Urban Space

The Form of Urban Space

In some ways, nearly all cities have a similar spatial form. For example, they tend to be denser at the center than at the edges, and similar people and businesses tend to cluster together into neighborhoods and commercial districts. But in many ways, different cities exhibit very different spatial forms. Renaissance cities like Florence, colonial cities like Adelaide, and planned cities like Washington, D.C., are walkable, whereas a car is a practical necessity in many newer American cities like Phoenix and Houston that flourished during the [Page 928]automobile age. Cities like Chicago (e.g., the Loop), Moscow (e.g., the Kremlin), or London (e.g., the City) have a clearly defined center, whereas some metropolitan areas, like Los Angeles, have a more diffuse spatial organization. Others, like the Dutch Randstad, comprise multiple centers (e.g., Amsterdam, Rotterdam). Within cities, some streets have wide, tree-lined sidewalks with small shops and cafés, while others are uninviting corridors of brick and concrete. The form of large urban spaces like expressways and downtowns, as well as small urban spaces like streets and neighborhoods, play a key role in how a city works and how it is experienced.

For several millennia both the location and form of urban space were constrained by nature and technology. For example, early cities were located near water and productive land and were limited in size and shape by the practical dimensions of a defensive city wall or by the practical provision of food to their population. With improvements in production, transportation, and communication technologies, the form of urban space was incrementally liberated from these constraints and cities grew in a variety of ways. Ancient cities like Rome evolved a radial network of streets to connect existing, symbolic structures (e.g., the Coliseum and the Forum). Mexico City (e.g., Zócalo) and Bogotá (e.g., Bolivar Square), and later medieval European cities like Venice (e.g., St. Mark's Square) and Prague (e.g., Staromêstské Námêstí), developed around central plazas and piazzas that served as civic gathering spaces. Finally, planned or rebuilt cities like Chicago and Paris developed within more rigid grids and networks of streets. Most often, these elements of urban form blurred together to give particular cities their unique character. For example, while Lower Manhattan is the obvious center of New York City, Brooklyn and Newark also serve as centers within the same urban space. Similarly, while Manhattan is defined within a careful grid of east–west streets and north–south avenues, Broadway cuts across this grid as a vestige of a much earlier Native American urban form.

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