Pier Head | Liverpool (England)
“From the artistic point of view a merely unbuilt piece of ground is not yet a city plaza. Aesthetically speaking, a great deal would still have to beaded in embellishment, in meaning, and in character.”
Camillo Sitte (1889)
Not every unbuild piece of ground in a pedestrian area is (automatically) an urban square. And not every open space in the city should be an urban square. Different types of pedestrian spaces have different usage and therefor different designs.
If you want to have a social point in the urban morphology, it is advisable to design an urban square. And when you design an urban square, you better design it well.
But how to design a proper urban square? Through the last 135 years many great urban designers analysed the qualities of the town square. They found some regularities that makes an urban square a good one.