Provide a range of amenities, such as: seating, shade and drinking fountains.
Ensure amenities are appropriate for the scale and purpose of the park, and also cater for a variety of ages and abilities. Design well-signposted, interesting and welcoming entrances to the park. Apply Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design (CPTED) and Injury Prevention Through Environmental Design (IPTED) principles from the outset.
Provide comfortable spaces
Civic spaces should be places of enjoyment and respite from busy urban life. The edges around a civic space are often formed by large buildings or street edges, so careful attention must be paid to making them comfortable and enjoyable places to visit.
Provide comfortable spaces by:
- understanding the microclimates created by surrounding buildings, particularly wind strength and direction. Use this information to inform the locating of seating and other facilities
- designing to maximise sun in the space though solar orientation
- considering the space in all seasons. Design for shade in summer and maximum sun in winter
- providing amenities for human comfort (e.g. drinking fountains, shade and seating)
- providing a variety of seating options to cater for a range of users (e.g. higher seats with backs and armrests for older visitors, as well as low planter box seating for younger visitors).
Create safe spaces
Create safe civic spaces by applying Crime Prevention through Environmental Design (CPTED) and Injury Prevention through Environmental Design (IPTED) principles, to make people to feel comfortable and safe using the space.
Do this by:
- completing a site analysis to identifying key safety issues that need to be addressed
- applying CPTED principles to the design. These are:
- Access: Safe movement and connections
- Surveillance and sightlines: See and be seen
- Layout: Clear and logical orientation
- Activity mix: Eyes on the street
- Sense of ownership: Showing a place is cared for
- Quality Environments: Well designed, managed and maintained environments
- Physical protection: Using active security measures
- applying IPTED principlesto the design. These are:
- Design can support the creation of safer environments across a range of physical settings
- Safer design involves identifying, assessing and addressing physical hazards
- Safety through design is a "passive" intervention that minimises the role of individual attitudes and behaviours.