Transitional Zones

Abstract

For the author, Transitional Zones which are those half way between private and public, open and enclosed,
collective and private ones are of special interest, because they best lend themselves to any project that
seeks to bring together, in harmony, the seemingly opposed ideas of shelter as such and the city as itself.
This coming together would be best brought about through the agency of quality ordinary housing which
would make the city so much the richer, complex and intense both in its formal and sociological sense. Thus
the paper urges three levels of initiative in these transitional zones in the light of their being communal,
public or private.
Such zones are here thought to require researching, projecting and building more than ever before. Their
shared construction would allow every community and those using them the chance to give some proper
character to the whole and thus give rise to a heterogeneous and diverse urban landscape.
All this is thought to require a stride forward from policies of providing mere shelter to others offering a
habitat, these being understood to encompass such as would go beyond housing as an end in itself to embrace
a spatial and social setting for this which would cherish urban planning and architecture and cherish the
life of the community.