Urbanization is understood by many urban planners as the most operative process for our civilization’s adaptation to the increasing pressures of diminishing resources, increasing populations, and effects of climate change.  Robust neighborhood structure is also considered critical to livable cities responsive to the contemporary challenges of human sustainability and resilience.  Fundamental to the intelligent design of sustainable neighborhood spatial units, is an understanding of the relationship between sustainability, public outdoor space, and the production of social capital.  

Thoughtful and purposefully designed public outdoor space, disbursed on the neighborhood level, is the basis for healthy human-scaled urban life.  As a venue for the production of social capital, neighborhood public outdoor space is essential for resilient and sustainable neighborhoods and communities. The planar morphology of a public outdoor space plays a critical role in its success as effective infrastructure for the development of a community’s social foundations.  

This research is concerned with urban public outdoor space and the identification and analysis of the planar spatial and morphological features which affect the social utility of that space.  These design variables are examined through the physical analysis of a group of geographically concentrated Italian public outdoor spaces, the campi of Venice.  A group of 67 Venetian campi is used as prototypical examples of those planar physical characteristics seen as fundamental to effective public outdoor space.