A walk in the park: Affordances as urban design tool for creating inhabitable cities

In this chapter, we explore the proposition that affordance is an important urban design tool that can help create inhabitable cities for people. The creation of inhabitable cities for people is a core ambition in urban design, resonating the aim of the discipline to formulate responses to situated urban problems by means of spatial strategies and architectural design. From the 1950s, urban design grew as a discipline from an apprehension of the importance of the public realm of cities, the human scale, and the thriving of the collective urban population. Following this core ambition of the urban design profession, urban designers have sought to develop methods and tools for the creation of such cities. These tools must provide alternatives to a city-making method based on the form or function of objectified buildings and spaces, or on structural patterns, and instead foreground the city as an environment for inhabitation. The chapter explores the notion of 'affordance' as a tool for making such inhabitable cities.