Shops in Morocco, India, Peru, and the oldest parts of older towns, are often no more than 50 square feet in area. Just room for a person and some merchandise—but plenty big enough.
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| Fifty square feet. |
Therefore:
Do what you can to encourage the development of individually owned shops. Approve applications for business licenses only if the business is owned by those people who actually work and manage the store. Approve new commercial building permits only if the proposed structure includes many very very small rental spaces.
434
INDIVIDUALLY OWNED SHOPS
| owner occupied |
|---|
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| ' - • T-*I • V—; |
some no more than 50 square feet 4* »!♦
Treat each individual shop as an identifiable unit of a larger building complex (95); make at least some part of the shop part of the sidewalk, so that people walk through the shop as they are going down the street—opening to the street (165); and build the inside of the shop with all the goods as open and available as possible—the shape of indoor space (191), thick WALLS ( I 97), OPEN SHELVES (200) . . . .
435
TOWNS
process which we believe is compatible with this piecemeal approach.
1. The core of the planning process we propose is this: The region is made up of a hierarchy of social and political groups, from the smallest and most local groups —families, neighborhoods, and work groups—to the largest groups—city councils, regional assemblies.
Imagine for example a metropolitan region composed very roughly of the following groups, each group a coherent political entity:
A. The region: 8,000,000 people.
B. The major city: 500,000 people.
C. Communities and small towns: 5-10,000 people each.
D. Neighborhoods: 500-1000 people each.
E. House clusters and work communities: 30-50 people each.
F. Families and work groups: 1-15 people each.
2. Each grouf makes its own decisions about the environment it uses in common. Ideally, each group actually owns the common land at its "level.” And higher groups do not own or control the land belonging to lower groups—they only own and control the common land that lies between them, and which serves the higher group. For instance, a community of 7000 might own the public land lying between its component neighborhoods, but not the neighborhoods themselves. A co-operative house cluster would own the common land between the houses, but not the houses themselves.
3. Each of these groups takes responsibility for those patterns relevant to its own internal structure.
Thus, we imagine, for example, that the various
4
| 88 STREET CAFE** |
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436
. . . neighborhoods are defined by identifiable neighborhood (14); their natural points of focus are given by activity nodes (30) and small public squares (61). This pattern, and the ones which follow it, give the neighborhood and its points of focus, their identity.
*£•
The street cafe provides a unique setting, special to cities: a place where people can sit lazily, legitimately, be on view, and watch the world go by.
The most humane cities are always full of street cafes. Let us try to understand the experience which makes these places so attractive.
We know that people enjoy mixing in public, in parks, squares, along promenades and avenues, in street cafes. The preconditions seem to be: the setting gives you the right to be there, by custom; there are a few things to do that are part of the scene, almost rituaclass="underline" reading the newspaper, strolling, nursing a beer, playing catch; and people feel safe enough to relax, nod at each other, perhaps even meet. A good cafe terrace meets these conditions. But it has in addition, special qualities of its own: a person may sit there for hours—in public! Strolling, a person must keep up a pace; loitering is only for a few minutes. You can sit still in a park, but there is not the volume of people passing, it is more a private, peaceful experience. And sitting at home on one’s porch is again different: it is far more protected; and there is not the mix of people passing by. But on the cafe terrace, you can sit still, relax, and be very public. As an experience it has special possibilities; “perhaps the next person . . .”; it is a risky place.
It is this experience that the street cafe supports. And it is one of the attractions of cities, for only in cities do we have the concentration of people required to bring it off. But this experience need not be confined to the special, extraordinary parts of town. In European cities and towns, there is a street cafe in every neighborhood—they are as ordinary as gas stations are in the United
States. And the existence of such places provides social glue for the community. They become like clubs—people tend to return to their favorite, the faces become familiar. When there is a successful cafe within walking distance of your home, in the neighborhood, so much the better. It helps enormously to increase the identity of a neighborhood. It is one of the few settings where a newcomer to the neighborhood can start learning the ropes and meeting the people who have been there many years.
The ingredients of a successful street cafe seem to be:
1. There is an established local clientele. That is, by name, location, and staff, the cafe is very much anchored in the neighborhood in which it is situated.
2. In addition to the terrace which is open to the street, the cafe contains several other spaces: with games, fire, soft chairs, newspapers. . . . This allows a variety of people to start using it, according to slightly different social styles.
3. The cafe serves simple food and drinks—some alcoholic drinks, but it is not a bar. It is a place where you are as likely to go m the morning, to start the day, as in the evening, for a nightcap.
When these conditions are present, and the cafe takes hold, it offers something unique to the lives of the people who use it: it offers a setting for discussions of great spirit—talks, two-bit lectures, half-public, half-private, learning, exchange of thought.
When we worked for the University of Oregon, we compared the importance of such discussion in cafes and cafe-like places, with the instruction students receive in the classroom. We interviewed 30 students to measure the extent that shops and cafes contributed to their intellectual and emotional growth at the University. We found that “talking with a small group of students in a coffee shop” and “discussion over a glass of beer” scored as high and higher than “examinations” and “laboratory study.” Apparently the informal activities of shops and cafes contribute as much to the growth of students, as the more formal educational activities.
We believe this phenomenon is general. The quality that we tried to capture in these interviews, and which is present in a neighborhood cafe, is essential to all neighborhoods—not only student neighborhoods. It is part of their life-blood.
Therefore:
Encourage local cafes to spring up in each neighborhood. Make them intimate places, with several rooms, open to a busy path, where people can sit with coffee or a drink and watch the world go by. Build the front of the cafe so that a set of tables stretch out of the cafe, right into the street.