Abstract
This essay considers that urban spaces are not single spatial experience but are composed of 'multiple environments at the scale of each human user'. For the purposes of the study I selected the following sites: A small square in King's Cross (London, UK) ; the entrance to the district of Christiania (Copenhagen, Denmark) ; a street adjacent to the UK Chabad Centre (London, UK) ; and bus stops from Victoria railway station to Seven Sisters district (London, UK). At each site I documented the following observations were made: (1) the overlapping patterns of people's ordinary activities characterized the site, (2) in some cases, the pattern of people's ordinary actions gave tangible physical or social structure to a site; (3) the proximity of people's ordinary activities gave a gradation to the sites, and (4) the vector of people's ordinary activities was created by the gradation of the overlapping patterns. In summary, the combination of ordinary activities, actions, proximities, and vectors creates 'environments at human scale', which are each separate but united parts of the life of the city.
