Publisher's Synopsis
Everyone who has spent time in a city has seen it - small, temporary, unintentional, nondescript, though often frequented spaces, next to unified, expensive, permanent, and grand public developments that resemble ghost towns. Addressing the problems that plague the urban built environment, twelve innovative and fully illustrated essays by authors active in the world of architecture and urban design document and analyze in detail these urban locales. From inner-city neighborhoods to street-corner miniparks, idiosyncratic garden environments to middle-class trash alleys, vacant lots to sidewalks and front yards, temporary street performers to an auto-body repair lot that transforms into a drive-in restaurant during dinner hours, Everyday Urbanism illuminates the lived realities of the city.