Regenerating Public Space in Residential Areas : Planning and Design Proposal for Oxhagen Residential Area, Kalmar

This degree project looks at the effective methods and principles in planning and design for regenerating public space, especially regenerating public space in residential areas. This regeneration of public space is important, as a way to solve problem of unattractiveness, lack of social interaction and insecurity feeling among people or inhabitants in public spaces in residential areas. In this project, we choose Oxhagen housing area in Kalmar, as the project object. In which, the projects aim to change the Oxhagen from unattractive place to an attractive place which enhance people to have positive social interactions among inhabitants. Firstly, this project begun by collecting the relevant study and theory regarding public space, especially in residential areas. From there, we based this project with proper guidelines and planning principles. Furthermore, to thoroughly consider all practical aspects, this project also studied successful public spaces in residential areas in Scandinavia countries, therefore, the project can learn from the successful projects. The second and third part, the project provides information of the context of the area and situational analyses of the site, Oxhagen in Kalmar. The last important part of this project, we provide the proposal of public space in residential area, Oxhagen. The project based the proposal on the relevant theories and the situational analysis. The proposal are consists of detail plans and other planning suggestions. In the proposal, we focus the planning and design with the concept of accessibility, enclosure, and diversity of activities, as we think these three concepts are the most applicable to the context of Oxhagen. Therefore, the suggestions and proposal are from these three concepts.