Shared space

When we talk about space, what do we mean? Often, we think about physical space, the space between buildings, the spaces that surround us. However, there is another space that we all understand, people space. We have personal space, community spaces, thinking space. Successful places pull these spaces together. They enable 'shared spaces'. Too often in our villages, towns and cities we don't have shared space. Indeed, some argue that we often don't have communities, we have residencies; individual groups doing their own thing, rarely engaging. To re-invigorate our urban places we need to reconnect people to places and people to each other. We need more shared spaces. Shared space is a key element of the Scottish Renaissance Towns approach. We promote shared space in a number of ways:

• understanding community priorities [the shared space of common life]


• understanding local priorities and who can do what [the shared space of collaboration]


• understanding the link between national policies and local action [the shared space of policy]

Shared space is all about people. Achieving better shared spaces to enable better community life, vibrant and viable places needs a clear strategy for delivery. The Shared space concept helps again in terms of :

• exploring new ways of thinking and doing together [the shared space of delivery]


• making the right interventions in the right place for the right reasons [the spared space of good places]

We recognise that shared space is a good approach. It is starting to become practical in many ways. Roads and streets are increasingly working to the shared space agenda. 'Designing Designing Streets the forthcoming guidance from the Scottish Government promotes streets as shared spaces, which balance place and link functions. This means that we need to understand streets as more than just a traffic corridor. It is a place for people. The Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment [CABE] think so too. Their report on Streets for people argues coherently for a more balanced view of how we use the spaces in our urban areas.

Demos, the think tank on democracy have thought about shared people spaces. Their publication Equally Spaced sets out some interesting ideas for new forms of public space, new forms of public life, new forms of community. The ideas are all there. Making it happen is the exciting bit. Scottish Renaissance Towns are helping to do just that.