Over the past few years there has been a proliferation of new kinds of retail space. Retail space has cropped up just about everywhere in the urban landscape: in libraries, workplaces, churches and museums. In short, retail is becoming a more and more manifest part of the public…
This book investigates street art and graffiti as cultural practices at the borders of legality and illegality. Cities are engaged in a continual process of cultural production through which their self-image is developed and refined; a process that is sometimes legal -- as with …
While we are used to looking around us, we are less used to listening to what happens around us. And yet, the noises we produce reveal our way of life, and learning to master them is a necessity. This book aims at drawing the reader's attention to the sound of the urban environm…
In recent years it has become common-place to hear claims that public space in cities across the globe has become the exclusive preserve of the wealthy and privileged, at the expense of the needs of wider society. Whether it is the privatisation of public space through commerica…
Bringing together leading scholars in the fields of criminology, international law, philosophy and architectural history and theory, this book examines the interrelationships between architecture and justice, highlighting the provocative and curiously ambiguous juncture between …
Think big, design small. This is the rallying cry of a new generation of architects and artists who aim to improve the lives of city-dwellers through small-scale public design projects. Using the city as an open-source platform for ideas, these visionaries create "urban interven…
Diasporic Agencies addresses the neglected subject of how architecture and urban design can respond to the consequences of increasing migration. Arguing that diasporic inhabitations can only be understood as the co-production of space, subjectivity and politics, the book explore…
What makes a great city? Not a good city or a functional city but a great city. A city that people admire, learn from, and replicate. City planner and architect Alexander Garvin set out to answer this question by observing cities, largely in North America and Europe, with specia…
Public Space Reader
Recent global appropriations of public spaces through urban activism, public uprising, and political protest have brought back democratic values, beliefs, and practices that have been historically associated with cities. Given the aggressive commodification of public resources, …