The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces

by William H Whyte, The Conservation Foundation, 1980 

Note: This guy sat there for days just watching people use the space and taking notes and even made statistical charts about it, measured the height and width of ledges and benches, you name it. This comes from first-hand observation and data; this is not theory.

• Women are more selective. A high proportion of women to men in a space is a good sign. A low proportion means something is wrong. p18
• Erwin Goffman's "civil inattention" p19
• On trying to figure out why some plazas work and others don't, "People tend to sit where there are places to sit" p28; and "Even though benches and chairs can be added, the best course is to maximize the sitability of inherent features (ledges, walls, stairs)', i.e, "integral seating" p28
• People will sit anywhere with a height of 1 foot to 3 feet p31
• Ledges 2 backsides deep seat more people comfortably (when used on both sides), and so make them 30  inches deep (36 is better) p31
• Designing for the handicapped makes things better for everyone. p33
• Benches are actually no good; they're too small to satisfy the nature of group behavior (my words) p33
• Again on benches - by the second day, the basic use patterns will be established p33
• On moving chairs (but could applied anywhere) - people want the *perception* of choice, hence the paradox, "If you know can move if you want to, you feel more comfortable staying put." p34
• Moving a chair this way and that before sitting is about a "declaration of autonomy". And when others are present, it's an exercise in civility. p35
• On building glare and F-stops - "In eight years of filming, I have found that several streets have become photographically a half-stop faster" p43
• "Now we come to the key space for a plaza. It is not on the plaza. It is on the street." p54
• Imagine, in 2025 as I write this, "New York's Bryant Park is dangerous...dope dealers and muggers" p58 (fyi Bryant Park in 2025 is swanky as hell, has coffee and food vendors, benches and chairs everywhere, and hosts movie nights in the summers for families to lay out a blanket on the grass) 
• A slight elevation can be beckoning, but not more than one foot, and never sunken. p58-59
• Undesireables - "They are not themselves much of a problem. It is the measures taken to combat them that is the problem." p60
• "Plaza Mayors" p63
• The effective carrying capacity of a park is the linear feet of seating space divide by 3 (which is the size of a person's ass; not really but the size of a person's personal space, at 3ft) 
• The unconscious social intelligence described here is perfect: For 2 hours during lunch, a person either gets up or sits down every minute, yet the number stays at 18-21 people. "Whenever it reaches 21, almost immediately someone will get up and leave. If it drops to 18, someone will sit down. ... A self-regulating factor seems to be at work ... There are enough spaces to take care of another half-dozen people easily. But they do not appear. It's as if people had some instinctive sense..." p69
• He calls New York the most sittable city in the country (in 1980) p75
• He mentions toilets as an essential ingredient for good interior spaces p78
• Some people are natural door openers. Some are not. (Hence crowds move faster during the rush, because more people are forced to open more doors, speeding the flow) p81
• "Triangulation" he calls it, but I call it social triangulation: When some external stimulus provides a linkage between people and prompts strangers to talk to each other as though they were not. ... Casually they exchange comments, in a tone of voice usually reserved for close friends. 

Notes section

• According to their studies, the distribution of group sizes in public spaces has a group of 3 at 21%, always. Two's, four's and more's change 
• On Seagram's Plaza "I never dreamt people would sit there" -Cook and Klotz, Conversations w Architects, 1973
• On Noise: it's all perception. He's asked to measure near 42nd and Grand Central. Looks noisy; very moderate noise measured. He speculates that two years hence, it will be redesigned and look different, and it will sound different too (but only subjectively).