Problem
The simple social intercourse created when people rub shoulders in public is one of the most essential kinds of social “glue” in society.
Solution
Arrange buildings so that they form pedestrian streets with many entrances and open stairs directly from the upper stories to the street, so that even movement between rooms is outdoors, not just movement between buildings.
Related Patterns
… the earlier patterns - Promenade (31), Shopping Street (32) and Network of Paths and Cars (52), all call for dense pedestrian streets; Row Houses (38), Housing Hill (39), University as a Marketplace (43), Market of Many Shops (46), all do the same; and within the Building Complex (95), Circulation Realms (98) calls for the same. As you build a pedestrian street, make sure you place it so that it helps to generate a Network of Paths and Cars (52), Raised Walk (55), and Circulation Realms (98) in the town around it.
The street absolutely will not work unless its total area is small enough to be well filled by the pedestrians in it - Pedestrian Density (123). Make frequent entrances and open stairs along the street, instead of building indoor corridors, to bring the people out; and give these entrances a family resemblance so one sees them as a system - Family of Entrances (102), Open Stairs (158); give people indoor and outdoor spaces which look on the street - Private Terrace on the Street (140), Street Windows (164), Opening to the Street (165), Gallery Surround (166), Six-Foot Balcony (167); and shape the street to make a space of it - Arcades (119), Path Shape (121) …
Alexander, Christopher. A Pattern Language: Towns, Buildings, Construction. Oxford University Press, 1977, p. 488.