Patchwork for Accessible Coolth

About this pattern

‘Cool commons’ are spaces and places that offer cooler temperatures than surrounding areas.  This pattern is concerned with how patchworks of places/spaces can provide more accessibility.

Patchwork for accessible coolth is a pattern of scattered spaces, forms or services accessible to pedestrians; it is low-rise and integrated within neighbourhoods, enabling a spectrum of fine differentiation. This pattern suggests an alternative to continuous blocks of development, or enclosed shopping centres.

Examples of built form and space types that could be patchworked include:

• Patchwork green in a city
• Patchwork of social corners
• Cooling refuges
• Aged care
• Pocket parks
• Water play
• Shops

The accessibility of these places/spaces relates to the way people move through them comfortably and how they know where they are going.  Patchwork analyses look at the fine grain, working closely with the diverse ways people use urban space. Three ways of considering patchworks (permeability & legibility; movement and responsive environments) are offered here.

Accessibility equals permeability & legibility

Permeability is both physical and visual in the way it allows people to pass through; it entails both private and public interfaces and provides variety in the choice of movement. Legibility exists where the places/spaces have understandable forms such as edges, nodes, paths, districts and landmarks (see Lynch 1960).

Movement through patchwork involves a kind of serial vision, whereby elements of an environment – buildings, trees, nature, water – can be interwoven in such a way that causes anticipation to occur (see Cullen 1961).  We experience places in sequence, as the existing view and the emerging view simultaneously. Examples of these spaces are;

• Enclaves, enclosure;
• Focal points, precincts; hereness and thereness;
• Silhouette, incident;
• Undulation, fluctuation;
• Recession, anticipation, mystery.

Responsive Environments provide users with a democratic setting, enriched by the degree of choice available (see Bentley et al 1985). Criteria for evaluating responsive places include:

• Permeability: where people can go;
• Variety: the range of uses a place can have;
• Legibility: how people understand the place;
• Robustness: how people can use a place for different purposes;
• Visual appropriateness: the visual codes;
• Richness or the choice of sensory experiences;
• Personalization: people put their own stamp on places.

Pattern Conditions

Enablers

• Planning codes that prevent amalgamated sites, control density, maintain diversity of use.
• Open space guidelines which designate the sizes of infill parks based on standard recreational uses.
• Strategies that favour urban walkability, like Parramatta Ways or reimagine city roads as pedestrian linkages.

Disablers

• Patterns of planning that favour densification and centralisation of services.

Commoning Concerns

Various elements in these patchworks code the commons that are used by, and are accessible to, a community of commoners who, to some degree, care for, take responsibility for, and benefit from this coolness.

Ownership: Private/public ownership.

Access: Unrestricted.

Use: Community identity.

Benefit: Sense of place.

Care: State and Local Government, private owners.