Publication date: 12 November 2015
DOI: https://doi.org/10.14324/111.9781910634134
Number of pages: 380
Number of illustrations: 133
Suburban Urbanities
Suburbs and the Life of the High Street
Laura Vaughan (Editor)
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.
Related titles
Suburban Urbanities
Suburbs and the Life of the High Street
Publication date: November 12, 2015
Open Access PDF ISBN: 9781910634172
Paperback ISBN: 9781910634134
Hardback ISBN: 9781910634141
Trim size (hardback): 23.4cm x 15.6cm
Trim size (paperback): 23.4cm x 15.6cm
Page count (hardback): 380
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.
‘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.’
City Lab
‘Suburban Urbanities is a hugely important contribution to understanding our suburban world.’
Thinking Cities
‘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
‘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
‘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
