Can public spaces create a feeling of home for everyone? Is that feeling a constructive tool for city-making?
In recent projects in which we work to improve the livability or, better, the quality of life of cities, we find that the issue isn’t necessarily a technical one. It hardly ever is solely a parking solution that makes the neighborhood better, and its residents happier. Challenges, and opportunities, are networked.
More often than not, we find that the conversation about quality of life starts from a feeling that residents experience – an emotional realisation that, in some places, their cities do not “feel like home” anymore.
There are many reasons why this can be the case. I won’t go deeply into these now, but rather, I’ll share some thoughts on how to deal with the idea of “a feeling of home” when working on urban policies.
First and foremost – it is crucial to welcome new ways of approaching complex challenges in the urban context. Networked problems –those that don’t respect the municipal organizational silos of, let’s say, the mobility, sports, or youth departments– cannot be solved in the traditional way. Usually, organizations will seek to find the one cause that is the root of the problem, and tackle that. But in recent years it has become increasingly visible that problems are (almost always) connected, have multiple causes, and can only really be solved by organizing teams in a multidisciplinary way.
Accepting that a “feeling of home” is missing can open up this new way of working – it can open up a pathway to creative thinking and doing. As the word itself makes clear, this new approach is less analytical and allows for subjective positions.
Though the need for social analysis in urbanism has always been the case – as William Shakespeare already said, “what is the city but the people” – the implications of working at once on the subjective and objective experiences of cities and their challenges seems to be something city makers only recently started to realise.
Perhaps because, while they open up spaces for new ways of looking at the city, feelings remain complex matters. And if they are difficult on a subjective, individual level, imagine how much more complex dealing with them on a societal level can be.

The idea of home is a good example of this. What does home mean? Does it mean the same for me and for you? We perhaps –hopefully?– think about it as a safe space, where we can be ourselves; where others –maybe a mom, dad or other caregivers– take care of us, even when we do stupid things. But it is also the place we run away from, rebel against, return to, or create from scratch completely anew, by and for ourselves.
This complexity and multiplicity of definitions begins to explain why using a notion like “feeling at home” as a concept for policy development can be problematic for several reasons: it is dangerously personal (people might feel truly at home only with a select few who are similar to them, or in a limited number of places); and potentially exclusive (residents claiming a “home feeling” in a neighborhood might seek to limit the presence or behavior of other groups).
When we have dealt with requests from cities to create public spaces that “feel like home living rooms”, it is important to realize that the concept of "home" doesn't easily translate to shared, public spaces. While people may desire their neighborhood or city to feel like "home," the dynamics of public spaces differ significantly from those of a private home, and equating one to another can hardly be useful.
Amsterdam’s Binnenstad, for example, serves multiple functions, including "living room," political stage, museum and attraction, each with its own set of dynamics. And it is precisely the constant activity, diversity, and unique character of the Binnenstad that presents inherent challenges for everyone to feel "at home", at all times.
In essence, requests for creating plans that make people feel at home are positive, because they allow us to be more creative, and organize ourselves in a different way. But it is important to ‘unpack’ what we mean with the idea of home, looking beyond the obvious, in order to get a shared idea of what this means to different people.
We believe we should create space to agree and disagree, to be together and together alone, and to explore what the role of public spaces can be in fostering that feeling of home, only when we can accept their inherent characteristic of spaces for everything – also contrast and contestation.
Jorn Wemmenhove - Co-Founder and Creative Strategist
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