When exactly did we resign ourselves to the idea that outdoor space belongs to all of us — and turn it into nothing more than a traffic pipeline?
The roots of this problem reach deep into our past. Look at a medieval town square and you'll see the pulsing heart of a community. It was a marketplace, a theatre, a place for political debate and public justice. The square was defined by bustle, encounter and a human scale.
With the arrival of industrialisation and the twentieth century, however, the way we think about cities changed radically. Urban planning fell under the spell of traffic flow. The success of a city began to be measured by how many cars it could absorb, and how quickly it could move them from point A to point B.
The result? Public space was reduced to mere traffic infrastructure, and what had once been the living centres of communal life became transit corridors where pedestrians are tolerated only as a necessary inconvenience.
But where did public life go? Where did neighbourliness, shared experience and a sense of safety disappear to?
The Right to Simply Be: Who Does the City Really Serve?
If we want to bring life back to the streets, we need to change the fundamental paradigm — and look carefully at the details that quietly rob us of our freedom.
A striking example is the critical shortage of benches.
Our cities are slowly losing places where you can sit down without being obliged to buy an overpriced coffee or a glass of wine at a commercial terrace. Public space is being commercialised. But the ability to pause and rest should not be conditional on the turnover on your payment card.
We need places for "ordinary being" — for older people who need to rest on the way back from the shops, for students reading a book, for people who simply want to watch the world go by.
A free bench is a basic symbol of a city acknowledging your right to its space.
Equally overlooked is the issue of public toilets. Their absence severely limits the ability to spend time in the city — particularly for older people, parents with young children or people with physical limitations.
For someone using a wheelchair, the question of an accessible toilet is not a matter of comfort, but of freedom of movement. Public space cannot be truly open to everyone if it forces certain groups of residents to plan every journey around whether they will find accessible facilities.
A toilet may not be as photogenic as new paving, a fountain or a designer bench. And yet precisely these small things often determine whether a city is genuinely liveable.
We don't recognise a truly inclusive city by how it looks on a visualisation. We recognise it by whether a child, an older person and someone using a wheelchair can all spend a whole day there without anxiety.
We encounter the same paradox with city rivers. In many cities, rivers are perfectly navigable for tourist boats, but for the ordinary person they are practically untouchable — imprisoned in deep concrete channels, behind high railings and stone embankments.
Yet a river brings life, cooling and dynamism to a city. It is also the city's memory. It was around water that the first settlements, trading routes and cities themselves came into being.
When you can't touch it, walk down steps to it, or wade in it, the city loses its most natural grounding element.
Heat, Shade and Missing Water: The New Role of the Street
This deficit takes on an entirely new dimension during the hot summer months.
With climate change advancing, we are experiencing an acute shortage of water features and shade. Grey concrete squares without trees or fountains function as enormous radiators that literally drive people out of public space and back home to their air conditioning.
Water features were never purely decorative throughout history — drinking fountains, wells and basins were practical infrastructure for surviving heat.
European cities that treat outdoor space intelligently are humbly returning to these principles today.
Bordeaux
The French city managed to transform its originally industrial and inaccessible riverbanks into vibrant oases. Its famous Miroir d'eau (water mirror) is a giant air-cooling surface along the embankment, where on hot days people naturally take off their shoes and touch the water right in the middle of the historic city centre.
Nice
Along the celebrated Promenade du Paillon, the city replaced an old bus station and concrete car park with a sprawling urban park full of greenery, benches and water jets. The result is a dramatic reduction in temperature and the return of families to public space.
Copenhagen
A world leader in human-scale urbanism. Copenhagen not only builds countless freely accessible benches and pocket parks, but has cleaned its city canals to such a degree that it has created public swimming spots in them. River and sea here serve people, not only maritime traffic.
What Does Common Ownership Mean?
Rediscovering public space means understanding what common ownership actually means.
Common ownership doesn't mean that a space "belongs to nobody", and that we can therefore abandon it and pour it over with asphalt. It means that it belongs to all of us.
When we begin to see the street and the square as a shared living room, our behaviour changes. The sense of safety increases, because a street where people are present — thanks to benches, shade and a pleasant environment — is naturally monitored and safe.
Space for sharing emerges — from community gardens to places where we simply meet as people, not as drivers or customers.
A city is not just a collection of buildings and streets. It is the backdrop of our everyday lives. And we judge the quality of that backdrop by whether it invites us to pause — or constantly forces us to hurry.
Conclusion: Moving from Transit to Inhabiting
Abandoning the concept of the city as a traffic pipeline is not a utopia. It does, however, require the courage to return to the essence: cities are made by people, not by cars.
We need to return water to its banks and to our squares. We need benches that don't charge us for sitting. We need access to the elements that connect us with nature.
Only when we stop merely rushing through the streets and begin to genuinely inhabit them do the anonymous residents of apartment buildings become real neighbours.
Public space is not a luxury feature of a city. It is a basic public service.
And what about you?
Is there a place near you where you can simply sit down without having to buy something?
Do you have a chance to touch the river in your city?
What would your ideal urban space look like?
Write to us via the Grain of Design contact form.