Abstract

Urban residents have voiced criticisms of and complaints about the functionality of street furniture at night. These concerns can be attributed to inappropriately designed and managed street furniture and its spatial arrangement. The issues on which these complaints center, however, arise from the lack of appropriate management and design practices for night-time street furniture, and explain the lack of analysis of the design of street furniture and its deployment at night. To address these issues, street furniture solutions and designs must take pocket spaces fully into account, and in particular must consider how such spaces appear at night. This paper focuses on the spatial factor as an integral element of street furniture design, particularly in terms of its use in pocket spaces. The nature, significance, and characteristics of pocket spaces are analyzed through a case study undertaken in pocket public spaces in the Tin Shui Wai district of Hong Kong. The results of the analysis suggest principles for improving design and deployment solutions for street furniture in pocket public spaces. The quality of nightlife in public spaces will be enhanced by considering the design and deployment of those spaces and street furniture design from an holistic perspective.