An Investigation of the aspects that affect the quality of revitalized public spaces

Abstract

Public spaces are the places where all people can come together and spend their time without any restriction and it can be defined as the “City Living Room”. Therefore, these spaces can foster social cohesion, reduce psychological stress and provide physical activities. Public spaces have unique historic and architectural values and such places can be used to enhance the place making character of the area. Planning agencies often use revitalization, restoration, regeneration, refurbishment or redevelopment as Placemaking tools which can improve the quality of such public spaces in a city. It is often acknowledged that “revitalization” can be identified as one of the viable alternatives instead of demolition of historical buildings. “Revitalization” and “Adaptive re-use” can be identified as the tools for creating public spaces which are livable, accessible and convivial places for all. The previous studies have researched on the aspects an essential method to make places functional, attractive and convivial spaces. Although researchers studied the general functional aspects of revitalized public spaces, a few studies have focused on the quality and the barriers for such revitalized public spaces. This study attempts to fill this research knowledge gap and investigates what are the barriers and areas that need to be improved in the revitalization process within the Sri Lankan context by using three case studies in Colombo. As our framework of this study, we used access & linkages, comfort & image, uses & activities to assess the quality of revitalized places. This study further found that barriers associated with the process of revitalization are regulatory, social barriers, and technical barriers.