The relations of spatial qualities with citizens' behaviours and social interaction at street interfaces

Introduction This study is about behaviours and social interaction of citizens at street interfaces. Street interfaces are spatial urban interfaces in micro/street scale of the city. The aim of the study is revealing the effects of spatial qualities on social behaviours. Spatial qualities of street interfaces are analyzed in three categories that are permeability, diversity and spatial effect. Street interfaces are spaces between the buildings and the close environment where citizens interact with each other as well as their surroundings. Hence, these spaces have a potential to enhance social life in urban space. The importance of the study is to bring spatial qualities together with social and behavioural data. Superposition of these physical and social aspects is realised in a case study held in Nişantaşı neighbourhood of Istanbul. Literature Review Street interfaces are in humans' direct field of view and perception. Thus, citizens have an interaction with those spaces inherently. These spaces do not only provide a connection between buildings and close environment but also interact with the citizens through perception and affect their behaviours. Social interaction is the first step of socialization and it primarily occurs in street interfaces as where citizens pass to public from private. Istanbul is a highly and densely populated megacity with lots of social and physical layers within. Like many other global cities in the world, the fast urbanization of Istanbul takes shape without consideration of human scale and social needs. The human scale, the relations between ground floors and the urban space is ruled out by the modernistic planning principles. Thus, the city serves for vehicles, highways and big scaled projects in zoned lands out of the city and the spaces between buildings can turn into lost spaces. Lost spaces are undesirable idle spaces with inadequate public use in-between buildings. These spaces lack social life, create disconnection in the city and may cause insecurity. Thus, the street scale must be considered during architectural and urban design processes by paying regard to social needs of citizens as well as physical needs. Designing street interfaces or rehabilitating the existing spontaneous ones in the city makes possible to heal disconnections and improve social life in urban space. Therefore, it's important to evaluate the effects of spatial qualities of street interfaces on social life to make cities safer and more livable. The second part of the thesis is titled 'History of Interfaces'. This part subjects the theoretical background and the dynamics that create urban interfaces during the history. Understanding the relation and difference between 'in-between' and 'interface' concepts is important for the study. For this purpose, the 'in-between' concept which provides the theoretical background of our day's interfaces is evaluated in this part with its' philosophical roots. In the same part, it's evaluated that how the interface term in computing science was evolved for the use in urban studies. The second part also discusses the critics of modernistic planning principles and the lost space problem in modern cities. In the process of creation of urban interfaces, 'New Urbanism' movement is an important threshold. New Urbanism movement opened the way for urban design approaches with analytical, social and behavioural aspects. These approaches bring the attention to social life of the street scale and discuss hierarchical spaces that lead to the evolution of street interfaces. The third part 'Urban Interfaces' is about the studies specifically made in the urban area by different disciplines. The development and the different types of urban interfaces are evaluated in this part. Understanding where the street interface concept takes place as a micro-scaled urban interface is important for this study. The vertical and horizontal physical variables of street interfaces are explained at the end of this part. The fourth and the fifth parts focus on the street interfaces between buildings and the close environment as the main focus of the study. In the fourth part, the spatial qualities of street interfaces are examined with examples. Permeability, diversity and spatial effect qualities are evaluated deeply with all the sub-qualities. Those spatial qualities of street interfaces are; Permeability  physical permeability  visual permeability  usage permeability Diversity  physical diversity  usage diversity Spatial Effect  enclosure effect  setbacks and other boundary movements Street interfaces function as boundary spaces which separate and connect between buildings and environment at the same time. In addition to this, those spaces are spatial realities including city life. Thus, perception and social life of citizens in those spaces must be discussed. The fifth part of the study is 'Perceptual and Social Aspects of Street Interfaces'. In this part, visual perception in the eye level, social interaction and act of looking in the city is discussed. Case Study Nişantaşı neighbourhood of Istanbul is a multi-layered district with a variety of different scaled buildings from different times with a diversity of uses. Usage diversity and the cosmopolite face of the neighbourhood brings a lot of daily users, tourists and students to the area. Therefore, this neighbourhood has social diversity and a long daily use time. Social and physical diversity has an impact on citizens' perceptions and behaviours. With all these reasons, Nişantaşı provide the needed dynamics to analyse spatial qualities and observe behaviours at street interfaces. The case study consists of three stages. In the first stage, spatial qualities of 10 chosen street interfaces in Nişantaşı are analyzed in terms of 'permeability, diversity and spatial effect'. In the second stage, systematic observations were made in the same sites. In these observations, chosen behaviours due to the former researches and pilot studies were counted in weektime and weekend systematically. These behaviours are;  Passing in front of the interface with no interaction  Passing by the interface slowly/with interaction  Looking/watching the interface space/frontage  Meeting, encountering, talking or other social interactions  Entering or leaving the space/spaces at the interface  Joining the utility of interface  Other activities and behaviours that are not categorized In the last stage, the findings were correlated statistically in SPSS program. Meaningful correlations between the degrees of spatial qualities and counted citizens' behaviours reveal that how 'permeability, diversity and spatial effect' change behavioural activities and how this affection leads to social interaction. Conclusions The results show that an effective use of spatial qualities at street interfaces can affect peoples' behaviours and provide social interaction. The outcomes of the study serve as a guide for the use of spatial qualities at street interfaces to provide interaction between the buildings and the close environment. In-between spaces where urban space and buildings encounter can be connected and turn into interfaces instead of becoming lost spaces. For this purpose, the street scale must be considered by regarding citizens' perception, behaviours and social needs.