The Setting of Internal Shopping Centres’ Public Spaces and Their Relationship to the Visitors

Abstract

Public spaces can sometimes be considered as nodes
and are often regarded as the images that create a sense of place
in a city. Public spaces here refer to city parks and streets with
their many elements. On a smaller scale, a shopping center as a
commercial building also serves as public space for its locality.
The research is aimed at finding out about the role of a public
area’s layout in creating a sense of place, which specifically can
be described in three points. The first is to find the physical
factors that develop sense of place. The second is to analyze the
social factors in a sense of place. And the third is to examine the
relationship between people and their environment. Shopping
centers are used as the case study to identify the relationships
between a public space’s interior design that shapes its
atmosphere as a mental image which creates a sense of place in a
particular scale. The case study for this research was PasarAtum,
Ciputra World and Tunjungan Plaza, all of which represent
successful shopping centers from various eras in Surabaya. The
research subjects were 15 people in each shopping center. The
research method used was the qualitative method with in depth
interview.