"Pocket park" refers specifically to the small urban open space.
They are often scattered or hidden in the structure of the city, but they are an important part of the central urban area with tight land to improve the urban environment and improve the quality of the city.
Especially in an international metropolis with high density and high urbanization like Shanghai, people's demand for green space around them is more urgent, and the role of pocket parks in adding green and vitality to the city is more significant.
Lou Jiajun, a distinguished professor at Shanghai Normal University, has long studied the development of urban leisure functions, and in recent years, he has set his sights more on "a good place at the doorstep".
In this interview, we invite Professor Lou Jiajun, who often investigates and participates in the review of Shanghai's "good place at the doorstep", to make comments for the creation of Pocket Park.
The service radius of the "pocket"
Shangguan News: You have long studied the development of urban leisure functions, and in recent years, you have set your sights on "good places at the doorstep" and served as a judge for the "good places at the doorstep" selection initiated by the Municipal Bureau of Culture and Tourism. Can you combine your experience and review of "good places at the doorstep" in the past two years to make some suggestions for the "good garden at the doorstep"?
Lou Jiajun: In the past two years, I have served as a judge for the "good place at the doorstep" selection initiated by the Municipal Bureau of Culture and Tourism, and I have gained a lot, the first of which is to more firmly realize that whether the "good place at the doorstep" is good or not, and the user's feelings and evaluations, especially the citizens, are the most important.
Taking the 2020 "Good Place at home" selection as an example, before the selection, the expert group visited all the locations of the participating space projects in three ways. Because it is a good place to select the "doorstep", everyone has placed special emphasis on paying attention to whether the selection object is better implemented the concept of "15-minute coverage".
It is precisely because it is considered from this perspective that some spaces that everyone looks good at first, such as some park green spaces, a landmark or a single theme exhibition hall, etc., because the function is relatively single, it may not be able to attract citizens to visit many times, and the ranking in the review is not high.
This ranking is not entirely about "good" or "bad", but depends on the degree and frequency of citizens like to go, and the experience and feelings of citizens on the spatial environment and its services. Through such selection and ranking, on the one hand, we hope to guide citizens and tourists to have a deeper understanding of the many changes that have taken place in Shanghai and are closely related to ourselves, so as to have a higher quality of leisure, entertainment and fitness life; on the other hand, the higher ranking cases themselves are also demonstrations, which can inspire more creators and managers of "doorstep destinations" to find the key points of polishing their own service quality.
Another important takeaway from participating in the review is that the creators, managers and operators of the "good place at the doorstep" must have a clear understanding of the service radius of their projects.
In the case of pocket parks, their core essence is to "meet the daily recreation and fitness needs of residents at their doorsteps." Since it is strictly stipulated that the scope of service is "doorstep", the community should be given priority and the community '15-minute life circle' should be given priority.
We are now building a pocket park, the general greening function and environmental creation function is more prominent, but whether it is necessary to achieve the degree of "good-looking", "exquisite" and "artistic" in the creation of the environment is debatable.
We may wish to reason in this way, "good-looking" can generally attract more people to "watch", thanks to the blessing of social networks, many citizens and tourists outside the community may come to visit. In this way, the ornamentality of the garden has been affirmed, and the reputation has also been enhanced, but in essence, such an attraction of communication traffic is the icing on the cake, and it has little to do with the "practicality" of the garden itself.
The downtown area of Shanghai is scarce, and the creation of pocket parks is often stitched in the needle. In this case, I personally feel that the "practicality" of pocket parks may be more important than "ornamentality".
As planners, designers, and managers, we should focus our main efforts on finding ways to create conditions, so that the surrounding residents can use the garden well and lively, and truly put the feelings and sense of gain of the surrounding residents in their hearts.
Especially in the newly built pocket park, managers and designers need to fully consider the various problems that may arise during the use process in the initial stage of design, including sustainable development issues such as maintenance and service after the project is landed.
Nanchang Road Lane 168 Pocket Park. Pictures of the Liberation Daily archives
Give the community a "physical check-up"
Shangguan News: You just highlighted the "practicality" of pocket parks. A tricky problem is that pocket parks are usually located on a fairly limited base, with various needs corresponding to different land use strategies, and there may be a "crowding out effect" between different land use needs. When encountering such problems, how to take care of them?
Lou Jiajun: That is "taking care of the sorting", and the ranking should be based on comprehensive and specific research. In the early stage of planning and design, it is necessary to make great efforts to discover the needs of surrounding residents.
In the case of central urban areas, we generally think that the demand of community residents for "pocket parks" is mainly "rest". But in fact, a pocket park located at the intersection of Fuxing Middle Road and Madang Road, and a pocket park in Caoyang New Village, the leisure functions that surrounding residents need to complete through it are actually quite different.
At the beginning of the design, the designer of the pocket park must not only read the basic construction conditions of the base, but also understand the community in which the base is located. It is best to run the existing parks, gardens, and areas with leisure facilities in the community, and give the community a comprehensive physical examination of the basic situation of leisure life.
The preliminary investigation is sufficient, and the later stage can take fewer detours, which is essentially to lay the foundation for the practicality of the garden. After all, the historical and cultural accumulation, geomorphological texture, and socio-economic conditions of different communities are different, the age structure and population flow of the population are different, and the existing leisure facilities are based on different foundations. Even the intersections on the same main road and different branches have subtle differences in functional and callable resources.
What's more, a limited pocket park cannot meet too many features and needs. At this time, first of all, it is necessary to sort out, sort, and choose the needs. Second, we can broaden our thinking and not just think of a single base to fill in all the gaps or gaps in needs.
In the case of more lack of leisure functions in the community, it may be advisable to find ways to consider the overall situation within the community, or to do a good job of differentiation, guidance and linking between the base and its surrounding leisure resources, which can be through the optimization of the trail system, or through the identification system to prompt and guide residents. It's better to revitalize resources across the community than to overlay too many features or content on one base.
Shangguan News: What are your best ways to spot the needs of residents around Pocket Park?
Lou Jiajun: In recent years, many communities in Shanghai have their own "community planners", and community planners have a very useful magic weapon called "participatory planning", that is, to solicit residents' opinions by distributing survey questionnaires and other means as much as possible. What I use more in my own research is really a "stupid method" - field visits.
I once spent a little time "squatting" in a park with a central urban area of about 80,000 square meters. In just one morning, the park has hosted several groups of citizens of different ages. Come here for morning exercises (running, doing exercises, using small equipment to work out), square dancing, ballroom dancing, singing (with small external speakers), basking in the sun, walking, playing with young children, different citizens come here with different activity needs, some alone, some in pairs, some in groups, using this park in their own ways.
One of the more prominent contradictions of this park is that the overall environment here is elegant and spacious, and in most cases, different citizens get along with each other and get along peacefully. However, due to the fact that some citizens who dance or sing bring their own external speakers, they do not pay attention to it and do not control the volume of the speakers or tape recorders, and the citizens who carry out other leisure activities around them will inevitably look embarrassed, and some simply leave or move to other quieter areas in the park.
For example, a park in the central urban area of about 60,000 square meters has a enclosed fitness trail, and almost every day after dinner, those who come here for walking and those who come here to run often share the same space. Due to the different speeds and fitness intensities of each other, it is inevitable to rub into each other, and those with strong empathy can also understand and accept each other, and they are about to encounter angry emotions.
As observers and discoverers of community leisure needs, similar conflict points deserve to be observed and recorded for further tracking and analysis.
Both of these examples, although they occurred in parks larger than pocket parks, have the same sample significance for the communities in which they operate. Their actual use reflects the leisure needs of the surrounding residents, and there are potential but unmet parts.
Teachers and students of Tongji University participated in the renovation of Siping Community Pocket Park. Pictures of the Liberation Daily archives
Participatory "practicality"
Shangguan News: Judging from the example you just shared, the daily recreation needs of citizens have obvious fragmentation and temporary characteristics, which need to be adapted and taken care of by pocket parks.
Lou Jiajun: The tendency to fragmentation and temporary is very obvious, and these two points will be more obvious in pocket parks.
Some students have asked me, if there is a pocket park in a central urban area, the surrounding residents and white-collar workers working in the surrounding area, which one or groups will be preferred?
In my opinion, first of all, it is necessary to carefully screen, for example, residents and white-collar workers may go to pocket parks at different times. Secondly, in the design, try to choose a group of functional facilities with greater flexibility. Finally, if the demand for pocket parks is more strong among the residents of the community, the needs of local residents should be prioritized. Considering that users are mainly short-term stays, mainly engaged in simple and short-term leisure activities, such as walking, sitting or quiet rest after meals, the design and choice of leisure facilities must be based on a humane scale.
In the pocket park, the seats arranged in a linear and scattered arrangement occupy a large area, but they do not necessarily match the needs of small groups to communicate and rest, and need to be properly configured.
For the main users of the two major recreational spaces in the central urban area, one old and one small, a little tilt can be appropriately made to increase the facilities that family users such as the elderly and children can use.
As for the leisure needs of citizens for a longer period of time, we may wish to guide them to a larger space, make full use of parks of different types, sizes and themes, and arrange their own leisure life. At the community level, we should also do a little guidance work to help citizens know and use various resources within the community, and encourage everyone to combine time, peak and static.
Shangguan News: You particularly emphasize that pocket parks should be "useful" and "participatory".
Lou Jiajun: Yes. In terms of some of the pocket parks I've been to, they are very exquisite and beautiful in terms of landscaping, but strictly speaking, the actual areas available for citizens to move are very limited, which makes me feel a little regretful.
The lack of real activity space may lead to a problem, that is, it is difficult for citizens to stay after entering the park, and they will go out after walking around. In this way, the landscape function is greater than the rest function, which is not necessarily in line with our original intention of using the land to see the seam and insert the needle.
At present, another prominent phenomenon in urban parks is the heavy maintenance of lawns and light participation. Careful maintenance of the turf is indeed costly, and rough stampede must of course be banned, but if the public is completely forbidden to enter, in a sense, the lack of immersive experience of the park environment is also a pity and embarrassment. How to do a good job in guiding this aspect is worth discussing.
In the future, when the conditions of the base permit, the pocket park should also pay attention to the diversification of functions as much as possible. The purpose of diversification is to better play the role of serving different users and create better basic conditions for the management and service of parks to a higher level. In terms of creating the park environment, it is necessary to integrate with the architectural texture of the block where the park is located as much as possible, and grasp the scale and proportion of the artificial landscape.
This article was first published in Liberation Daily
Column Editor-in-Chief: Gong Danyun Text Editor: Liu Sen
Source: Author: Liu Sen