A reprint of the 1987 VNR edition with a new (four page) foreword by Moudon for this Morningside publication. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Streets Reconsidered is a fundamental rethinking of America's streets. It explores the future of streets and what America's roadways could be if they were designed for living, instead of just driving. The book includes: detailed design guidelines, fully illustrated, four color case studies of successful streets from around the world, a new paradigm of streets designed to promote human functions, turning new design ideas into a series of best practices that can be applied to any community. What would streets look like if they accommodated people of all ages and abilities, promoted healthy urban living, social interaction and business, the movement of people and goods and regeneration of the environment? Streets Reconsidered pushes beyond the current standards, focusing on the planning, design and construction of streets as a method for improving our built environment for everyone. The book is organized by the functions of a street: mobility, way finding, commerce, social gathering, events and programming, play and recreation, urban agriculture, green infrastructure and image and identity. Streets Reconsidered is the essential resource for city planners, urban designers, developers, architects, landscape architects, policymakers and community members who share a passion for great urban, human spaces.

How local, specific, and personal understandings about belonging, ownership, and agency intersect with law to shape the city. In Owning the Street, Amelia Thorpe examines everyday experiences of and feelings about property and belonging in contemporary cities. She grounds her account in an empirical study of PARK(ing) Day, an annual event that reclaims street space from cars. A popular and highly recognizable example of DIY Urbanism, PARK(ing) Day has attracted considerable media attention, but has not yet been the subject of close scholarly examination. Focusing on the event's trajectories in San Francisco, Sydney, and Montreal, Thorpe addresses this gap, making use of extensive interview data, field work, and careful reflection to explore these tiny, temporary, and often transformative interventions. PARK(ing) Day is based on a creative interpretation of the property producible by paying a parking meter. Paying a meter, the event’s organizers explained, amounts to taking out a lease on the space; while most “lessees” use that property to store a car, the space could be put to other uses—engaging politics (a free health clinic for migrant workers, a same sex wedding, a protest against fossil fuels) and play (a dance floor, giant Jenga, a pocket park). Through this novel rereading of everyday regulation, PARK(ing) Day provides an example of the connection between belief and action—a connection at the heart of Thorpe’s argument. Thorpe examines ways in which local, personal, and materially grounded understandings about belonging, ownership, and agency intersect with law to shape the city. Her analysis offers insights into the ways in which citizens can shape the governance of urban space, particularly in contested environments. The book's foreword is by Davina Cooper, Research Professor in Law at King’s College London.

The only book of its kind to provide an overview of sustainable street design Today, society is moving toward a more sustainable way of life, with cities everywhere aspiring to become high-quality places to live, work, and play. Streets are fundamental to this shift. They define our system of movement, create connections between places, and offer opportunities to reconnect to natural systems. There is an increasing realization that the right-of-way is a critical and under-recognized resource for transformation, with new models being tested to create a better public realm, support balanced transportation options, and provide sustainable solutions for stormwater and landscaping. Living Streets provides practical guidance on the complete street approach to sustainable and community-minded street use and design. Written by an interdisciplinary team of authors, the book brings insights and experience from urban planning, transportation planning, and civil engineering perspectives. It includes examples from many completed street design projects from around the world, an overview of the design and policy tools that have been successful, and guidance to help get past the predictable obstacles to implementation: Who makes decisions in the right-of-way? Who takes responsibility? How can regulations be changed to allow better use of the right-of-way? Living Streets informs you of the benefits of creating streets that are healthier, more pleasant parts of life: Thoughtful planning of the location, uses, and textures of the spaces in which we live encourages people to use public space more often, be more active, and possibly live healthier lives. A walkable community makes life easier and more pleasant for everyone, especially for vulnerable populations within the larger community whose transportation limitations reduce access to jobs, healthy food, health care, recreation, and social interaction. Streets present opportunities to improve the natural environment while adding to neighborhood character, offering beauty, providing shade, and improving air quality. If you're an urban planner, designer, transportation engineer, or civil engineer, Living Streets is the ultimate guide for the creation of more humane streetscapes that connect neighborhoods and inspire people.

The Social Life Of Small Urban Spaces.

This collection of twenty-one essays, written by colleagues and former students of the architectural historian Spiro Kostof (1936-1991), presents case studies on Kostof's model of urban forms and fabrics. The essays are remarkably diverse: the range includes pre-Columbian Inca settlements, fourteenth-century Cairo, nineteenth-century New Orleans, and twentieth-century Tokyo ... The theme of the volume is that the street presents itself as the basic structuring device of a city's form and also as the locus of its civilization. Each essay is a detailed investigation of a single urban street with unique historical conditions. The authors' shared concern regarding anthropological, political, and technical aspects of street making coalesce into a critical discourse on urban space.

Street level discretion -- Three pathologies: the indifferent, the enforcer, and the caregiver -- A gymnastics of the self: coping with the everyday pressures of street-level work -- When the rules run out: informal taxonomies and peer-level accountability -- Impossible situations: on the breakdown of moral integrity at the frontlines of public service

Focusing on the liberating promise of public space, The Beach Beneath the Streets examines the activist struggles of communities in New York City—queer youth of color, gardeners, cyclists, and anti-gentrification activists—as they transform streets, piers, and vacant lots into everyday sites for autonomy, imagination, identity formation, creativity, problem solving, and even democratic renewal. Through ethnographic accounts of contests over New York City's public spaces that highlight the tension between resistance and repression, Shepard and Smithsimon identify how changes in the control of public spaces—parks, street corners, and plazas—have reliably foreshadowed elites' shifting designs on the city at large. With an innovative taxonomy of public space, the authors frame the ways spaces as diverse as gated enclaves, luxury shopping malls, collapsing piers and street protests can be understood in relation to one another. Synthesizing the fifty-year history of New York's neoliberal transformation and the social movements which have opposed the process, The Beach Beneath the Streets captures the dynamics at work in the ongoing shaping of urban spaces into places of repression, expression, control, and creativity.

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)