One of the significant functions of any culture is to provide appropriate settings which encourage and enable the productive behavior of its members through the purposeful shaping of the built-environment. These settings are essential infrastructure for maintenance of the culture and successful negotiation of that culture’s relationship with the broader natural environment in a sustainable manner. Neighborhoods are an urban subculture’s operative spatial units and their public realm is the culture’s critical setting. Fundamental to their effective design is an understanding of the relationship between sustainability, public outdoor space, and social capital.  

Thoughtful and purposefully designed public outdoor space can act as an effective venue for the production of that social capital essential for resilient and sustainable communities. The planar morphology of a public outdoor space plays a critical role in its success as operative infrastructure for the development of a community’s social capital. This work is concerned with urban public outdoor space and the identification and analysis of the planar spatial and morphological features which maximize the social utility of that space.  These design variables are examined through the physical analysis of a regional group of exemplary Italian public outdoor spaces (piazze).  

In order than the understanding of the Italian examples developed herein has a broader theoretical framework within which to be considered, a typology of public outdoor space is developed based on several attributes assigned to a limited number of forms existing in contemporary urban contexts. With that typology in place, a systematically selected sample of Italian piazze is used as prototypical of those physical characteristics seen as fundamental to effective public outdoor space within the piazza type.  

Introduction:

• Table of Contents
• Introduction
• Research Problem
• Research Method

Frameworks:

• A Typology of Public Outdoor Space
• Sustainability and Public Outdoor Space
• Social Capital and Public Outdoor Space
• A History of Public Outdoor Space Design Theory
• A History of Proportion and Dimension Theory
• A Modern Theory of Public Outdoor Space Design

Research:

• The Italian Piazze
• Piazza Drawings and Data

Data Analysis:

• The Theoretical Framework
• Piazze Planar Area
• Piazze Planar proportion
• Piazze planar Dimension
• Piazze Corner Morphology]
• Piazze Sectional Proportion

Conclusions:

• Theoretical Conclusions
• Recommendations for the Urban Design of Neighborhood Public Outdoor Space
• Further Research
• Bibliography
• Tables (5 - 12)