Privately owned public spaces (POPS) are public spaces in private areas that provide citizens with resting areas and walking environments in the city. The importance of POPS in urban space is increasing and encouraged by the government. However, the S...
Privately owned public spaces (POPS) are public spaces in private areas that provide citizens with resting areas and walking environments in the city. The importance of POPS in urban space is increasing and encouraged by the government. However, the Seoul Metropolitan Government Building Ordinance and District Unit Plan Standards only suggest POPS types restricted to the exterior of buildings. Since 1991, when POPS were institutionalized, their number has increased quantitatively due to obligations to install them; however, the actual utilization of the spaces has been limited due to careless installation. It is, therefore, necessary to suggest countermeasures to improve these outdoor POPS and introduce new types of POPS.
Other countries have already adopted indoor POPS systems, taking into consideration the living conditions of urban citizens with numerous indoor activities. These spaces provide citizens with resting and pedestrian areas on the ground floors of commercial and office buildings. Indoor POPS refers to enclosed, indoor open spaces that pedestrians can freely access and use without restriction. These spaces, installed on the ground floors of commercial and office buildings, represent a new type of public space. Moreover, as an intermediary space for the private interests of building owners and the public, they may provide a solution to the current limitations of outdoor POPS in Korea.
The purpose of this study is to develop an evaluation index for indoor POPS to secure the publicness of urban public spaces and to introduce an indoor POPS system in Korea. To do so, highly used indoor POPS in New York City were analyzed using Visibility Graph Analysis, a type of space syntax theory. As a result, a quantitative publicness index for indoor POPS and indoor public space was developed.
To develop the index, ten cases of indoor POPS in New York City were analyzed by evaluating their publicness, which is physical accessibility and visual connectivity (openness). The characteristics of frequently used indoor POPS were also considered. The developed evaluation tools were also used to analyze the publicness of indoor public spaces of office buildings in Korea.
The results are as follows. First, New York City’s indoor POPS are installed in places with high accessibility and openness compared to other public spaces on the first floor of the buildings. The evaluation of the accessibility and openness of the space corresponds to the standards for installing indoor POPS in New York City.
Second, cases with a high accessibility index possessed a greater number of entrances, and cases with a high visual openness index were primarily composed of glass.
Third, among the ten cases of New York City indoor POPS, atrium types were highly utilized and their evaluation index was high, whereas linear types were less utilized and their evaluation index was low.
Fourth, by applying the developed evaluation index to assess the publicness of the atrium spaces of the six office buildings in Seoul, a significant correlation was derived between the accessibility evaluation and the atrium pedestrian flow rate, which verifies the effectiveness of the developed evaluation index.
Fifth, by evaluating the publicness of indoor public space, it was proved that the indoor public space in Korea was as public as the indoor POPS in New York City. This research proves, therefore, that the public spaces of office buildings in Korea can feasibly be used as indoor POPS.