

The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces (1988) [video] - jamesjyu
https://archive.org/details/SmallUrbanSpaces

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sachinmonga
William Whyte should be required reading for anyone building an app intending
to facilitate interaction. I probably reference his book
([http://www.amazon.com/Social-Life-Small-Urban-
Spaces/dp/0970...](http://www.amazon.com/Social-Life-Small-Urban-
Spaces/dp/097063241X)) more than any book on actual product design when
working on social products @ Facebook!

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tatterdemalion
This is a wonderful video! Thankyou.

A lot of the comments remind me of patterns from A Pattern Language by
Christopher Alexander. I'm sure many people on HN know this book from the
preface to Design Patterns, but if you've never flipped through it you really
should - any single pattern contains a great deal of insight into how we live
in the world.

~~~
frik
Triva: The _A Pattern Language_ book influenced Will Wright to create a game
that would later evolve into SimCity:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Will_Wright_(game_designer)#Car...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Will_Wright_\(game_designer\)#Career)

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frik
Very good video. Btw. the video is from 1979 (see credits), not 1988
(archive.org title).

Do urban architects know about this video and the _A Pattern Language_ book?
Has the school of thought changed in recent years? Has the introduction of CAD
tools changed/simplified the architecture style?

