Overview

Manhattan’s Public Spaces: Production, Revitalization, Commodification analyzes a series of architectural works and their contribution to New York’s public space over the past few decades. By exploring a mix of urban mechanisms, supportive frameworks, legal systems, and planning guidelines for the transformation of the city’s collective realm, the text frames Manhattan as a controversial landscape of interests and concerns to authorities, communities, and, very importantly, developers. The production, revitalization, and commodification of Manhattan’s public spaces, as a phenomenon and as a subject of study, also highlights the vicissitudes of the reconciliation of the many different agents, which are part of the process. The challenge of the book does not only lie in the analysis of good design but, more importantly, in how to understand the functional mechanisms for the current trends in the production of space for public use. A complex framework of actors, governance, and market monopolies, which invites the reader to participate in the debate of how these interventions contribute, or not, to an inclusive environment anchored in the existing built fabric. Manhattan’s Public Spaces invites reflection on the revitalization of the city’s shared space from all dimensions. Beautifully illustrated in black and white, with over 50 images, this book will be of interest to scholars and students in architecture, planning, and urban design.

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9781032056401

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This book is a remarkable window onto a unique moment in the history of New York - and the history of contemporary urban design - when squalor, decline, innovation and opportunity somehow existed simultaneously. - Robert Fishman

""This book is a remarkable window onto a unique moment in the history of New York – and the history of contemporary urban design - when squalor, decline, innovation and opportunity somehow existed simultaneously."" -Robert Fishman ""Rivers of ink have gone into tackling the Big Apple from numerous and widely varied critical angles. A new addition to this hermeneutic lineage is by a Michigan-based Spanish scholar, who scans recent production of public space through examples which are halfway between architectural and urban, covering the period from the times of Mies van der Rohe to the High Line. These examples are analyzed by means of sensible texts and photographs, illustrated through analytical drawings rendered by the author, and complemented with conclusions of a critical nature. -Arquitectura Viva

Author Information

Ana Morcillo Pallarés is a Spanish architect, researcher, and designer based in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and Cieza, Spain. Her research and creative practice critically engage today’s increasing need for more shared space as an ongoing process of continuous agreements among the diverse networks of people who are part of the city. Her work has been featured in the Journal of Architectural Education, VLC Arquitectura, MONU, and the Plan Journal, among others. Ana is an assistant professor at Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning, where she initiated her academic career as the 2015 Walter B. Sander Research Fellow. She received her Ph.D. from the Polytechnic School of Madrid and her professional degree in architecture from the Polytechnic School of Valencia.

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