William H. Whyte grew up in West Chester Pennsylvania before he went Princeton University and joined the Marines.  He then went on to join the magazine Fortune for a time before he wrote his book The Organization Man, which “sold over two million copies” (William).  After his book, he moved on to urban sprawl and revitalization to help with the development of cities and to advocate for them.  In 1969, he helped the “New York City Planning Commission in drafting a comprehensive plan for the city” (William).  He did this after years of research on the streets of New York taking notes and pictures of the way that people moved through the city and through the plazas.  This is seen in this film The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces where he uses time-lapse photography and film with narration to explain where his ideas for the Planning Commission came from.  In addition to the film he also wrote a variety of books throughout his life such as “The Exploding Metropolis (1958); Cluster Development (1964); The Last Landscape (1968); The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces (1980); and City: Rediscovery of the Center (1988)” (William).  One of the things that he believed that could be seen in the film was how important public spaces are to a city.  “He believed that we have a moral responsibility to create physical places that facilitate civic engagement and community interaction” (William).  This has become a common idea in all towns that are being built in the urban and residential setting.  When this is not being done, it is easy to see how a downtown or residential neighborhood can become separated and unapproachable.  Whyte’s next idea is connected to the creation of public spaces; he believed that public spaces should designed bottom-up.  By this, he meant that when designing the space you should start with the way that people use it, and to make sure it is comfortable if it is not it will never be used.  The last topic that he believed in was “the power of observation” (William).  He believed that the best way to design was to watch how people interact and use spaces so that the design of the space can be as productive as possible.  His normative models for city design and urban form are the ways that people move and congregate in the cities they live in.  Whyte wanted a variety of different people strangers and friends to be able to have spaces to meet and talk in the city naturally and not be forced.  This can be seen in his film when he talks about the different cafes at the end of the movie.  At some of these cafes, he guessed there has been the start of a marriage or business deal.  He also put great importance on the street as a connection to the small urban spaces, but also to the city as a whole.  “The street is the river of life of the city, the place where we come together, the pathway to the center” (William).  Whyte wanted the street to connect the people to the infrastructure and direct them to the civic experience of the city naturally. 

William H. Whyte - Project for Public Spaces. Retrieved October 12, 2016, from http://www.pps.org/reference/wwhyte/

Boechat, J. P. (2016, January 31). The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces. Retrieved October 12, 2016, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g_9g5qk0kbY