7. Civic buildings and public gathering places require important sites to reinforce community identity and the culture of democracy. They deserve distinctive form; because their role is different from that of other buildings and places that constitute the fabric of the city.

Vertical Infrastructure: Civic and public buildings are considered to be vertical infrastructure. They are long-term investments, as important to the functioning and the welfare of a community as the horizontal infrastructure of thoroughfares and utilities.

Public and Civic: Public buildings are those which are held in common by the entire community. They usually pertain to government, public education, and recreation and to transportation. Civic buildings are those administered by private organizations. These are usually religious, cultural, educational institutions and certain sporting venues.

Enabling the buildings: Public and civic buildings will come into being only if provision is made for them at various times in the urban process. It is fundamental that sites must be reserved early in the planning and prepared for donation to suitable civic organizations. By being grouped as infrastructure the construction of the buildings may be funded by municipalities by the financial residue of minimized horizontal infrastructure through compact development.

In the increasingly common private governments, the community association should be financially structured to enable civic improvements in addition to the usual provisions for ongoing maintenance. For developers, such buildings may play the role of amenities, which for purposes of marketing can substitute for an entry feature or a golf course.

Identity and Differentiation: A public or civic building, to be an effective repository of a community’s pride and an instrument of its identity, should be readily identifiable as special. It is no longer possible to depend on an identity based on scale, as public buildings today are often smaller than private ones. A more realistic and economical strategy is to enhance the buildings by granting them special locations. Such significant sites are generally those which terminate the axial vista of a thoroughfare and those which enfront or occupy an open space such as a plaza or a square.

A supplementary method is to differentiate the public buildings b tectonic elaboration of their construction. This involves the establishment of a dialectic between private and public architecture. This may include the use of culturally based elements such as a tower or a colonnade (as a yellow mansard represents fast food). Certain configurations and are for public buildings establishing a modern version of the duality of classical and vernacular. Sometimes the landscape associated with the building (the entourage) can become the significant difference.

The most likely strategy, however, assumes an architectural code limiting the private buildings to tectonic modesty (a visual silence), while the public buildings are allowed be remain uncoded, thus able to be fully expressive of the aspirations of the institutions they embody or of the aesthetic inspiration of their architects. I

Concentration and Dispersion There is no question that urbanisticaly, if not administratively, several smaller public buildings are superior to a single composite megastructure. By separating them, the public building's role is easier to grasp and also more likely to decant activity into the public open space rather than maintaining it with an indoor circular corridor system.

There remains the open question of the public buildings' placement within the urban structure. To group all the public buildings at the community core does enliven the public realm at that one place more intensely. On the other hand, the dispersal of these special buildings more equitably leavens the community and contributes to localized identity. Both are valid within the American urban tradition.

* There are other types of places that play a public role while belonging neither to the civic nor the public categories. These are the informal community gathering places between the workplace and the residence. Typically they are diners, corner stores, cafes, pubs, barber shops, hotel lobbies and the like. Ray Oldenberg in The Great Good Place has categorized them as Third Places.