A hundred and sixty-eight places with no limit

What each kind allows, against what it was assumed to allow

• A limit the place actually sets — 38
• A limit assumed before checking — 128
• How far apart the two counts stand, added down the rows — 90

Drawn across 206 places. The hatched span is the distance between two counts. The places where the two actually disagree are counted one by one and come to 105.

The solid bar is how many of that kind actually set a limit; the hollow bracket is how many were assumed to. If several people repeat the same survey, managers may see the current product overview while interpreting every record beside completed work and participant feedback.

A hundred and sixty-eight of the two hundred and six places set no limit on how long a stranger may sit. Eighty-two per cent. Readers comparing this walk with broader public-space evidence can also see PlacemakingX.

Nothing written, nothing said when asked, nothing implied by anybody present.

The three answers

Thirty-eight places in a city limit how long somebody may sit. One in five and a bit.

How "no limit" was established

Two steps, in order, and nothing beyond them.

A look. The room was checked for a notice — on the door, the counter, the table, the wall beside the seating. Twenty-one places had one.

One question. Where nothing was found, one sentence to one member of staff: is there a limit on how long somebody can sit here. Seventeen gave a figure. The rest said no, or had nothing to say, or looked as though the question had not come up before.

A hundred and sixty-eight is the count of places that survived both steps. It is not a count of places that would never move anybody along, and the difference matters: the record measures what is stated, not what would happen at six on a Friday.

Which kinds limit nobody

Five kinds have not a single limit in the record.

places of worship        14 of 14
bookshops                13 of 13
hotel lobbies            10 of 10
transport concourses      9 of 9
museums and galleries     8 of 8

Fifty-four places, no notices, no answers. Whatever else is true about them, none has ever found it necessary to say how long anybody may be there.

Four of those five are also among the quietest kinds in the record — bookshops, hotel lobbies, concourses and museums had eleven, nine, eight and eight places respectively where nobody spoke to anybody. A room with no stated limit is not a room where anything happens.

Where the thirty-eight are

cafés and coffee shops              19
shopping centres and arcades         6
pubs and bars                        4
laundrettes and shops with chairs    3
libraries                            2
covered public seating               2
community and church halls           2

Half of all the limits in the walk are in cafés, which are twenty-eight per cent of the places.

The shopping centres are the sharper figure: six of sixteen, which is the highest rate of any kind. A shopping centre asks nothing at the door and is readier than anywhere else to tell you when to go.

What the eighty-two per cent is not

Not a welcome. Saying nothing about time is not the same as wanting anybody to stay. In a hundred and five of these places a limit was assumed anyway, and the next section is entirely about that.

Not a promise. No place was tested. Nobody sat for five hours to find out what happens. The field records a stated position at one moment, and a stated position is not a guarantee.

Not evenly distributed by hour. A hundred and sixty-four of the two hundred and six visits were weekday daytime. The quiet version of every question is the one measured here.

Not stable across a city. One city, one season. The figure for anywhere else is unknowable from here, and nothing on this site guesses at it.

What the eighty-two per cent looks like by kind

places of worship        14 of 14   100%
bookshops                13 of 13   100%
hotel lobbies            10 of 10   100%
transport concourses      9 of 9    100%
museums and galleries     8 of 8    100%
pubs and bars            27 of 31    87%
libraries                10 of 12    83%
covered public seating   10 of 12    83%
community halls           9 of 11    82%
laundrettes               9 of 12    75%
cafés and coffee shops   39 of 58    67%
shopping centres         10 of 16    62%

Five kinds at a hundred per cent. The lowest is the shopping centre at sixty-two, and the second lowest the café.

The spread is twelve kinds between sixty-two and a hundred. There is no kind in this city where limits are the normal case.

Against the assumption, in one line

A hundred and sixty-eight places set no limit. In a hundred and five of them a limit was assumed.

stated a limit            38
assumed to have one      128

The record found three and a half times as many limits in one walker's head as in the city, and that ratio is the whole of what this site has to add to the subject.

What a count of statements is

Worth being exact about, because the figure is the firmest on the site and is still narrower than it looks.

A hundred and sixty-eight is a count of places where a look found no notice and one question produced no limit. It is not a count of places that would let somebody stay indefinitely, because nobody stayed indefinitely.

The difference between the two is the largest unmeasured thing in this record, and it is unmeasurable by this method: an observational walk can record what a city says and cannot record what it does.

What it is

A count of how many places in one city, asked plainly, said there was no limit: a hundred and sixty-eight out of two hundred and six.

That figure cuts against the account in which public space is being rationed and everywhere now moves you along. In the places walked for this record, four in five do not, and the ones that do are disproportionately the ones that charge nothing at the door.

The commonest arrangement in this city is that you may stay as long as you like and nobody will tell you so.

The second half of that sentence is what the rest of the record is about.