Qualitative Norms for Democratic Urban Spaces Design

Considering humanity was a basic issue from the emergence of urban design discipline. In addition, looking into the views of theoreticians of this field, a tendency for humanity and the liberality related to social life could be vividly traced during history. Therefore, what has been introduced as Democratic Urban Space Design is the consideration of ideas linking of humanities, people friendliness, and democratic concerns in urban context. In short, Democratic Urban Space Design is a concept which aims at "designing for all" and is concerned with the user's rights, freedom of access, and freedom of action in public places. Nevertheless, there has rarely been argued about the linkage between humanitarian and freedom norms in urban design process & professions fields. Having appropriate knowledge about environmental criterion & norms which their existence in public spaces addresses the people friendliness of such space, can be an introductory cue for understanding relationship between urban design & freedom. The responsive environments include such norms whose understanding from the freedom centeredness and people centeredness points of view can help us to identify these types of norms. This article is addressing specific methodology aiming to find appropriate norms for designing democratic urban public spaces. First of all, the general attributes of democracy and the normative characteristics of responsive environment have been studied from related field views & related case studies. Then, a comparative study in these areas could identify the common norms which play active role both in public spaces and in the arena of democracy. In the end, the aforementioned qualitative norms will be investigated briefly understanding their capabilities for design of a responsive public space/place in relation to democracy, human rights and freedom.