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Are you interested in how multifunctional urban spaces can contribute to increasing the quality of urban life in dense cities?

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Our summary today works with the article titled Multifunctional Urban Spaces – a solution to increase the quality of urban life in dense cities from 2020 by Atieh Ghafouri and Christiane Weber, published the Manzar journal. Since we are investigating the future of cities, I thought it would be interesting to see how urban spaces can be designed and managed to promote social inclusion, community engagement, and sustainable development in the face of rapid urbanization and increasing density. The article presents the potential of these spaces to provide a range of social, cultural, and recreational amenities that meet the diverse needs of urban residents.

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Welcome to today’s What is The Future For Cities podcast and its Research episode; my name is Fanni, and today I will introduce a research paper by summarising it. The episode really is just a short summary of the original paper, and, in case it is interesting enough, I would encourage everyone to check out the whole paper. Stay tuned until because I will give you the 3 most important things and some questions which would be interesting to discuss.

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Urban population is steadily increasing. Consequently, urban landscapes and forms are constantly changing, developing and expanding horizontally and vertically. The horizontal expansion, also known as urban sprawl is known to be harmful due to the increasing CO2 emission, artificial soils, fragmentation of landscape in peri-urban areas. The spread also increases the costs of development and living because of infrastructure development or transportation needs. Thus, densification seems to be a more sustainable urban development. However, sustainable urban development should have specific characteristics, like compactness, multicentralism, active mobility, social diversity, and integration with nature. Sustainable urbanism needs to encompass democracy, social welfare, preserving natural resources and environment, economic viability, and transportation. It requires a framework that includes all of these and even more.

Urban population growth however, can evoke greater density to the detriment of green spaces, activity centres and public places per capita. But what makes a city liveable is the quality of life of its citizens. And quality of life does not depend upon density but the life between the buildings: outdoor necessary and functional activities, optional and recreational activities and social activities and public spaces. The better a place is, the more optional activities occur and the longer necessary activities last. Social activity is the fruit of the quality and length of the other types of activities because it occurs spontaneously when people meet in a particular space. When a city establishes its path through densification, without considering the environmental and social aspects of urban sustainability and providing new facilities, the quality of life of the residents decreases. Thus the question of this research was how the quality of life of citizens can be maintained in densely populated cities.

One solution can be multifunctional spaces to increase the quality of life in high-density cities. Multifunctional spaces free up more space for optional activities. The authors took a general view on the multifunctional spaces: they are both places or objects that maintains various aspects as well as whole active systems that can be optimised. This is needed because the definition for the multifunctional spaces is lacking – there are too many of them. However, examples can be taken from other fields, like agriculture. Agriculture is multifunctional, because it considers not just food production, but ecological, economical, socio-cultural, historical and aesthetical roles and values of the farm. And these additional effects benefit broadly the society, culture, the national economy and security, among others. For example, the wine route in Alsace, France does not only provide wine, but vineyards with a special land pattern, an identity to the whole area, an aesthetical experience and an attractive place for tourists. Thus, a multifunctional approach focuses on the various roles areas can play.

The main goal is to improve the quality of life in densely populated cities. This can be achieved through efficiency but we must be able to create spaces for new functions. To create multifunctional spaces, the authors identified six ways of using a space during a cycle of its activity:

1. Mono-functional space with one function and one activity for one user group – the most general method of designing spaces – like an office or a house.
2. Periodic functional space with changing activities following each other in time – like how a gallery hosts different artists over the year
3. Multipurpose spaces with activities following each other but with similar equipment needed – like sports halls hosting different sport events during the year
4. Mixed-use space with activities a bit overlapping with each other – like commercial-leisure centres
5. Complex spaces with consecutive activities a bit overlapping – like cinema complexes
6. Shared spaces with one main function but replaceable smaller activities in the cycle – like weekly markets in local cafés.

This can work on different scales as well. The parking lots of a residential complex are usually empty during the day while the office parking spots are empty during the night – allowing something else to happen. Spaces with private or semi-private uses might also be allocated to a public performance. For example, school yards can be opened to the public during school holidays and used as a shared communal space.

A multifunctional space could be identified with these two characteristics: allow different functions, actors and different users to use it and fulfill the different roles a space might have in line with the environmental, economical and social sustainability. The recovered space could be used for optional activities, and as the levels of optional activity rise, the number of social activities usually increases substantially, eventually leading to an increase in quality of life. When multifunctional cells are put together with a comprehensive vision, the benefits are much more significant than the sum of the advantages each cell could achieve individually.

Multifunctional use of urban spaces may reduce the requirement to create new capacities in order to meet the needs arising from growing population and increasing urban density. It also enhances the quality of life of citizens ensuring increased opportunity for optional and social activities in the city – in the existing spaces that have been used in a multifunctional way.

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What was the most interesting part for you? What questions did arise for you? Do you have any follow up question? Let me know on Twitter at WTF4Cities or on the wtf4cities.com website where the transcripts and show notes are available! Additionally, I will highly appreciate if you consider subscribing to the podcast or on the website. I hope this was an interesting paper for you as well, and thanks for tuning in!

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Finally, as the most important things, I would like to highlight 3 aspects:

1. The main goal is to improve the quality of life in densely populated cities and this can be achieved through efficiency but we must be able to create spaces for new functions – we must create multifunctional spaces.
2. A multifunctional space could be identified with these two characteristics: allow different functions, actors and different users to use it and fulfill the different roles a space might have in line with the environmental, economical and social sustainability.
3. When multifunctional cells are put together with a comprehensive vision, the benefits are much more significant than the sum of the advantages each cell could achieve individually.

Additionally, it would be great to talk about the following questions:

1. Do you have multifunctional spaces in your city? What do you think of them?
2. What multifunctional spaces are missing in your city? What would you create as a multifunctional space?
3. How would you use multifunctional spaces in your city?

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