Conviviality as a Spatial Planning Goal for Public Open Spaces

Conviviality is a popular concept in urban design while referring to the good qualities of public spaces. This concept is the need for current times when social life in physical public spaces is declining away largely to forces like social media and the virtual world. The human tendency to feel satisfied and happy exists in existence with others. The social media has taken away the role that established Greek agora as the first centre of public interaction which initiated the concepts of modern democracy. Where popular public spaces have big roles to perform, the small public spaces in the neighbourhood and markets perform an important role to stage the everyday local nuisance in people's life. Even If public space is satisfactory enough to take away the loneliness and boredom of everyday course of modern living a lot can be achieved. Conviviality is one such factor which helps to elevate the satisfaction of spending time with others. This paper is an attempt to understand conviviality and relate it to public open spaces from the physical planning point of view.