The Social Life of Event Spaces
William H. Whyte watched where people sat in New York plazas. His findings explain why networking areas fail.
William H. Whyte filmed New York plazas to learn why some fill and others stay empty. This essay applies his findings on seating, flow and triangulation to the event networking area. It gives you a simple observation kit with timed counts, a floor sketch, a seating check and a before-and-after test of one change.
Networking areas fail in a familiar way. Picture a large carpeted room with a few high tables and coffee at the far end. People stand at the edges looking at their phones. William H. Whyte spent years filming New York plazas to learn why some public spaces fill and others stay empty. His answers fit a conference foyer almost exactly.
The empty lounge
Every planner has seen it. The lounge is set, and the signs point to it. Yet the crowd stands at the coffee station and the door instead. The usual explanation is that attendees don't want to network.
Whyte's evidence suggests another one. People use spaces that give them somewhere to sit, something to look at and other people to be near. The empty lounge usually offers none of the three. Time and permission matter too, as getting attendees to network argues. Whyte's subject is the place.
What Whyte watched
In 1969 Whyte worked with the New York City Planning Commission and won a grant to study the street life of New York. The Street Life Project grew from it. His team used time-lapse cameras, notebooks and counts. They watched plazas across Midtown and compared the ones people used with the ones they avoided. Paley Park and the plaza of the Seagram Building were among the successes.
The findings came out in 1980 as The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces. It was a book from the Conservation Foundation and a film made with the Municipal Art Society. Two lines matter most for events. The first is "People tend to sit most where there are places to sit." The second is "What attracts people most, it would appear, is other people."
Sitting space
Whyte's team tested the obvious reasons a plaza might be used. They looked at sun, shape, size and looks. None explained use as well as the amount of sitting space. People sat where there were places to sit.
Two details carry indoors. First, seats should come in quantity and variety. Think of chairs, benches, ledges and steps, both high and low. Second, chairs should move. Whyte watched people shift a movable chair a few inches before sitting in it. That small choice makes the spot their own.
New York's zoning rules still require at least one linear foot of seating for every 30 square feet of public plaza. The standard grew out of his work. It is a plaza rule, not an event rule. Still, a networking area far below it is unlikely to hold people.
Conversations happen in the flow
Whyte saw something planners still resist. People stop to talk in the main flow of foot traffic, at corners and doorways. They do not stop in the quiet side areas set aside for them. He called it self-congestion.
For venues the lesson is direct. Put networking areas on the route between session rooms and catering. Widen the path where people will stop, so a conversation does not become a blockage.
Stop hiding lounges at the back of the hall. Kevin Lynch's paths and nodes give the same advice from the side of wayfinding.
Triangulation
Whyte's word for a third thing that links strangers is triangulation. A street performer, a sculpture or a view gives people who have never met a reason to talk.
Events have easy equivalents. A live demonstration can be watched from several sides. A wall of questions invites attendees to answer on cards. A shared screen can show something worth arguing about. A food station can sit where two routes cross.
The failure is triangulation by noise. A DJ set loud enough to stop talk gives strangers something in common and no way to discuss it. On a stand the same logic favors spacing and calm over spectacle. A booth designed for conversations follows the same rule.
Food, light and edges
Food draws people, and people draw more people. Daylight and views matter. Edges are where people settle first, such as a ledge, a wall or a column with a shelf.
Whyte's advice worked at city scale. Bryant Park, behind the New York Public Library, reopened in 1992 after a redesign that followed his advice, movable chairs included (history of Bryant Park). A pattern language for events gathers other tested answers of this kind into a checklist.
Watch your own event
Whyte's method fits a single event. You need a floor sketch, a clipboard and a watch.
- Counts at fixed times. Pick four or five times, such as before the first session, each break and the end of the day. At each one, count the people sitting, standing and passing through the networking area.
- The floor sketch. On a plan of the area, mark dots where people sit, crosses where they stand and circles where they stop on the route.
- The seating check. Measure the area and the linear feet of seating. Compare them with the plaza standard of one foot per 30 square feet.
- One change. Change one thing only. Add chairs, move the coffee onto the route or put a demonstration in the middle.
- A second count. Repeat the counts at the same times the next day, or at the next edition, and compare.
- Before first session
- Morning break
- Lunch
- Afternoon break
- End of day
For the next book, read Jan Gehl's Life Between Buildings (Danish 1971, English 1987). It takes the same habit of watching further.
Count before you blame
Before you blame attendees for not networking, count the seats. Check the route and look for the reason to talk.
Whyte showed that people talk where the route and the seats let them. Monet re-runs its crowd-flow and spatial occupancy checks after every change to a layout. A planner can move the lounge onto the main route and see the effect before the doors open.