The interplay of psychology, design, and politics in experiments with urban open space As suburbanization, racial conflict, and the consequences of urban renewal threatened New York City with “urban crisis,” the administration of Mayor John V. Lindsay (1966–1973) experimented with a broad array of projects in open spaces to affirm the value of city life. Mariana Mogilevich provides a fascinating history of a watershed moment when designers, government administrators, and residents sought to remake the city in the image of a diverse, free, and democratic society. New pedestrian malls, residential plazas, playgrounds in vacant lots, and parks on postindustrial waterfronts promised everyday spaces for play, social interaction, and participation in the life of the city. Whereas designers had long created urban spaces for a broad amorphous public, Mogilevich demonstrates how political pressures and the influence of the psychological sciences led them to a new conception of public space that included diverse publics and encouraged individual flourishing. Drawing on extensive archival research, site work, interviews, and the analysis of film and photographs, The Invention of Public Space considers familiar figures, such as William H. Whyte and Jane Jacobs, in a new light and foregrounds the important work of landscape architects Paul Friedberg and Lawrence Halprin and the architects of New York City’s Urban Design Group. The Invention of Public Space brings together psychology, politics, and design to uncover a critical moment of transformation in our understanding of city life and reveals the emergence of a concept of public space that remains today a powerful, if unrealized, aspiration.

The authors offer a perspective of how to integrate public space and public life. They contend that three critical human dimensions should guide the process of design and management of public space: the users' essential needs, their spatial rights, and the meanings they seek.

Presents an examination of public space -- what it is, why it's important, how to protect and expand it, and much more.

We typically take public space for granted, as if it has continuously been there, yet public space has always been the expression of the will of some agency (person or institution) who names the space, gives it purpose, and monitors its existence. And often its use has been contested. These new essays, written for this volume, approach public space through several key questions: Who has the right to define public space? How do such places generate and sustain symbolic meaning? Is public space unchanging, or is it subject to our subjective perception? Do we, given the public nature of public space, have the right to subvert it? These eighteen essays, including several case studies, offer convincing evidence of a spatial turn in American studies. They argue for a re-visioning of American culture as a history of place-making and the instantiation of meaning in structures, boundaries, and spatial configurations. Chronologically the subjects range from Pierre L'Enfant's initial majestic conceptualization of Washington, D.C. to the post-modern realization that public space in the U.S. is increasingly a matter of waste. Topics range from parks to cities to small towns, from open-air museums to airports, encompassing the commercial marketing of place as well as the subversion and re-possession of public space by the disenfranchised. Ultimately, public space is variously imagined as the site of social and political contestation and of aesthetic change.

First Published in 2004. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

In New York - wie auch in vielen anderen Großstädten - wächst die Zahl der öffentlichen Plätze, die Privatpersonen gehören und auch privat betrieben werden. Als Gegenleistung für die Schaffung dieser Plätze und Einrichtungen, erhalten die Erbauer von der Stadt Sonderkonzessionen (in der Regel für die Gebäudehöhe). Dieses Buch dokumentiert und beschreibt anhand von Fotos, Lageplänen und Karten über 300 öffentliche Plätze in New York, die in privater Hand sind. Zu den bekanntesten zählen u.a. das Trump Tower Atrium, die Sony Arkade und die Citicorp Mall. Jede Beschreibung enthält Informationen zu Größe, Fertigstellungsdatum, Architekten/Landschaftsarchitekten, Gebäudeeigentümer, Öffnungszeiten und Lage. Zu den Abbildungen gehört jeweils ein Foto sowie eine maßstabsgetreue Zeichnung, die verdeutlichen, wie sich der Bau in die angrenzende Gebäude-/Straßenlandschaft einpaßt. (y05/00)

This Cambridge History of Modernism is the first comprehensive history of modernism in the distinguished Cambridge Histories series. It identifies a distinctive temperament of 'modernism' within the 'modern' period, establishing the circumstances of modernized life as the ground and warrant for an art that becomes 'modernist' by virtue of its demonstrably self-conscious involvement in this modern condition. Following this sensibility from the end of the nineteenth century to the middle of the twentieth, tracking its manifestations across pan-European and transatlantic locations, the forty-three chapters offer a remarkable combination of breadth and focus. Prominent scholars of modernism provide analytical narratives of its literature, music, visual arts, architecture, philosophy, and science, offering circumstantial accounts of its diverse personnel in their many settings. These historically informed readings offer definitive accounts of the major work of twentieth-century cultural history and provide a new cornerstone for the study of modernism in the current century.

Over the past few decades, rapid urbanisation has threatened to erode public space, especially in emerging economies. Market forces that prioritise profit generation are allowed to construct venues of consumption in its place. Though their physical appearance may resemble traditional public space, in reality, they are greatly restrictive and diminished in affordability, accessibility and social meaning. It is in this context that William SW Lim, chairman of Asian Urban Lab, has brought together architects, designers, historians, sociologists and urbanists from the region to discuss public space in selected Asian cities.Part One contains essays from participants from Chongqing, Hong Kong, Jakarta, Kuala Lumpur, Singapore and Taipei and observations from commentators. Several essays by William SW Lim on the subject round off the discussion in Part Two. The thoughtful essays in Public Space in Urban Asia emphasise how engaging with the present actuality of cities and public awareness of spatial justice in cities are crucial — for it is the achievement of spatial justice that will help create a greater level of happiness across societies in our increasingly urbanised world.

Galen Cranz surveys the rise of the park system from 1850 to the present through 4 stages - the pleasure ground, the reform park, the recreation facility and the open space system.

The relationship between public and private spheres is one of the key concerns of the modern society. This book investigates this relationship, especially as manifested in the urban space with its social and psychological significance. Through theoretical and historical examination, it explores how and why the space of human socities is subdivided into public and private sections. It starts with the private, interior space of the mind and moves step by step, through the body, home, neighborhood and the city, outwards to the most public, impersonal spaces, exploring the nature of each realm and their complex, interdependent realtionships. A stimulating and thought provoking book for any architect, architectural historian, urban planner or designer.