated in the book’s forward by the foundation’s president William K. Reilly, who are also the publishers, to be able to meet the demands of the growing population. The book was able to successfully contribute to these issues and was of good use. It introduced a new method that allows direct connection and communication between the space, the people, and the third party being the researcher. However, the book lacked timelessness, not in the physical approach, but in the social approach. Whyte, especially in the first chapter of the book titled “The Life of Plazas” tends to base his studies on the generalization of gender roles, portraying men as compulsive “machismos” and women as very selective in where they sit and that they prefer to sit in secluded areas. Thus, reaching a conclusion that the more you see women using a space, the more successful it would be. This falls under generalization and jumping into conclusions, other than being irrelevant to peoples’ behavior in the 21st century where gender roles don’t apply as much anymore. On another hand, Whyte shows some discriminating and irrelevant references such as a stereotype against specifically construction workers as having more tendency to verbally harass girls passing by than others.

William H. Whyte was able to draw perfect images of the scenes he describes through his words by using informal simple English, reaching out for as many audiences as possible. As the book was initially intended to community groups, architects, planners, businessmen, developers, and real estate people as stated in his introduction of the book, the latter was simply and thoroughly written to be understood by the public.

The book records a process of the research in complete details, talking to the reader and trying to reach conclusions that bring new ideas on the table. Whyte was able to study all possible influences of using a space without rushing into results. He focused equally on all the elements of influence such as the sun, shape, aesthetics, size, amount of “sittable” space and their quality; then moving into more details talking about water, wind and trees in chapter 3 where he describes each element on its own, states the problem, explains it and backs it up. Then he moves to talk about the importance of food in chapter 4, however, the latter was not really well developed and didn’t add new ideas to the process and discussion.

Moreover, he focused on the importance of all of the mentioned elements reaching a variety of conclusions represented by using numbers and statistics that were visually presented through charts in a comparative analytical manner. These, beside the expressive self-explanatory images provide enough material to visualize and understand the issue tackled. The writer shows a quality of thoughtfulness and critical thinking where he raises questions in the beginning of almost each chapter, questions that fall under controversy and engage the readers in the discussion of the book. Later on he suggests steps and reaches results that can answer these questions. For example, “…how public are the public spaces?” and

“what does accessible mean?” (Whyte, 1980). It is important to mention that some of these question as important as they are, as general and broad as they get, that a straight answer couldn’t be provided.

Nonetheless, Whyte simplifies the subject and gives a simple answer making them irrelevant at certain points. “Will the factors that make a plaza or small space successful in one city work in another?” (Whyte, 1980); Whyte simply answers as yes. In his answer he ignored a very important aspect of high influence, an aspect that he fails to raise its importance in The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces, and this aspect is culture and traditions. Each country and city had its history that developed and grew, with it grew the culture and remained the traditions. What works in America wouldn’t work in Algeria or Africa, and what works in New York City wouldn’t necessarily work in Detroit. In such a manner, the author states statements as facts either without relevancy to the text, like saying that a designer sees the whole building, the clean verticals and horizontals like Mies turned his corners (Whyte, 1980) which is a general and weak statement used only to say that the public don’t care about the buildings there, which is also an overstatement; or statements that are not well backed up and are not necessarily true such as saying that if circulations and amenities are planned with handicapped in mind, the place will function more easily for everyone (Whyte, 1980) and that downtowns of smaller cities cover more space than those of bigger cities and have wider streets (Whyte, 1980).

As mentioned before, the author follows a simple style of writing and language making it accessible for everyone to read and understand providing evidences and examples thoroughly, like the example of Paley Park in NYC. However, this informal writing brings with it a lot of subjectivity in some of the issues tackled along with some vulgar words and expressions such as “kitsch”, “nippy”, “tarry”, “drafty” and “machismo” that fall under subjective judgments in their context. Nonetheless, the visuals including images, graphs and charts provide a strong visual explanation that works perfectly with the text.

Moreover, the book provides a simple yet sufficient content page allowing readers to understand the process of thinking of the author. Structurally, the book lacks a bibliography and glossary knowing that some of the vocabulary used require explanation. These parts are replaced by two appendixes, A and B, that explain tools used for the photographs and time lapse in Appendix A which are relevant to the film but not to the book. In Appendix B, he provides the 1975 Zoning Amendments of NYC that provides familiarity and a look at the possible future of these spaces. Eventually, he ends the book with some notes that provide further details about each chapter including further statistics, people who helped, and small summaries in some cases. Through this book, the author was able to set specific goals and reach specific statements and results which were of huge success at the time, giving bold recommendation and suggestions based on a long process of research. Also, the production of the book is well done without any significant typographical errors. As mentioned before, the visuals are well placed and the content page is sufficient regardless of the missing bibliography and glossary.

Eventually, the book tackles all the issues and elements that can possibly influence peoples’ behavior in urban spaces. Regardless of the subjectivity and lack of back up prevailing in few of the statements, detailed procedure and detailed studies are provided in a very interesting approach to the research using time lapse and close observation. The book acts as an important element that visualizes the use of public spaces and really gives facts on why people use some spaces and not others. I would recommend this book to all students related to the field of architecture, design, and psychology, but as a medium for further understanding of the subject and of the human behavior towards all the elements of these spaces rather than a book of rules on creating public spaces.

References Imran, K. Review "The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces". SCRIBD. https://www.scribd.com/document/352136730/Review-The-Social-Life-of-Small-Urban-Spaces William, W. (1980). The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces. Tuxedo, Maryland. The Conservation Foundation.