Loose Space

Possibility and Diversity in Urban Life
1. Auflage 2006
ISBN: 978-0-415-70117-4
Verlag: Routledge

Buch, Englisch, 320 Seiten, Format (B × H): 174 mm x 246 mm, Gewicht: 573 g

In cities around the world people use a variety of public spaces to relax, to protest, to buy and sell, to experiment and to celebrate. Loose Space explores the many ways that urban residents, with creativity and determination, appropriate public space to meet their own needs and desires. Familiar or unexpected, spontaneous or planned, momentary or long-lasting, the activities that make urban space loose continue to give cities life and vitality.

The book examines physical spaces and how people use them. Contributors discuss a wide range of recreational, commercial and political activities; some are conventional, others are more experimental. Some of the activities occur alongside the intended uses of planned public spaces, such as sidewalks and plazas; other activities replace former uses, as in abandoned warehouses and industrial sites. The thirteen case studies, international in scope, demonstrate the continuing richness of urban public life that is created and sustained by urbanites themselves

- Presents a fresh way of looking at urban public space, focusing on its positive uses and aspects.

- Comprises 13 detailed, well-illustrated case studies based on sustained observation and research by social scientists, architects and urban designers.

- Looks at a range of activities, both everyday occurrences and more unusual uses, in a variety of public spaces -- planned, leftover and abandoned.

- Explores the spatial and the behavioral; considers the wider historical and social context.

- Addresses issues of urban research, architecture, urban design and planning.

- Takes a broad international perspective with cases from New York, London, Berlin, Amsterdam, Rome, Guadalajara, Athens, Tel Aviv, Melbourne, Bangkok, Kandy, Buffalo, and the North of England.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Franck, Karen

Stevens, Quentin

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Architektur Städtebau, Stadtplanung (Architektur)
• Geowissenschaften Geographie | Raumplanung Regional- & Raumplanung Stadtplanung, Kommunale Planung

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Tying Down Loose Space Appropriation Found Spaces: Freedom of Choice in Public Life. Open-Ended Space: Urban Streets in Two Cultural Contexts. Betwixt and Between: Building Thresholds, Liminality and Public Space Tension Urban Appropriation and Loose Spaces in the Guadalajara Cityscape. Urban Slippage: Smooth and Striated Streetscapes in Bangkok. Transforming Public Space into Sites of Mourning and Free Expression. Central Park: The Aesthetics of Order and the Appearance of Looseness Resistance Heterotopias and the Experience of Porous Space. Stalker on Location. Dead Zones, Outdoor Rooms and the Architecture of Transgression Discovery Social Practices, Sensual Excess and Aesthetic Transgression in Industrial Ruins. Unruly and Robust: An Abandoned Industrial River. Patterns of the Unplanned. Annotated Bibliography

Über Autor(innen)

Karen A. Franck is a Professor in the School of Architecture and the Department of Humanities at the New Jersey Institute of Technology.
Quentin Stevens is a Lecturer in urban design at the Bartlett School of Planning, University College London.