Great public spaces thrive when they are filled with people. More people means greater safety through informal policing of the public realm. And the more people in a space, the more likely retail or other public amenities will flourish. Walk down the 16th Street Mall at noon, or walk in Washington Park on a weekend, and you experience the joy of many people animating a public place.

But as the Rocky's recently completed series "Civic Center Blues" pointed out, the most important public space in Denver, Civic Center park, currently attracts more pigeons than people. Few people go into the park, making it feel less safe, which then discourages even more people from going into the park. Recent proposals for revitalizing the park have rightfully focused on bringing more people into it, mainly by proposing more attractions to the space including public events or amenities like a restaurant.

Attractors alone, unfortunately, will not likely fix Civic Center park's woes. A research center at the University of London, called Space Syntax, has studied public spaces for over 30 years in cities around the world - including Denver - and they have discovered that successful public spaces are always connected to the natural pedestrian routes of the city. As people make their way around a city, if their walking routes naturally pass through a public space, then they will help animate that space even though it is not their destination. More routes passing through the space means more people will use the space.

With the help of the Space Syntax researchers, graduate students in the College of Architecture and Planning at the University of Colorado Denver studied Civic Center park last year to see how well the park connected to the natural pedestrian routes of the city. Their findings were startling, and help explain the problems of the park.

The entrances and routes through Civic Center are not placed where people naturally wish to walk between downtown and the cultural complex, and so they walk around the park as the more convenient route. Try walking from the terminus of the 16th Street Mall shuttle to the Denver Art Museum, and you will see that the natural route is straight down Broadway and then along 14th Street, not through the park.

Imagine how much more lively the park would be if all of the people we observed on Broadway walked through the park instead of around it.

The students then redesigned the entrances and paths through Civic Center, using special Space Syntax software to test whether people would likely use the new paths. By establishing entrances at the corners of Broadway and Colfax, and at Colfax and 14th Street, and by cutting diagonal routes through the park to match people's desired circulation routes, the student designs predicted that almost double the number of people would walk through the park.

These student projections are not pie in the sky. A few years ago, Space Syntax helped architect Norman Foster redesign London's historic Trafalgar Square. It also suffered from more pigeons than people, but by redesigning the pedestrian paths to go through the square rather than around it, the number of people in the square tripled.

Civic Center park urgently needs more people in it, to enliven it, to police it and to support any other amenities that might be envisioned for it. An amenity alone will not likely generate enough traffic to support itself. The city also must align the park's entrances and walkways more directly to the natural walking routes.

Thoughtful design allied with the evidence of successful public spaces around the world can create the great public space that Denver deserves.

Mark Gelernter is the dean of the College of Architecture and Planning, University of Colorado Denver.