New City Spaces

Jan Gehl & Lars Gemzøe

This book presents an overview of the developments in the use and planning of public spaces, and offers a detailed description of 9 cities and 39 selected public space projects from all parts of the World. During the past 25 years, urban space and city life has undergone significant changes. The aim of this book is to provide an overview of this development as well as a detailed presentation of architectonically interesting cities and urban projects from five continents. The book presents nine cities a.o.; Barcelona, Lyon, Strassbourg, Freiburg, Copenhagen, Portland in the USA, Melbourne in Australia and Curitiba and Cordova in South America. On top of that there are 39 selected urban projects from all over the world.Cities as well as urban projects are described with plans, overview maps and illustrations. Using a good mesure of simplification, at this point of history it is possible to observe and describe four very different types of cities:

The traditional city – where meeting place, marketplace and traffic continue to coexist in balance, more or less.
The invaded city – where a single use, usually car traffic, has usurped territory at the expense of the other uses of city space.
The abandoned city – where public space and public life have disappeared.
The reconquered city – where strong efforts are being made to find a new, workable balance between the uses of the city as meeting place, marketplace and traffic space.