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.
Praise for Suburban Urbanities: Suburbs and the Life of the High Street
'Book reviews rarely comment on the quality of the production of the physical item itself, yet Suburban Urbanities: Suburbs and the Life of the High Street begs an initial reflection on this aspect. UCL Press should be commended for producing a book that looks and feels beautiful: it is a physical item that any scholar interested in the urban should want on their shelf, and there is something to be said for the importance of this. Of course, such attention to detail would be wasted without good content, but thankfully this collection, edited by Laura Vaughan, does not disappoint.'
LSE Review of Books
'Suburban Urbanities is a hugely important contribution to understanding our suburban world.'
Thinking Cities
'Suburban Urbanities: Suburbs and the Life of the High Street, by Urban Form and Society Professor Laura Vaughan, is a book that, unlike others before it, consider urban and suburbs together rather than two different areas.'
Realty Today
'Rather than taking the city out of the suburb or the suburb out of the city, the intention of the recently published Suburban Urbanities: Suburbs and the Life of the High Street has been to consider the two together: the suburb as a continuum of the city’s spatial–social complexity.'
CityLab
'Jane Jacobs’ pioneering work on the death and life of the city continues to engage, with UCL Professor Laura Vaughan’s collection of essays analysing the morphology of the UK high street through time and via the likes of Spain’s Toledo, Limassol in Cyprus and urban Tripoli.'
RibaJ
Laura Vaughan is Professor of Urban Form and Society at the Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL. In addition to her research into social cartography, she has written on many other critical aspects of urbanism today.
Introduction
Suburbs are as Old as the City Itself
Laura Vaughan
Part A: Theoretical Preliminaries
1 The Suburb and the City
Laura Vaughan, Sam Griffiths and Muki Haklay
2 The High Street as a Morphological Event
Sam Griffiths
Part B: Suburban Centralities
3 Suburban Continuity and Change
Ashley Dhanani
4 Spatial Memory and Shifting Centrality
Nadia Charalambous and Ilaria Geddes
5 Street Quality, Street Life, Street Centrality
Adel M. Remali, Sergio Porta, Ombretta Romice and Huyam Abudib
6 Beyond Lively Streets
Borja Ruiz-Apilánez, Mayte Arnaiz and José M. De Ureña
Part C: High Street Diversity
7 High Street Diversity
Laura Vaughan
8 High Street Transactions and Interactions
Garyfalia Palaiologou
Case Study 1: High Street Productivity
Fiona Scott
Case study 2: High Streets and the Pedestrian realm
Yodan Rofè, Galit Yerushalmi, Moshe Margalith and Ahuva Windsor
Part D: Everyday Sociability
9 Street Interaction and Social Inclusion
Ann Legeby, Meta Berghauser Pont and Lars Marcus
10 Sociability and Ethnic Identity
Angela Piragauta
11 Being Suburban
David Jeevendrampillai
Glossary of Space Syntax
References
Index
'It is clear that attempts to pinpoint a suburban culture are going to arrive at a dead end (if you will forgive the pun), if suburban culture is seen to be as shallow-rooted as its grassy lawns. A deeper understanding of suburban culture, if we are willing to agree that there is such a thing, will take as its starting point that its inhabitants have had a past life elsewhere.'
Alexandrine Press
'Book reviews rarely comment on the quality of the production of the physical item itself, yet Suburban Urbanities: Suburbs and the Life of the High Street begs an initial reflection on this aspect. UCL Press should be commended for producing a book that looks and feels beautiful: it is a physical item that any scholar interested in the urban should want on their shelf, and there is something to be said for the importance of this. Of course, such attention to detail would be wasted without good content, but thankfully this collection, edited by Laura Vaughan, does not disappoint.'
LSE Review of Books
'Jane Jacobs’ pioneering work on the death and life of the city continues to engage, with UCL Professor Laura Vaughan’s collection of essays analysing the morphology of the UK high street through time and via the likes of Spain’s Toledo, Limassol in Cyprus and urban Tripoli.'
RIBAJ
'Suburban Urbanities is a hugely important contribution to understanding our suburban world.'
Thinking Cities
'Rather than taking the city out of the suburb or the suburb out of the city, the intention of the recently published Suburban Urbanities: Suburbs and the Life of the High Street has been to consider the two together: the suburb as a continuum of the city’s spatial–social complexity.'
City Lab
'Suburban Urbanities: Suburbs and the Life of the High Street', by Urban Form and Society Professor Laura Vaughan, is a book that, unlike others before it, consider urban and suburbs together rather than two different areas.' Realty Today
Format: Open Access HTML
ISBN: 9781911307198
Publication: November 12, 2015
