Attractive winter spaces : Maximizing the opportunities for social gathering

Abstract: Success of public spaces depends on many factor one of them being environmental factors and how the urban environment is adapted to climate. The social function of public spaces is achieved in spaces where people choose to stay and creates a sense of place. Warm climate and public spaces is better explored in literature compared to cold winter climate. This study aims to explore how public spaces can be designed to maximize social gathering in winter. The barriers and assets to social gathering in winter is the starting point in order to identify what to reduce and highlight to create attractive spaces. Using this information together with case studies from winter cities, guidelines is created on how to increase the opportunities for social gathering in winter. Successful spaces are created from a combination of several success­factors, this study is limited to success related to climate without neglecting the importance of all factors. The literature review focuses on social gathering in public spaces, climate impacts on urban areas and finally future climate. Future climate scenarios are used to explore how winter climate is expected to change. Winter season is the season that is expected to change the most due to climate change impacts. The main barriers are wind, rain, snow, darkness and icy groundcover. Future climate scenarios includes warmer temperatures and increased precipitation, which makes darkness due to less snow, rain and ice more important barriers to add to winter planning in the future. One of the main assets is snow and recreational winter activities and those are both threatened by climate change. The uniqueness of snow are also one of the assets as among other things positively affecting tourism. Economic factors, lack of programming and human behavior are also be considered as barriers. Barriers and asset are the foundation of the suggested guidelines. The guidelines that are divided in to three main sections; Physical form & Urban geometry, Activity and Management. It is also suggests that a flexible planning approach is beneficial to cope with climate change. Resilient spaces are able to reorganize or recover and quickly return to desired functions when disturbed. Place-keeping means keeping the same quality of spaces, in winter as for the other seasons, as well as keeping the same quality now as in the future.