Focusing on the street as a socio-spatial catalyst, this book fosters a comprehensive conversation on the past, present, and future of streets and public space. While 'the street' is commonly associated with urban form or the metropolitan context of social dynamics and design practices, this interdisciplinary anthology highlights that urban design challenges are global, multidimensional, and transcalar.
This critical survey of the city collects a broad scope of practices and phenomena in urbanism, architecture, activism, and participatory design. Individual chapters examine the histories, theories, geographies, architecture, and design of streets offering essential reading for scholars, professionals, students, and enthusiasts of urbanism, urban design, architecture, landscape architecture, planning, geography, sociology, anthropology, cultural studies, economics, and the arts. Over 50 chapters, authored by an international and diverse group of leading academics, theorists, historians, and practitioners, expand the discourse on streets and public space.
Introduction.- Part 1: Histories.- The street as an elemental atom of
the urban system.- Towards a new urban paradigm: Lina Bo Bardi and the
citadel of freedom.- Rockefeller centers channel gardens: Pleasure, profit,
and ceaseless transformations.- The intellectual versus the street: Ludwig
Hilberseimers settlement unit.- Where the skyway ends: A past and future in
downtown Minneapolis.- The street through the building.- Fixing a hole:
Replicas and the conservation of streets.- House, street, city: Le
Corbusiers research towards a new urban interior.- Guts of the city: In the
bowels of the street.- Towards a new narrative for the automotive strip.-
Part 2: Geographies.- Replicas: Thoughts from Colonial Williamsburg and
contemporary Berlin.- Streetscapes, dwellings, and performance in three Asian
Museums.- The streets of Chinatown: Mapping the spatial character of a
distinctive urban district.- Cultural intersections: Street networks in
Seouls Jongno district.- Istiklal avenue: A distinctive urban assemblage in
Istanbul.- Contested territories: Identity and memory in the public spaces of
Mostar, Bosnia and Herzegovina.- Residential back alleys: Underdetermined
spaces of multiple potentials.- The graphic urban ground.- The fragile
architecture of public life: Unraveling the public-private interface.-
Brownsville market square: A resurgence of city life.- Avenida 9 de Octubre
and the malling of Guayaquil.-Part 3: Expressions.- Street matters: Urban
policy lessons from a century of protests in Brazil.- Streets and women:
Everyday public spaces for Egalitarian cities.- Doors as streets: Snøhettas
Toronto Metropolitan University library as streetscape.- A dialogue of two
infrastructures: Choreographing water and pathways in India.- Queer streets:
A new kind of public.- Largo do Arouche: São Paulos Queer militant
battlefield.- Filmic space of streets: Avant Garde interpretations of the
urban experience in city symphonies.- Observing Prishtina: Sketching the city
as a way of seeing.- Re-assembling revolution: Actors, material, and
economies of Avenida Revolución.- Boulevard of American dreams: People,
politics, and placemaking in the Cleveland cultural gardens.- Part 4:
Designs.- Art and other appropriations: Reconstituting the street as a work
of life.- 16th street Transitway mall: Revisiting an iconic street 40 Years
later.- Streets in the air: A view from Latin America.- Streets for People:
Parklets before and after the pandemic.- House +: Strategies for a domestic
commons in an unzoned city.- Fashion street: The role of streets in the
expression, impression, and acquisition of fashion.- Tactical urbanism:
Staging the public use of left-over spaces.- Streets in the Studio: A
cross-cultural exploration of Chinese Hutongs and American alleys.-
Intricacy: Interior urbanism at the edges of contemporary public space.-
Kiosk 67: An adaptable architecture for street life.- Part 5: Metrics.-
Shaping high street futures: Place attraction and the Sun model of shopping
choices.- Image of the road: The case of Celovka cesta in Ljubljana.-
Digital placemaking: Social media as a tool to reappropriate public spaces.-
Neighborhood parks and equitable access.- Collaboration in the creative city:
Virtual and analogue co-creation of street art.- Navigating privacy and
community in residential street design: Case studies from the Italian
Ina-Casa plan.- Part 6: Reflections.- Interstices: Spaces of connection and
disconnection.- Repeating the past: The politics of highway expansion in
Houston.- Streetscapes: From cluttered to Spartan and back.- Oklahoma city:
Cultivating urban possibilities on the Southern Plains.- Streetscapes as
enabling social infrastructure.- Street trees: Making a case for a productive
urban Canopy.- Dead ends: Notes on death, architecture, and the everyday life
of the street.- Afterword.
Gregory Marinic, PhD, is an Associate Professor at the University of Cincinnati College of Design, Architecture, Art, and Planning SAID and the Director of URBANIA, a grant-funded research lab speculating on metropolitan futures with current research focused on housing, urban design, urban morphology, and informal settlements. Marinic has published four books, most recently, the co-edited Informality and the City: Theories, Actions, and Interventions (Springer, 2022) and the co-authored Urban Labyrinths: Informal Settlements, Architecture, and Social Change in Latin America (Routledge, 2024). His research has been widely published in journals including Journal of Urbanism, International Journal of Architectural Research, Journal of Architecture and Urbanism, and AD Journal. His teaching and practice have been recognized with awards from the American Institute of Architects, the Seoul Metropolitan Government, and the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture. His work has been exhibited worldwide, including the AIA New York Center for Architecture, AIA Philadelphia Center for Architecture, Seoul Dongdaemun Design Plaza, Estonian Architecture Museum, TSMD Turkish Architecture Center in Ankara, National Building Museum in Washington, DC and elsewhere. Prior to academia, Marinic worked in the New York and London offices of Rafael Viñoly Architects where he contributed to RIBA and AIA award-winning civic, academic, performing arts, residential, aviation, urban design, master planning, and international competition projects.
Pablo Meninato, PhD, is an Associate Professor at the Temple University Tyler School of Art and Architecture. An architect, architectural critic, and educator, Meninato has practiced and taught architecture and urbanism in Philadelphia, Buenos Aires, and Monterrey, Mexico. A native of Argentina, Meninato is a recipient of the 2024-2025 Fulbright US Scholar Award. Before joining Temple University, he taught at various academic institutions, including the University of Pennsylvania, Universidad de Monterrey, and Universidad de Palermo in Buenos Aires. He currently serves on the Philadelphia Chapter of the Board of the Society of Architectural Historians. His essays have been widely published in various journals, magazines, and books. Meninato is the author of Unexpected Affinities: The History of Type in the Architectural Project from Laugier to Duchamp (Routledge, 2018), a book that proposes a historical reassessment of the concept of architectural type and its impact on the design process. He is currently engaged in an ongoing research and publishing project examining how contemporary architects are developing unique interventions in informal settlements across Latin America. Outcomes of this project include the co-edited book Informality and the City: Theories, Actions, and Interventions (Springer, 2022) and the co-authored book Urban Labyrinths: Informal Settlements, Architecture, and Social Change in Latin America (Routledge, 2024).
