The importance of participatory design in improving the public space quality for healty cities: Bursa Altiparmak Square-Stadyum Street

Public spaces where people from different cultural and social classes come together, socialize and have opportunity to relax physically and psychologically, play important roles in creating healthy cities and communities. However, today uncontrolled growing cities do not provide sufficient public spaces in terms of quantity and quality, but also weaken public life. In addition, the failure to take into account the expectations of users in the development and design of public spaces adversely affects the quality and use of these spaces. In this study, the importance of participatory approaches in public space design for healthy cities and societies is discussed. In this context, the aim of the study is to determine the physical and social problems related to Bursa Altiparmak Square and Stadium Street with a participatory method and to develop user-oriented design recommendations for the case study area. One hundred people were surveyed and these were analysed by place standard tool. At the end of the study, providing pedestrian accessibility, arranging parking spaces, increasing the number of open green areas and social activity spaces that can be used in different seasons were featured as the main recommendations which can contribute to the participatory regeneration of Altiparmak Square and Stadium Street in Bursa, as the pioneer of Healthy Cities in Turkey.