The Spaces between Buildings: (Center Books on Space, Place, and Time)

Gates and fences, sidewalks and driveways, alleys and parking lots - these ordinary features have an important achitectural impact, influencing how a building "relates" to the spaces around it. As geographer Larry R. Ford argues, architectural histories and guidebooks have, in the past, told readers little about the character of American cities because they concentrate on buildings taken out of context: buildings divorced from space. In this book, he focuses on these neglected nooks and crannies between structures, supplementing his analysis with three photographic essays. It is the result of his preoccupation with the relationship of buildings to one another and how their means of access and boundaries organize the areas around us. He observes that a city with friendly, permeable facades and a great variety of street-level doors is more conducive to civic life than a city characterized by fortress-like structures with blank walls and invisible doors. Life on the street is defined and guided by the nature of the surrounding buildings. Similarly, a residential neighbourhood with front porches, small lawns or gardens, and houses with lots of windows and architectural details presents a more walkable and greagarious setting than a neighbourhood where public space is surrounded by walls, three-car garage doors, blank facades and concrete driveways. Ford begins by looking at the growth of four urban places, each representing a historical era as much as a geographic location: the Islamic medina; the city shaped by the Spanish renaissance; the 19th-century North American city; and the 20th-century American city. His first essay also discusses the evolution of the free-standing structure as a basic urban building type and the problems encountered in beautifying the often work-a-day back and side yards that have helped to create the image of the untidy American city. The second esay examines the urban trend towards viewing laws, gardens, hedges and trees as an essential adjunct to architecture. The final essay focuses on pedestrian and vehicular spaces. Here the author includes the landscape of the garage, sidewalks, streets and alleys. In its exploration of how spaces became places, the book invites readers to see anew the spaces they encounter every day and often take for granted.

Table of Contents:
Acknowledgments Introduction. The Nooks and Crannies of Everyday Life Chapter 1. Buildings and the Spaces around Them Gallery: Enclosers of Space Chapter 2. Lawns, Trees, and Gardens in the City Gallery: Shapers of Space Chapter 3. Places for Driving, Strolling, and Parking Gallery: Shapers of Access Conclusion. City Spaces and Human Nature Bibliography Index

About the Author :
Larry R. Ford is a professor of geography at San Diego State University and has taught urban geography for thirty years. His previous book, Cities and Buildings: Skyscrapers, Skidrows, and Suburbs, is also available from Johns Hopkins.

Review :
The lively work of a geographer who has spent years exploring cities . . . His explorations range across a broad spectrum, from the form and character of building skins to the effects of zoning and building codes on urban design. There is similar breadth to the temporal sweep of his work, which focuses primarily on contemporary American cities but is comfortable reaching back to nineteenth-century or earlier antecedents to explain contemporary urban forms and patterns . . . [Ford] addresses and integrates an enormous range of issues of contemporary urban form that lie under our noses but to which, all too often, we find it beneath our dignity to pay attention. Ford pays attention. In one cogent comment after another, he reminds us of the importance of examining and thinking about our daily living and working environments. The clarity and scope of Ford's survey make the book engaging and informative not only for planners and designers, but also for readers generally interested in the shape of our cities. Easily accessible and useful to anyone interested in the pattern of our cities. This book creeps up on you, like the plot of a good novel or movie that starts with an ordinary situation but, with twists and turns, forces you to look at things in new ways. Ford's colourful and accessible essays are likely to stimulate a deeper interest in understanding the spaces of the city. Perhaps then the spaces where most individuals spend most of their time would no longer be taken for granted. Which is precisely Ford's point: because we do not question our own acceptance of the American city as we know it today, the spaces of our cities have no meaning.