Abstract:
Tha Sai community's public open spaces have typical spatial configuration characteristics as any other suburban communities, which are open, fragmented, continuingly fluided spaces around built structures including some enclosed spaces. These configurational properties affect the pedestrians' visual potentials or 'isovist fields' which Benedikt (1976) argued, would subsequently influence different moving and static activity patterns. That is, the area with a vast isovist field has a potential to attract multi-types of pedestrian and activity in various periods of time while on the contrary, the area with a smaller isovist field attracts the less 'mix'. To test Benedikt's idea, the study uses public open spaces in Tha Sai community, a suburban community in Nonthaburi Province as a case study. This is carried out by creating systematic space use pattern maps, comparing with isovist field maps to analyse their interrelationship. The analytical result shows that in general isovist fields very much correlate to the levels of mix-use. Most pedestrians who are local dwellers go about the area on a daily basis through its only two major routes; Rewadee and Nonthaburi 7 Roads, which have great isovist fields. The same observation also occurs in a small but vibrant and mix-use public space network within a waterfront Talad Kwan community which has a good isovist field. However, there are some areas that yield out the contradiction to Benedikt's idea such as 1) the areas with good isovist fields but surrounded by a single building use, for examples, Plaza in Wat Tai Mueang, sports ground in Sriboonyanon School, Plaza in Rajamangala University of Technology Suwarnabhum. These areas have high levels of pedestrian use but only of students and for some certain periods of time such as before-after school times and during the breaks. 2) the areas with rather confined isovist fields within Narongsook Nives Housing Estate which attract high levels of pedestrian use but again, only of the dwellers in afternoon-evening times when they are back from schools and workplaces. Synthesizing with the data on the areas land use and building use patterns as well as the spatial typology of its public open spaces, the findings can be summarized that successful and popular public open spaces in Tha Sai community should have high potential of sight and access as well as surrounded mix building and land uses to ensure their vibrancy and levels of mix-use.