Espacios intermedios para la recuperación del alma del espacio urbano. Análisis del carácter intermedio de 4 casos de estudio

Abstract

Urban spaces with in-between character promote community relationships, social cohesion, and care. Inbetween spaces are those found on the threshold between private and public domains; they encompass an environment between public and private character, regardless of ownership. These are spaces where a gradient of privacy is generated, allowing people to feel at home and, therefore, to develop a sense of community with others outside their family. This contributes to a sense of well-being and provides soul to the space. Such spaces can be traced back to ancient settlements. We could find these spaces in Roman courtyard houses (Hales 2003), the spaces between huts in some pastoral villages in Zambia (Rudofsky 2020), the Siheyuan or Tulous in China (Zhang 2013, Katayama 2011), or the spaces around washing places in many medieval urban fabrics. However, in more planned urban fabrics, it is more challenging to find these types of in-between urban spaces, which is believed to have led to a loss of opportunities to foster relationships among people in urban fabrics.Within the framework of a research project aimed at promoting the in-between character of certain urban spaces to enhance human relationships in urban regeneration, a set of indicators has been designed to analyze the degree of in-between character of urban fabrics. This paper will present the application of the designed indicators in the analysis of four types of urban fabrics (medieval, classical expansion districts, modern movement, and 20th-century expansion districts) to identify the degree of in-between character of each and thus identify the formal characteristics that allow this in-between character, which can then be extrapolated to other soulless urban spaces.