Urban meeting places : An identification of the Physical, Social, and Psychological determinants of the place-type

Abstract

The relationship between man and the environment has been given considerations in the recent times. But it is yet to be understood the effective theoretical and practical phenomena of it, when designing buildings for people. Within all the places that man experiences in his day today life, "meeting place" has an importance which is not second to other places. It is important to man's social life and should be a definite entity in the built environment. Even though, people couldn't find any specifically designed places for out door public meeting activities in urban settings in Sri Lanka, some places could be found which give more opportunities to use them as people's natural meeting places, while they are engaged in their primary activities in the same place. Nowadays, designers are giving less consideration to these important entities when they design places for people. As a result, the built environment is being affected with loss of intimacy. The man-environment relationship is been divorced at many of our urban settings. This is even clear when thinking of diminishing of meeting places. In order to rebuild the bridge between those two conditions, it became of vital importance to identify the types of meeting places, the role played by them and the process how they have come in to being. In this respect this Dissertation is an approach to identify the facts, that could create an attachment to a place for meeting activities and to give a sense of belongingness to places. In other words, this is an attempt to find the Physical, Social and psychological determinants of meting places. By doing so, the author has derived a proper definition for the notion of the "Urban meeting place". It has given a basis for future researchers to look more deeper in to each and every type of meeting place and identify how the determinants of place get modified and applied to different place situations in the built environment.