JAN GEHL PHILOSOPHY AND PERCEPTIONS

Jan Gehl Philosophy and Perceptions

[Name of the Institute]

Jan Gehl Philosophy and Perceptions

Introduction

Jan Gehl is an urban design consultant and a Danish architect. He has revived several cities all around the world. A strong rationality or consistency between the built environment and life lived in the spaces created in such environments. Several important cities like New York and London has gained much from the recommendations of Jan Gehl. In addition to this, Jan Gehl has also studied Sydney and has provided various valuable recommendations and suggestions in this regard. This paper aims in explaining the philosophy and principles of Jan Gehl and also their advantages, disadvantages and limitations. Recommendations provided by Jan Gehl are based on the “Public Spaces Public Life Sydney 2007 Study”, it involves a detailed analysis of central city public domain and also provides various recommendations based city planning, parking, public transport, and public space design and also traffic (Architects, 2007).

Discussion

The study process conducted by Jan Gehl in accordance with the issues of Sydney involved three major stages. First stage involved the identification of the problems and potentials related to the urban spaces. Second step included the survey related to the patterns of pedestrians i.e. related to the utilization of the city (Architects, 2002). Third step included recommendations for improving the city. One of the most efficient factors of this study was that it was a detailed one and the data was collected at distinct environments. In addition to this, gender and age counts, stationary observations and pedestrian counts were carried out at both winter and summer seasons.

The findings obtained by Gehl Architects may be regarded as in accordance with the potential issues of the city. Potential issues identified through this study included disruptive road infrastructure thus developing inefficient links to the water, reduced street hierarchy, street domination by vehicular traffic, disordered streetscapes with numerous footpath disruptions, increased levels of noise, linkages present between public open space are also inefficient, and high buildings at several areas are a result of poor microclimate (Dempsey, 2008, pp. 249-264). Other negative attributes include that gender and age surveys reveal that old people and also young children are ineffectively represented with the majority of working age pedestrians. In addition to this, the waiting time for pedestrians at crossings is also high.

There are several positive attributes that are also identified by Jan Gehl related to the city of Sydney, for example it includes extensive parklands, Harbor Bridge, Opera House and several others. In addition to this, the grid configuration of the city may be regarded as a positive feature of the city because it provides the potential to permit walking to be a feasible mode of transportation. There are several positive and several negative attributes identified by Jan Gehl related to Sydney, identification of such attributes by Jan Gehl clearly indicates the philosophy and perceptions of Jan Gehl. The problems identified by Jan Gehl are more related to the problems of pedestrians. It seems that the philosophy ...