ABSTRACT

This chapter contains a great many thoughts and techniques relevant to recreational space and associated amenity values in the urban landscape. An amenity is measured by the response it evokes from human beings, the values, standards, and tastes of a population must necessarily influence the characterization, as amenities, of those environmental variables which impinge on the life space of that population. The amenity value of any environmental configuration is determined by the human responses which it engenders. The threshold of amenity or disamenity experience may therefore be hypothesized to vary widely throughout a population, as may the intensity or significance of the experience. The urban amenity planning and management must focus on the environmental subsystems, or “cells,” which comprise the urban or metropolitan community. A more rational and socially rewarding system for the planning and management of urban amenities is sorely needed.