Description
Book SynopsisTo attract investment and tourists and to enhance the quality of life of their citizens, municipal authorities are paying considerable attention to the quality of the public domain of their cities including their urban squares. Politicians find them good places for rallies. Children consider squares to be playgrounds, the elderly as places to catch-up with each other, and for many others squares are simply a place to pause for a moment.
Urban Squares as Places, Links and Displays: Successes and Failures discusses how people experience squares and the nature of the people who use them. It presents a typology of squares' based on the dimensions of ownership, the square's instrumental functions, and a series of their basic physical attributes including size, degree of enclosure, configuration and organization of the space within them and finally based on their aesthetic attributes their meanings. Twenty case studies illustrate what works and what does not work in differe
Trade Review
"El libro pasa revista a muchos casos de plazas urbanas significativas en cuanto al diseño y la vida urbana de las ciudades a nivel mundial, como la de San Marcos, en Venecia (2017, pp. 240-244), que puede considerarse para el lector geógrafo, urbanista, arquitecto, ingeniero, etcétera, como una especie de guía para entender el papel de las plazas urbanas hoy e, incluso, para desarrollar posteriores investigaciones en este campo de estudio." —Federico Camerin, Investigaciones Geográficas, April 2019
"The book reviews many cases of urban squares in terms of design and life of cities around the world, such as the of San Marcos, in Venice, which can be considered for the geographer reader, urban planner, architect, engineer, etc., as a kind of guide to understand the role of urban spaces today, and even to develop further research in this field of study." —Federico Camerin, Investigaciones Geográficas, April 2019
Table of ContentsPrologue: The Concern
Part 1: Introduction
1. Experiencing Public Open Spaces
2. Squares as Places, Links and Displays
3. Sociocultural Considerations
Part 2: Types of Urban Squares and their Design
4. Public, Quasi-public and Semi-public Squares
5. Types based on Instrumental Functions:
6. Types based on Size
7. Types based on Degree of Enclosure
8. Types based on Configurations
9. Types based on Internal Designs
10. Types based on Symbolic Functions
11. Types based on Design Paradigms
Part 3: Learning from Case Studies
12. A Score of Case Studies
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- Rittenhouse House Square, Philadelphia
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- Sproul Plaza, University of California at Berkeley
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- Paley Park, New York
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- Cours Honoréd-Estiennne d’Orves, Marseille
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- La Place des Terreaux, Lyon
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- Federation Square, Melbourne
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- Paternoster Square, London
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- Robson Square, Vancouver
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- Olympic Plaza, Calgary
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- Trafalgar Square, London
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- The Capitol Square, Chandigarh
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- Oxford Square, Sydney
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- Pershing Square, Los Angeles
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- Schouwburgplein, Rotterdam
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- The Guggenheim Museum forecourt, Bilbao
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- North and South Shanghai Railway Station Squares, Shanghai
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- Jacob K. Javits Federal Building Plaza, New York
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- Granary Square, London
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- Times Square, New York
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- Piazza San Marco, Venice
Part 4: What Works and What Doesn’t Work
13. The Qualities of Lively Urban Squares
14. The Qualities of Quiet Urban Squares
Epilogue
