And because you have all these uses, you get complex patterns of people using the street. And the street becomes terribly important. You can sit in them, you go there for a particular reason, you meet your friends, you bump into them, so the street becomes the most important social space in the city. And the Department of the Environment tells us that pedestrian flow is one of the indicators of vitality. I guess it is, but the best indicator of vitality is whether there are people sitting around doing nothing, because they are prepared to stay in the place longer.
Culture Let's look at culture.
One use of culture for the city has been to build big venues that attract people in. But you get all sorts of venues, some that happen on the street or a pub which has a theatre up the stair. If you are wandering down the street from Damplatz in Amsterdam and go into one of the little networks of alleyways at the end of one of them a door opens up and you find yourself in an art gallery in an alleyway. This should sometimes be controversial. Then there are some psychological tricks you can play as well.