If we don't make urban space that's free for all, encourages interaction and has no commercial imperative, we'll stifle the life out of our cities

It was truly inspiring to be able to re-visit, at this year’s Venice Biennale, the models for social housing that Siza and Rossi initiated with their radical approaches to urban and suburban issues. The intensity of the consultation and interview process that had been done with local residents was remarkable and the outcome evidently hugely successful. I watched as the long trestle tables, laid out in the nicely shaded spaces between the housing blocks, began to fill up with local residents as lunchtime approached. People were gathering to celebrate their homes in the presence of the creator, Siza, who many described as having become a father figure to them. Here was architecture truly serving the community and the community responding whole-heartedly. People were using the space between their housing blocks freely, customising and appropriating it on an ad-hoc basis to interact, eat, pass the time and keep an eye on each other’s welfare. The free urban space that I am talking about can be as simple as this.

So how do we get this type of “activism” working in London, where property and land prices have been a huge threat to free, non-commerically oriented space – because the work that Siza and Rossi were doing in the 70s must be seen as a form of activism.

The signs are that we are living in a society where people increasingly accept and even enjoy sharing facilities – from kitchens to workspace. It seems that we thrive on density and proximity. The new thinking coming out of developments like The Collective in London and Pure House in the States supports this: minimal private facilities; maximised group space – and it is getting real take-up.

How can we apply this thinking to changing the experience of public space, to bring a village-style atmosphere back to places of urban density? This is at the heart of discussions I am having with the Helix Centre at Imperial College, thinking not only at the micro level of improving healthcare solutions in hospitals, but at the macro level of improving wellbeing in the city through better public space and a more inclusive, welcoming built environment. A focus on community space that encourages locals to look out for and support each other could significantly impact on those recovering from illness with re-integration. But, more importantly, it could be at the root of preventing illness from occurring in the first place.

The Health & Social Care Act 2012 transferred responsibility and accountability for public health to local authorities; so now London’s health is a mayoral issue. Sadiq Khan made an electoral promise to pedestrianise Parliament Square and to set up a committee on the public realm in order to improve squares and other open spaces across the capital. Let’s hope that this is a real chance to champion the often-overlooked spaces between buildings and let them breathe life into our breathless city.