Suburban Urbanities : suburbs and the life of the high street / Laura Vaughan.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Vaughan, Laura, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Suburban life.

Physical Description:

1 online resourc (xxvii, 346 pages) : illustrations

Place of Publication:

London : UCL Press, 2015.

Summary:

Suburban space has traditionally been understood as a formless remnant of physical city expansion, without a dynamic or logic of its own. Suburban Urbanities challenges this view by defining the suburb as a temporally evolving feature of urban growth. Anchored in the architectural research discipline of space syntax, this book offers a comprehensive understanding of urban change, touching on the history of the suburb as well as its current development challenges, with a particular focus on suburban centres. Studies of the high street as a centre for social, economic and cultural exchange provide evidence for its critical role in sustaining local centres over time. Contributors from the architecture, urban design, geography, history and anthropology disciplines examine cases spanning Europe and around the Mediterranean. By linking large-scale city mapping, urban design scale expositions of high street activity and local-scale ethnographies, the book underscores the need to consider suburban space on its own terms as a specific and complex field of social practice.

Contents:

Introduction: suburbs are as old as the city itself

Part A: Theoretical preliminaries.

1. The suburb and the city

2. The high street as a morphological event

Part B. Suburban centralities. 3. Suburban continuity and change

4. Spatial memory and shifting centrality

5. Street quality, street life, street centrality

6. Beyond lively streets

Part C. High street diversity. 7. High street diversity

8. High street transactions and interactions

Case Study 1. High street productivity

Case Study 2. High streets and the pedestrian realm

Part D. Everyday sociability. 9. Street interaction and social inclusion

10. Sociability and ethnic identity

11. Being suburban.

Notes:

Description based on publisher supplied metadata and other sources.

ISBN:

9781910634172