ABSTRACT
‘Fitness for purpose’ is still the worthy goal for a designer, whether designing a new square or redesigning an existing one. Purpose just needs to be defined in broad terms rather than in the way the concept of function that we inherited from the Modernists is understood. 1 Jan Taugh (cited in Engwicht 1999) believes that the urban environment should provide the affordances for looking, listening and talking to people, walking about and sitting down – to be the outdoor rooms within a city. Many public authorities clearly do not want to have squares with the characteristics Taugh regards as good; they fear that the space will be taken over by transients, the homeless and other segments of the population whose presence is deemed to be less than desirable (Savić and Savićic 2013). 2 The impact of the redesign of Bryant Park in New York suggests, however, that well-located and well-designed public open spaces attractive to the general populace are not places desired by the homeless (Weber 1995). Where they are, transients are accepted as legitimate users of the square and interfere little with how a space works for others.
