Home Away From Home

Serious question. If we haven’t been designing our urban environments based on everyday human experiences, then what the hell have we been basing urban design on? Somebody please answer that for me because I am baffled.

Aside from that, I really like what Margaret Crawford is getting at. With refamiliarization, for instance, she explains how Everyday Urbanism seeks to make ‘brutal’ spaces more ‘inhabitable’ by trying to “domesticate urban space”. Just reading about it makes me imagine a very lively atmosphere. And thinking about spaces in that way, domesticating them, could solve quite a few issues that typically plague urban settings, such as safety. When you think of a home, you think of a safe space where you can be at peace and interact with loved ones. I don’t necessarily agree with it, but I’ve heard people refer to many large urban spaces like New York or Chicago as dangerous and crime-infested. If urban spaces are designed with domesticity in mind, maybe they can become that same kind of safe space that people find in a home. Just a thought.