Which standards for open space? A new conception for the 21st Century city

“Orthodox” modern city planning culture has favoured parks as places for social gathering and activities, partly because it has given up on streets as social spaces and relegated them to movement and access functions only. In recent years, parks are also increasingly seen as important for public health, and ecological functioning of the city. Researchers and advocates call for increased allocations of green spaces in the city, not always distinguishing between the metropolitan scale – where the mean amount of POS per capita is often measured, and the standards based on these means that operate at the level of urban neighbourhood or project. We suggest that time has come to reconsider streets as an essential part of the public space needed to satisfy the policy standard for POS. This move allows moderating the need of public land in new development, while providing for a diversity of allocations and density as well as dynamic change. Even more important, it requires designing streets as real social space, and adapting them to new urban and metropolitan contexts.