Urban Open Spaces in Historical Perspective: A Transdisciplinary Typology and Analysis

See discussions, stats, and author profiles for this publication at: https://www.researchgate.
net/publication/268208067
Urban Open Spaces in Historical Perspective: A Transdisciplinary

Typology and Analysis
Article in Urban Geography · November 2012

DOI: 10.2747/0272-3638.33.8.1089
CITATIONS READS
71 6,954
4 authors, including:
Benjamin W. Stanley Barbara L. Stark

Arizona State University Arizona State University
16 PUBLICATIONS 177 CITATIONS 60 PUBLICATIONS 844 CITATIONS
SEE PROFILE SEE PROFILE
Some of the authors of this publication are also working on these related projects:
Transparent Urban Development View project
All content following this page was uploaded by Benjamin W. Stanley on 12 November 2014.
The user has requested enhancement of the downloaded file.

URBAN OPEN SPACES IN HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE:
A TRANSDISCIPLINARY TYPOLOGY AND ANALYSIS1
Benjamin W. Stanley2
School of Sustainability
Arizona State University
Barbara L. Stark
School of Human Evolution and Social Change
Katrina L. Johnston
School of Urban Studies and Planning
Portland State University
Michael E. Smith
School of Human Evolution and Social Change
Abstract: Urban open space provides a unique conduit for the sociospatial study of urban
history. We propose seven categories to help scholars historically situate and analyze urban open
spaces: food production areas, parks and gardens, recreational space, plazas, streets, transport
facilities, and incidental space. We use these categories, and the contrast between grey and green
space, to compare examples from archaeological, historical, and recent times across a broad geo-
graphical range. Top-down and bottom-up actions dialectically intersect in the establishment, use,
and reproduction of urban open space, and many open spaces prove to be particularly flexible in
serving the general population. These findings can inform comparative urban analysis, and they
help contextualize current debates concerning the socioeconomic, political, and urban ecological
functions of open and public spaces. [Key words: open space, public space, urban history, com-
parative urbanism, urban morphology.]
Urban open spaces have been critical sites of cultural, political, and economic life from
early civilizations to the present day. We define open space as any urban ground space,
regardless of public accessibility, that is not roofed by an architectural structure.3 From
the alleys of ancient Babylon to the culs-de-sac of modern Phoenix, the form and function
of open spaces have varied dramatically, based on particular cultural arrangements, yet
retaining a host of similar features. As part of a transdisciplinary project comparing ancient
1
We thank our colleagues in the Late Lessons from Early History, Urban Organization through the Ages project
for their continued dialogue and ideas. We particularly acknowledge and thank Sharon Harlan, Jill Grant, and
George Cowgill for their useful suggestions to improve the text, but none are responsible for the content. We
acknowledge the financial support of the President’s Strategic Fund at Arizona State University.
2
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Benjamin W. Stanley, School of Sustainability,
Arizona State University, PO Box 875502, Tempe, Arizona 85287-5502; telephone: 914-589-3265; fax: 480-965-
8087; email: bwstanley@asu.edu
3
In some societies, roof tops and other spaces function as urban open spaces in terms of use, but we do not address
these spaces.
1089
Urban Geography, 2012, 33, 8, pp. 1089–1117. http://dx.doi.org/10.2747/0272-3638.33.8.1089

Copyright © 2012 by Bellwether Publishing, Ltd. All rights reserved.
1090 STANLEY ET AL.
and modern urbanism,4 we have drawn from research in several disciplines to construct an
open space typology relevant across urban history and to examine its implications.
Our project is guided by the notion that a long-term, transdisciplinary understanding
of the history of urbanism can provide valuable perspectives on modern cities while also
informing historical and archaeological study. An analysis of the configuration, use, and
social import of open spaces provides a counterbalance to an overemphasis on buildings
in urban research, although often architecture and open space are designed and used in
conjunction, as when merchants or domestic craftsmen utilize street space adjoining their
buildings. The current literature about open and public space from geography, planning,
and other disciplines provides a starting point, and, through the addition of archaeological
and historical data on premodern cities, we seek to transcend many urbanists’ preoccupa-
tion with 19th and 20th century Western history. Open space, as opposed to public space
(which may include enclosed institutional spaces), represents our conceptual conduit
between ancient and modern urbanism.
Open spaces are valued by theorists who relate them to the social, political, and physi-
cal health of urban residents and communities. Some argue that high-quality, pedestrian-
friendly neighborhood spaces can engender beneficial interpersonal connections (Jacobs,
1961; Whyte, 1980; Tibbalds, 1992). Others, taking cues from political theorists like
Habermas (1962), describe a spatial ideal of a “public sphere” where the functioning
of democracy is strengthened when urban space encourages exchange and understand-
ing among diverse subcultural groups (Carr et al., 1992; Sandercock, 1998; Madanipour,
2003). This public ideal is closely intertwined with controversial arguments emphasiz-
ing the “contact hypothesis,” that sociospatial contact between different ethnic and class
groups generates the healthy psychological, social, and political development of urban
citizens (Sennett, 1971, 1990; Hajer and Reijndorp, 2001; Ihlanfeldt and Scafini, 2002).
The accessibility of green open spaces has been ideologically linked with positive human
health outcomes, from the Garden City movement (Howard, 1898) to more recent dis-
courses concerning urban sustainability (Saunders, 2010) and medical health (De Vries et
al., 2003; Bedimo-Rung et al., 2005). Equitable access to public space, especially proxim-
ity to parks, is increasingly addressed as an environmental justice concern as well (Talen
and Anselin, 1998; Wolch et al., 2005). A broad, comparative perspective on urban history
confirms that open space has assumed a tremendous range of forms and functions, with a
variety of benefits for urban populations.
In analyzing our findings, we highlight a simple theoretical dialectic between “top-
down” and “bottom-up” forces that influence the forms and uses of urban open space.
Open spaces can be institutionally planned and play roles in statecraft, where they commu-
nicate hierarchical relationships through symbolic public display, but they can also emerge
through local initiatives of the general population and accommodate “grassroots” activi-
ties. Cities typically exist within complex societies such as states or empires, for which
scholars have turned increasing attention to the combined effects of central, elite interests
and those of other groups or individuals (e.g., for a theoretical stance, see Giddens, 1984;
4
The authors are members of the research project, “Urban Organization through the Ages: Neighborhoods, Open
Space, and Urban Life.” This project is part of a larger set of transdisciplinary research projects, based in the
School of Human Evolution and Social Change at Arizona State University, called “Late Lessons from Early
History.” For more information see http://cities.asu.edu/
URBAN OPEN SPACES IN HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE 1091
for an example, see Blanton and Fargher, 2008). The opposing poles represented by the
general population and central institutions (at multiple levels) provide a theoretical win-
dow into the construction and uses of urban open spaces that is broad enough to accommo-
date a transdisciplinary analysis. We emphasize that while open spaces are often planned
and controlled by states and lower-level governance institutions or influenced by voluntary
associations, they also provide critical venues for populations with limited means and little
private space to perform many social, economic, and cultural activities. Furthermore, some
open spaces can be appropriated by the general populace for political ends, sometimes
overturning their original symbolism in the process.
This paper begins with a review of historical and contemporary categorizations of open
and public space, followed by a presentation of a typology oriented toward the compari-
son of ancient and modern cities across the Western and non-Western world. We select
examples spanning human history that particularly highlight the interplay between broad
generative processes and state or municipal actions. Our focus is open space within cities,
but there is often an unclear transition between urban and rural, and in some instances we
note the influence of nearby peri-urban spaces as well. We conclude with the fundamental
observation that open spaces, critical for all urban groups, allow a unique historical per-
spective on urbanism not captured by a singular focus on buildings or political economies.
CRITICAL AND HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVES ON URBAN OPEN SPACE
Open space is often discussed under the rubric of public space because many modern
open spaces are freely accessible, but public space includes some roofed space as well,
such as civic institutions or religious buildings. Carr et al. (1992) define public space as
“open, publicly accessible places” that facilitate the popular activities necessary for com-
munity building. Some social scientists have emphasized a more critical perspective on
the privatization and management of public space. Smith and Low (2006) focus on com-
modification and class-based exclusion, arguing that “it is impossible to conceive of public
space today outside the social generalization of private space and its full development as
a product of modern capitalist society.” More neutrally concentrating on management,
Carmona et al. (2008, p. 5) find that “public space (narrowly defined) relates to all those
parts of the built and natural environment where the public has free access. It encompasses:
all the streets, squares and other rights of way … the open spaces and parks; and the ‘pub-
lic/private’ spaces where public access is unrestricted.” Although public access is common
for many types of open spaces, open space does not automatically imply public access.
Although many theorists propose causal effects between open space and sociopolitical
outcomes, disciplines such as urban planning, architecture, and archaeology often confine
analysis to the form and function of urban space—a simpler perspective we adopt to rec-
oncile the extreme temporal and spatial scales of our study. For example, Al-Hagla (2008)
classifies open space by physical form, defining “green space” as vegetated land and “grey
space” as hard-surfaced (e.g., paved or packed dirt). This contrast relates to a number of
current trends in planning and design. “New urbanist” planning employs the “transect”
concept to suggest proportions of green and grey space relative to a progressive scale of
built density (Duany et al., 2010), while the emergent notion of “landscape urbanism,”
rejecting formulaic design, uses open green/grey spaces to contextualize urbanism through
the display of ecological infrastructures (Waldheim, 2006). “Ecovillages” designed from
1092 STANLEY ET AL.
sustainability principles relate to both of these planning trends and emphasize a balance
between dense architecture and open space that supports local food production, biodiverse
preserves, and communal space (Newman and Jennings, 2008). We employ the green/grey
space contrast to categorize open spaces, both to aid our comparative project as well as to
contribute a historical perspective to these normative debates.
For historians of urban open space (e.g., Crouch, 1981; Carr et al., 1992; Madanipour,
2003; Carmona et al., 2008), the correspondence between ancient Greek urban spaces and
democratic practice often represents the starting point, as the Greek agora has become a
symbol of the public sphere in modern literature. Roman-planned forums and religious
plazas represent other commonly cited ancient spaces (Ward-Perkins, 1974; Wycherley,
1976; Owens, 1991). Historical narratives often abruptly jump from these classical set-
tings to medieval Europe, where plazas, usually paired with Christian churches, hosted a
wide variety of socioeconomic and recreational functions (Zucker, 1959; Carr et al., 1992;
Carmona et al., 2008). As the Renaissance and Enlightenment increasingly emphasized
secular and private values, urban open spaces reflected this shift. Urban squares planned
exclusively for surrounding residential use appeared in certain areas, such as the Place des
Vosges in Paris, the Bloomsbury squares in London, and downtown areas of Philadelphia
and Savannah (Crouch, 1981; Carr et al., 1992; Carmona et al., 2008). Dedicated urban
parks, as specialized recreational space, first proliferated in the 19th century (Crouch,
1981; Cranz, 1982; Carr et al., 1992). With the notable exception of Madanipour (2003),
with his attention to urban space in ancient Chinese, Iranian, and Islamic cities, historical
narratives framing current debates about open and public space usually are confined to the
trajectory from Mediterranean antiquity to modern Western cities. Our paper attempts to
widen contemporary perspectives by mobilizing a greater wealth of examples.
The first attempts to formulate open space typologies in modern urban studies concen-
trated on morphology, as have approaches in archaeology (e.g,, Moore, 1996; Cavanagh,
2002). Sitte (1889) famously classified and designed urban squares, and Zucker (1959)
expanded this effort, delineating five types: closed, dominated, nuclear, grouped, and
amorphous. Krier (1979) consigned all urban open space to two types—the street and
the square—and cross-referenced them with basic geometric shapes. Other strictly
functional approaches emerged thereafter, such as Carr et al.’s (1992) delineation of 11
functional types of city space and Gehl and Gemzoe’s (2001) five categories of urban
plazas. Carmona’s (2010a, 2010b) detailed review also addresses morphological concepts.
Carmona (2010b) reviews typological approaches arising from disciplines such as sociol-
ogy and political science, which diverge from the design literature to focus on the relation
between urban spaces and social relationships, cultural norms, class formation, and polit-
ical-economic power. Carmona concludes by presenting a public space typology intended
to reconcile these diverse perspectives in a single classificatory vision oriented around
issues of management and privatization. Twenty types of spaces are carved from four
categories—positive, negative, ambiguous, and private—representing continuums from
public to private and from form/function to sociocultural values. Carmona’s typology is
difficult to apply in multiple cultural contexts across history because of the proliferation of
types coupled with a particular interpretive agenda. For this reason, we employ a simpler
nominal typology and stress the interpenetration of categories and their variation across
sociospatial scales.
A HISTORICAL TYPOLOGY OF URBAN OPEN SPACE
Our typology is constructed around the conceptual tension between form and function.5
Archeologists tasked with reconstructing the past with extant physical data are predis-
posed to focus on form; modern urbanists, in contrast, emphasize the purposes and uses
of open spaces to explore the complexities of urban experience. In a comparative project
it is tempting to privilege form as a more objective way to classify and compare spaces.
Yet function is unavoidable if we wish to employ ancient data to better understand modern
cities; furthermore, for some open spaces (such as food production areas), it is impossible
to fully divorce function and form. Thus our types represent a mix of form and function,
including both functionally specific and multi-purpose categories.
Our typology (Fig. 1) delineates seven major types of open space: (1) food production
areas; (2) parks and gardens; (3) recreational space; (4) plazas; (5) streets; (6) transport
facilities; and (7) incidental space. Open spaces within each are further categorized by a
spatial scale continuum: city-wide, intermediate, and individual building. By city scale we
refer to open spaces associated with major institutions that are nationally or municipally
symbolic or oriented to large segments of the population. The intermediate scale refers
to spaces that serve multiple residences in a more localized portion of the city, such as
a district or neighborhood. Given the large variety across urban places compared in this
paper and the methodological issues associated with classifying neighborhoods defined by
multiple variables (Reibel, 2011), the intermediate scale described here is intended to be
flexible in terms of areal extent. Authors describing localized city areas have used a rough
distinction between smaller neighborhoods and larger encompassing districts in both pre-
modern (Smith, 2010) and modern (Jacobs, 1961) contexts without establishing uniform
populations or areal extents for either. Some facilities that provide associated open space,
such as schools and religious buildings, recur across cities to serve neighborhoods or dis-
tricts at different scales, helping to define them in the process. Finally, at the smallest scale
individual buildings or residences may have open space for occupants, such as a yard or
enclosed courtyard. Actions and regulation (formal and informal) can initiate at varied
levels across the scale continuum.
The typology accommodates a third dimension of analysis (indicated by a sliding scale
across the categories) oriented around Al-Hagla’s (2008) differentiation between “green
space” and “grey space.” In Al-Hagla’s scheme (2008, p. 164), green space represents “a
subset of open space, consisting of any vegetated land or structure, water, or geological
feature within urban areas,” and grey space refers to more civic-oriented spaces such as
“urban squares, market places and other paved or hard landscaped areas.” This distinction
applies across the seven types of open space and represents an important variable in plan-
ning research as well as urban ecology and human-environmental relations (Jenerette et
al., 2011).
5
The issue of classifying urban spaces by form and by function relates to long-standing themes in geography that
we do not have space to fully explore. Our approach has roots in early work on the classification of regions (e.g.,
Grigg, 1965). Form-based categories of open space can be seen as analogous to regions defined from homoge-
neous or uniform characteristics, whereas function-based categories are analogous to functional or nodal regions
(Richardson, 1979, pp. 19–22).
1094 STANLEY ET AL.
Fig. 1. A transdisciplinary typology of urban open spaces spanning ancient and modern history.
The spatial scale of any specific open space is clearly related to its size, function, and
urban context, but it is also defined here in terms of cultural importance; for example,
although the gardens around a particular shrine may be small in size, they may be per-
tinent at the city scale due to the society-wide importance of the sponsoring institution.
Likewise, private elite gardens associated with palatial residences may be extremely large,
but only serve one family and function at the building scale. The size and social implica-
tions of urban open spaces constitute a fluid continuum between large and small, best
described in the historical context of specific cities and cultures. Our typology is limited
as an analytical distinction because many places represent a mix of open space types and
are culturally valued for their multi-purpose nature. For example, New York City’s Central
Park would seem to match neatly with the Parks and Gardens category at the city-wide
scale. Upon closer examination, Central Park is home to a wide diversity of spaces: insti-
tutionally landscaped gardens, recreational ball fields and courts, streets used for trans-
portation and recreation, semi-wild forested areas, parking lots, grey space plazas, and
marginalized space alongside fences. Even small-scale open spaces like house yards can
represent different typological categories at once because they can be utilized for food
production, recreation, or garden landscape display.
Our typology—organized by the form, function, scale, and land cover of open spaces—
is intended as a versatile framework for making broad comparisons across extremely
diverse time periods, spatial scales, and human cultures. Although we recognize that there
are many potential ways to structure such a typology, such as privileging scale, land cover,
or public accessibility over form/function–based types, we believe this structure provides
the most clarity and flexibility in historical perspective. We offer the typology both to
encourage and improve comparative urban scholarship as well as contextualize future
urban planning. Much of the theoretical work on the social significance of open spaces
suffers from a lack of specificity on the spatial configurations, scale, and functions of dif-
ferent kinds of urban spaces and is confined to a narrow historical framework. These limi-
tations characterize the literature outlined above, as well as work on contentious politics
(Sewell, 2001; Tilly and Tarrow, 2006) and research on cooperation, governance, and pub-
lic display (Bowles and Gintis, 2002). Our scheme is intended not as a rigid framework to
be imposed on urban data, but rather as a tool for comparative research that can help gener-
ate insights about urban social dynamics. The remainder of the paper elaborates upon our
open space typology by providing historical examples for each type—morphological cases
that represent “illustrative comparisons” across urban contexts (Conzen et al., 2012)—and
relating them to the top-down and bottom-up processes that shape their form and func-
tions. By comparing urban spaces among civilizations, it is our intention to both buttress
and challenge our categories.
Food Production Areas
Food production areas are green spaces utilized predominantly for crops and livestock.
Such areas can be important for their subsistence contributions and condiments. This
seemingly straightforward category blends with the next one, parks and gardens, where
a mix of comestibles and aesthetic plantings are common in antiquity and many mod-
ern houselots (e.g., Ming China, Clunas, 1996; houselots, Kimber, 1973; WinklerPrins
and de Suza, 2005; Alayon-Gamboa and Gurri-García, 2008). Nevertheless, the divergent
functions and origins of food production areas warrant a separate category.
City level. In 19th and 20th century North American cities, patterns of “leapfrog devel-
opment,” driven by rapid urban growth, often create unplanned mosaics of older farm-
land and newer residential developments within metropolitan boundaries (Boone and
Modarres, 2006). This low-density, mixed green and grey space is often referred to as
peri-urban (Simon, 2008). Comparative urban analysis of “fringe belts,” scattered open
spaces produced by sequential periods of urban growth, shows that peri-urban zones often
represent a mix of food production, institutional garden, transport, and incidental spaces
1096 STANLEY ET AL.
(Conzen et al., 2012). Some premodern cities contained major food production zones. Pri-
vate orchards within city walls provided food for residents in Arab-Islamic cities (Bianca,
2000), and the walls of Tang-period Chang’an enclosed large areas of food production
(Seo, 1986). From early modern England to colonial New England, town commons have
provided large communal green spaces specifically designated for livestock, horticulture,
and foraging (Bowden et al., 2009).
Intermediate level. At the scale of the urban neighborhood, community gardens are
common in many contemporary cities (Carr et al., 1992). Newer movements focused on
urban sustainability, local farming, and organic foods have advocated the continued expan-
sion of community gardens. In lower-income neighborhoods in developing countries, such
as in Nairobi, local food production at the intermediate and residential scales often rep-
resents a critical addition to household income and nutrition rather than an ideological
pursuit (Freeman, 1991; Castillo, 2003), a situation that may have arisen in ancient low-
density urbanism as well (e.g., Stark and Ossa, 2007; Fletcher, 2009).
Urban farms in premodern low-density tropical cities can be seen as a special case of
intermediate-level food production. Housing in lowland Maya cities, for example, was
dispersed in spatial clusters, with considerable open area between and within the clusters.
Chemical analyses of soils have shown that this land was cultivated (Isendahl and Smith,
2012). These urban fields were of considerable size and difficult to match up with indi-
vidual houses, but they probably pertained to the residents of the neighborhood clusters.
A similar pattern may have characterized ancient Angkor and other early tropical cities as
well (Fletcher, 2009).
Residence level. In modern Western cities, household gardens often have been replaced
by aesthetic foliage, recreational space, or built structures because extensive food distribu-
tion systems have developed around fossil fuel–driven capitalist economies. Yet vegetable
gardens intended to supplement the urban food supply have been plentiful in times of
crisis, such as in the 1890s and 1930s, and they assumed the famous moniker of “victory
gardens” during World War II (Carr et al., 1992).
Throughout history, household food production has been a critical component of
urban life. For example, Kerala, India, is home to a 4,000-year-old tradition in which
many individual households maintain one-acre backyard gardens, which has created a
distinctly sprawled semi-urban area characterized by decentralized agricultural produc-
tion (Chandrashekara and Sankar, 2008). Another example derives from 1st century C.E.
Pompeii, where nearly every house, regardless of type or size, had an open area with a
kitchen garden or fruit trees to supply family needs (Jashemski, 2008). House plots in late
medieval Chester, England similarly supported vegetable growing, fruit orchards, and live-
stock (Laughton, 2008). Archaeologists are now refining methods to identify house-level
gardens, even at lowland tropical sites with poor architectural preservation (Killion et al.,
1989; Smyth et al., 1995).
General observations. From a broad comparative perspective, urban agriculture is not
new, and city life divorced from urban food production is a recent development. Many
urban residents throughout history maintained small-scale food plots, and in some cases
the extent of urban cultivation was extensive. Premodern, low-density tropical cities pro-
vide an extreme example, in which large expanses of land were dedicated to the production
of food and other useful crops. Peri-urban areas are often active in food production and
accessible via day trips, in some cases no farther than some urban installations across the
city, so this topic is particularly sensitive to the urban context.
Traditionally, most urban agriculture has been carried out by individual families, orga-
nized on either a household or neighborhood level. We have found no examples in which
civic authorities organized urban agriculture on a large scale, although it is possible that
this happened in Chang’an because much of the city’s spatial organization was dictated by
officials (Seo, 1986). Likely more common are cases in which governmental authorities
designated areas that could be used for cultivation by individuals and families, a pattern
found in many contemporary western cities. Today, small-scale urban farming in some
cities represents a grassroots effort to oppose large industrial farming practices, and some
community garden groups appropriate vacant private land. The local genesis of most urban
agriculture contrasts strongly with the institutional influences on the next category, parks
and gardens.
Parks and Gardens
Parks and gardens are defined as partly landscaped, mostly green areas intended
for social and recreational activities as well as aesthetic or display purposes, although
historically these functions have been intertwined with food production. Parks are usu-
ally larger than gardens and entail less management of plants, but usage of these terms
varies by country. While some parks and gardens are highly specialized and institutionally
designed for specific cultural functions, others have operated as multi-purpose spaces of
social interaction, recreation, and ritual.
City level. Gardens, parks, and landscaped grounds surrounding central state institu-
tions have been significant sources of open space in urban history, ranging from secluded,
even sacred spaces to fully public spaces serving as central points of social interaction and
recreation. In central Tokyo, the Imperial Palace features ornate gardens, intended as repre-
sentations of religious metaphysics, which historically remained inaccessible to the public
(Trancik, 1986). Only after Japan’s Meiji Restoration did gardens become available to the
public and include other functions, such as recreation (Brosseau, 2008). A similar transfor-
mation occurred during the European colonization of China, where institutional gardens
slowly became more publicly accessible after nearly 2,000 years of traditional private or
semi-public use (Hammond, 2008; Métailié, 2008). In fact, there are many instances in
which public parks at the city scale have been established when state authorities assumed
control of large estates formerly occupied by elites or royals (Carr et al., 1992); Mexico
City’s Chapultepec Park and Berlin’s Tiergarten represent two of many examples.
In ancient cities like Nimrud, Khorsabad, and Nineveh, royal gardens were famed and
established a long-lived tradition of garden design for royal and other gardens (Stronach,
1990; Foster, 2004). Marrakech in Morocco was actively planned around garden spaces
and for centuries maintained irrigation infrastructure to supply orchards, parks, and temple
gardens, many of which were publicly accessible (Faiz, 2008). In 19th century Nigeria,
Yoruba planning usually placed the palace of the Oba (king) in a central urban location and
included ample green space for public use (Mabogunje, 1968).
Large urban cemeteries also function as city-scale green space and are common in
American cities, such as Woodlawn Cemetery in Brooklyn, as well as ancient cities. A
large Viking cemetery site in Birka, Sweden, contains over 1600 graves and burial mounds
1098 STANLEY ET AL.
close to the island settlement (Ambrosiani and Clarke, 1988), while the peri-urban roads
leading away from Roman cities were lined with tombs, some surrounded by lush gardens
(Farrar, 1998; Jashemski, 2008).
Intermediate level. In many cities, smaller parks and gardens at the neighborhood scale
have surrounded religious buildings or civic institutions. In predominantly Christian cities
of Europe and North America, neighborhood churches often have a mix of cemetery and
garden space surrounding the building, such as Trinity Chapel in Manhattan. In Islamic
cities, mosques often provide courtyard space to accommodate peak assemblies (Revault,
1983). Government-designated neighborhood parks, ubiquitous in many modern cities, are
a relatively recent phenomenon in world history. Specialized parks first became common
in 19th-century North American and European cities due to reformist movements aimed
at improving the cultural refinement or physical health of city residents (Carr et al., 1992).
Park planning has occasionally been intended to offer specific opportunities for social
interactions. Institutional gardens in 17th- and 18th-century Paris became places where
upper-class men and women could interact without the usual formality (Conan, 2008);
parks established in 19th-century Birmingham, England, were conceived as spaces for
contact across social divisions, where working classes could learn “civility” (Bramwell,
1991).
Residence level. The degree of emphasis on green space associated with residences
is quite variable among societies, but kitchen gardens providing foods, condiments, and
medicines have a long history (Cooper, 1983). Despite the emphasis on gardens in ancient
Rome and the idealization of villa life and gardens in Renaissance Italy, European urban-
ization led to crowding, and gardens attached to residences were sometimes supplanted
by new residential units (Garrioch, 1986). In the British Victorian era, increasing cultural
preferences for private domestic spaces reversed this trend and generated more residential
garden space. Autonomous townhouses with green yards began to replace tenement apart-
ments, and “outdoor life was ceasing to be a social life and disappearing from view behind
the garden hedge or the yard walls” (Daunton 1983, p. 218). Today, fringe development in
some sprawling urban areas is planned to include generous private household yards. Yet
the link between new suburban construction and expanding provision of private greens-
pace is by no means ubiquitous; cities like Phoenix, for example, have seen reductions
in the sizes of suburban lots and residential open space in new construction on the urban
fringe, due to market demand for bigger houses and limits on using water to support green
landscaping (Gober, 2006).
When competitive garden aesthetic display and multifaceted garden activities were
common, such as in Renaissance Italy or Ming China, a combination of emulation and
cultural values led to gardens associated with residences up and down the social hierarchy
(Coffin, 1979; Smith, 1992; Clunas, 1996). As noted previously, in low-density cities such
as Angkor (Evans et al., 2007) or in lowland Maya and Gulf cities (Stark and Ossa, 2007)
where open space separated residences, kitchen gardens and sometimes infields could be
close to houses.
General observations. Today, large urban parks and gardens originate primarily from
municipal or state planning and associated zoning laws, or from the initiative of institu-
tions with large landholdings, such as churches, schools, and corporations, covering a
range of public, semi-public, and private settings. Parks and gardens in many cultural con-
texts have been constructed as sites of aesthetic reflection or for specific social practices,
and the intentionality inherent in these uses tends to require such “top-down” planning. In
ancient states, large gardens and parks were usually royal or elite installations and had only
sporadic or selective public access (e.g., to upper classes). In recent centuries, elite estates
have often been appropriated by authorities and converted to public use. The transition of
some parks and gardens in imperial Rome to public access (Farrar, 1998; Jashemski, 2008)
reveals that this process has extensive time depth. In both ancient and modern times, house
yards or courtyards can provide opportunities for the general population to create and use
garden spaces for their own purposes, but on a modest scale reflecting the economic means
of inhabitants. In wealthy capitalist economies, the provision (or lack) of residence-level
garden space is often dictated by market forces, and the degree to which this trend accu-
rately reflects popular preferences is debatable.
Recreational Space
Recreational space involves functionally specialized green and grey spaces designed or
used for leisure activities, such as sports or exercise. In many cases, spaces defined solely
in terms of recreation are modern in origin.
City level. The planning of urban greenbelts, often semi-wild, represents one of the
largest scales of recreational space. In the city of Chandigarh, India, built upon vacant
agricultural land in the 1950s to serve as the Punjab state capital, almost 3,000 acres of
greenbelt surrounding the city were reserved (D’Souza, 1968). In the Soviet Union, city
planners designing large industrial cities, virtually from scratch, often established green-
belts, both for recreation and as buffers between residential and industrial zones. Soviet
cities such as Magnitogorsk, Novosibirsk, and Volgograd were all designed with industrial
greenbelts (French and Hamilton, 1979; Bernhardt, 2005). Greenbelt and semi-wild park
planning was also employed in certain American cities in the 19th and 20th century, some-
times along abandoned rail corridors. The master plan for Chicago designed by Daniel
Burnham called for a massive greenbelt surrounding the city that was only partially com-
pleted (Burnham and Bennett, 1909). Beaches in many world cities represent a particular
type of recreational open space.
Stadiums utilized for the public viewing of ceremonial, sporting, or other cultural events
are common to various historical urban cultures. Such spaces are delineated separately
from parks or large formal plazas because they are functionally specialized for recreation
and viewing. For example, coliseums and theaters in the Roman Empire were important
cultural and political spaces (MacDonald, 1986). Mesoamerican ball courts combined
sport, symbolic, and ritual dimensions (Scarborough and Wilcox, 1991). In the 20th cen-
tury, cities all over the world have constructed specialized stadia to host sports, music, and
conventions. Today, these spaces include not only stadium seating and field space, but also
expanses of parking used not only for vehicles but also other socioeconomic activities,
such as “tailgating,” farmers’ markets, fairs, and swap meets.
Intermediate level. In most historical and ancient cases, recreation for the general popu-
lation has been conducted in multi-purpose neighborhood places, such as streets, plazas,
and empty lots. We have located little information on special recreational spaces at the
neighborhood level in ancient cities, although some Mesoamerican cities have multiple
ball courts that suggest neighborhood functions (e.g., for Cantona, García Cook, 2003).
1100 STANLEY ET AL.
Girouard (1985) notes that many European cities in the Middle Ages had informal, periph-
eral open spaces commonly used for recreation.
In Western cities during the late 19th and 20th centuries, the Garden City reform move-
ment influenced a Progressive Era effort to provide smaller, specialized recreational space
at the neighborhood level. First advocated under the guise of encouraging healthy, moral
behavior in children, playground spaces proliferated in American cities by the 20th cen-
tury (Abercrombie, 1981). New types of recreational space arose in the 20th century, like
“adventure playgrounds” emerging from Sweden and adopted in many cities (Andersson,
2008). Despite their top-down origins, contemporary Western municipal park spaces are
increasingly supported financially by local nonprofit organizations, as neoliberal reforms
to urban political economies reduce city recreation budgets. As a result, parks in upper-
income areas are sometimes maintained to a higher standard than those in lower-income
areas (Rosenzweig and Blackmar, 1992; Joassart-Marcelli et al., 2011).
Residence level. Courtyards (in the next section) and residential gardens (preceding
section) tend to be multi-purpose spaces that accommodate family recreation. Special-
ized recreational open space at the residence level is generally confined to upper-class
properties, especially in historical and ancient times, where some gardens accommodated
theatricals, polo, or archery (e.g., in China, Smith, 1992; in Iran, Alemi, 2007) and grounds
at some elite villas contained racetracks (Coffin, 1991). In modern cities, it is not uncom-
mon to find upper-class houses with swimming pools, graded grass lawns, and other rec-
reational facilities. In the United States, backyard lawns and patios have been increasingly
emphasized in suburban settings, to the detriment of front yard space, because the back-
yard is culturally elevated as the primary recreational space for families (Ford, 2000).
General observations. Dedicated recreational spaces with wide access are quite recent
urban phenomena emerging from sociopolitical responses to the urban problems of the
industrial era. Large-scale recreational spaces tend to be top-down products sponsored by
government, wealthy patrons, and public-private partnerships, due to the associated costs
and land requirements. Institutional control of recreational space is especially prevalent
when activities require special facilities and maintenance, such as stadia and golf courses,
and these requirements may translate into reduced accessibility across socioeconomic
classes or uneven quality of facilities. Specialized recreational spaces at the intermediate
and residence levels are also recent phenomena (except in the case of royals and urban
elites), despite the fact that they are now amenities supported by municipal institutions in
most developed countries. In contrast, less specialized recreation is common throughout
urban history, conducted in a variety of city spaces (including most of our typological
categories), a process that is “bottom-up” by nature.
Plazas
Plazas are defined as intentionally established open space framed by buildings on most
sides and usually hard surfaced. Plazas can host a diversity of civic activities and tend to be
multi-purpose. At the city and intermediate levels they normally are open to public access.
City level. Large plazas, often planned by government or religious authorities, have
been common in a wide variety of urban contexts through history. Such plazas are distinc-
tive at the city scale due to their centralized position, large size, and association with major
civic or religious buildings, and they play a critical political and symbolic role. These
spaces typically are used for multiple purposes, such as cultural events, military assembly,
local trade, and social interaction.
For example, the central urban plaza in Ottoman Isfahan was a highly diverse space in
the 16th century and remained the largest plaza in the world until the 20th century. Ringed
by religious, governmental, and educational buildings and home to large markets and rec-
reational activities, the plaza today hosts a similar mix of functions and is occasionally
used for political expression (Madanipour, 2003). In 17th- and 18th-century France, grand
places royales intended to symbolically glorify the king were constructed or proposed in
over 25 French cities (Cleary, 1999). In the era of European colonization, large monumen-
tal plazas were often planned in conjunction with political and military goals. During the
19th-century French colonization of Algiers, for example, buildings were demolished for a
wide plaza close to the harbor for the purposes of military assembly and political symbol-
ism (Çelik, 1997). Plazas in Latin American cities were influenced as much by indigenous
as by colonial traditions. This “central square of space, ringed by the cathedral, adminis-
tration buildings, arsenal and customs house, and later the residences of the social elite,
represented the double hierarchy of church and state” (Low, 1993, p. 76).
Twentieth-century states have continued planning city-level plazas with political sym-
bolism. Large formal plazas were common features of Soviet cities from Eastern Europe
to Central Asia. Plazas like Red Square in Moscow became important symbols of the
socialist state and were often home to political gatherings and propaganda events (Castillo,
1994). In modern Chinese cities, undergoing rapid redevelopment by state authorities, the
construction of monumental plazas continues to represent state power (Ma and Wu, 2005).
This sort of autocratic state planning is common throughout Chinese history, as many his-
toric dynasties used urban space to project symbolic political order (Abramson, 2007)—a
function found in many ancient contexts.
In the absence of textual data on the actual uses of civic plazas, archaeologists have
by necessity concentrated on formal attributes, such as size and associated architecture,
to infer uses and significance. Moore (1996) analyzed city-level plazas at archaeological
sites on the coast of Peru using five variables. Two relate to the position and occurrence of
plazas within a settlement—centrality and ubiquity (the occurrence of plaza types at differ-
ent spatial scales)—whereas three variables concern the plazas themselves—permanence
(ephemeral to multi-generational), scale or size, and visibility. These plazas were settings
for periodic gatherings to witness ceremonies and other events carried out on large adja-
cent platforms.
Formal plazas or large courtyards within or adjacent to royal palaces form a distinctive
subcategory of city-level plazas in some pre-modern cities. These features are histori-
cally documented for palaces in Bali (Geertz, 1980) and various Yoruba cities (Ojo, 1966).
Cavanagh (2002) employs a similar approach to Moore’s to reconstruct the activities that
took place in palace courtyards of Mycenaean towns. By studying eight physical and spa-
tial attributes (access, size, orientation, focus, perspective, visibility, appointment, and
frontage), Cavanagh shows that these spaces were used for political assemblies, including
formal occasions in which the ruler met subjects.
Intermediate level. Intermediate-scale plazas are qualitatively different because of their
smaller scale, relative abundance, and more localized uses. Neighborhood plazas are quite
common in a variety of cultures, but relative sizes and positions are contextually different
in each case. Local European plazas, shaped by both generative and state-driven processes
1102 STANLEY ET AL.
in the medieval and Renaissance eras, represent some of the most commonly cited open
spaces. In 16th- and 17th-century London, state authorities often cleared and redeveloped
neighborhoods to include open public squares (Harding, 2004). In 15th-century Florence,
the prevalence of smaller neighborhood plazas paired with churches—estimated at over
50—indicates both a lack of formal state planning and their importance for the social, cul-
tural, and economic life of Florence’s neighborhood parishes (Weissman, 1982). Neigh-
borhoods in Bhaktapur, Nepal, are similarly oriented around plazas, spaces that in history
have simultaneously supported food and craft production, markets, communal wells, and
social interaction (Levy, 1990). In urban and rural areas of Latin America, the ubiquitous
neighborhood plaza is intertwined with the sociocultural structure of urban society (Low,
1993).
Twentieth-century residential planning ideals, deployed in different ways across the
world, significantly influenced the current provision and nature of neighborhood plazas.
In the Soviet Union, the microraion model of new community development was intended
to provide a full community unit—including block apartment housing, services, and rec-
reation—and most included generous amounts of parks and plazas (French and Hamilton,
1979). Soviet authorities exported this modernist, socialist model to client countries in
Europe and Asia, such as Vietnam. In a different context, the planned city of Chandigarh,
India—created in the 1950s by Le Corbusier as the new capital of Punjab—also included
modernist plazas framed by concrete-based apartment blocks (Shaw, 2009). The city was
planned in 29 neighborhood sectors, some of which feature a centrally planned grey space
around which apartments and services are oriented (D’Souza, 1968).
Neighborhood level plazas are not commonly identified in ancient cities, likely reflect-
ing the limitations of mapping entire cities in detail. One example might be the plazas
associated with three-temple groups at Teotihuacan, Mexico (Cowgill et al., 1984).
Residence level. Courtyards are the smallest plazas, normally private or semi-private
areas for residents. Arab-Islamic urban residences often conformed to courtyard-based
planning (Bianca, 2000). Such cities exhibit a nested structure of private domestic spaces,
in which residential culs-de-sac, family compounds, and individual houses all represent
incrementally more segregated and private spaces. In tandem with certain aspects of
Islamic and Arab cultures, these spaces tend to be segregated by ethnicity, clan, and gen-
der to ensure privacy, and many Arab-Islamic homes are designed around courtyards fully
shielded from public view.
In European and Western cities, courtyards also have played a significant role in
social life, although in these contexts the courtyard is a much more “public” zone. In
18th-century Paris, rapid urban growth led many property owners to build residential
units in house yards, and often small courtyard spaces were carved out to provide hous-
ing access. These courtyards, open to the street, were the site of daily social interaction
between residents and other citizens (Garrioch, 1986). By the middle of the 19th century,
large tenement apartment buildings in cities such as Birmingham, New York, and Sydney
included planned courtyard entries. These shared spaces, again semi-public but informally
“defended” by local residents, were important for tenement residents with little home
space and few domestic amenities. In Birmingham, communal toilets, water supply, trash
deposits, and the production of goods all co-existed in such courtyard spaces; not surpris-
ingly, these zones engendered dense social networks among residents (Bramwell, 1991).
In West African cities such as Lagos, some residential districts have been constructed
as superblocks with large courtyards behind apartment structures (Mabogunje, 1968). In
informal settlements surrounding Latin American cities, courtyard spaces are sometimes
reserved by residents. For example, in an informal Mixtec neighborhood in Mexico City,
migrants clustered according to common village origins and adapted rural building styles
to the new urban context. This style, traditionally featuring a central patio surrounded by
one family’s residential compound, was transformed to include central courtyards sur-
rounded by the homes of multiple families (Butterworth, 1980). Similar plazas in informal
settlements have been observed elsewhere, such as Lima (Lloyd, 1979).
Houses arranged around a common patio represent a recurrent residential pattern in
pre-modern cities. In the so-called “Mediterranean-style” house, found from ancient
Mesopotamia to the Incas of Peru, the patio is completely enclosed by the residence
(Hyslop, 1990; Bergmann, 2007). Aztec and Maya cities had a variant in which individual
house structures surrounded a small patio, which could be easily entered from the outside
between the structures (Isendahl and Smith, 2012).
General observations. Many large plazas reflect state or municipal investments with
marked political or civic symbolism and fulfill state functions such as commemorative
events and proclamations. Yet often these spaces are appropriated by ordinary citizens
for their own purposes of trade, recreation, interaction, and political mobilization (acts
variously supported, tolerated, or suppressed by authorities). At the other end of the scale,
residential and neighborhood plazas or courtyards are flexible space for the ordinary popu-
lation, and some are produced and reproduced through local initiative. For the numerous
urban poor, plazas and courtyards offer arenas for activities and interactions that are inhib-
ited by scant private space. The greater frequency of plazas compared to parks and gardens
in many cities makes plazas and streets, discussed next, critical socioeconomic resources
for urban inhabitants.
Streets
Among the earliest written descriptions of cities, cuneiform inscriptions from Babylonian
cities mention three kinds of streets: (1) “broad street, way of the gods and king,” (2) “nar-
row street, way of the people,” and (3) “blind alley” (Baker, 2009, p. 95). This ancient
three-part classification matches our three urban scales, suggesting continuity in the signifi-
cance of streets from the earliest cities to the present. In ancient as in modern cities, streets
functioned as pedestrian and vehicular corridors as well as crucial locales of social interac-
tion, political demonstration, ritual, recreation, economic production, and trade.
City level. A wealth of archaeological examples shows the planning of monumental
boulevards for symbolic meaning, political display, and economic activity. The Romans
constructed boulevards through the city for triumphal military parades, even though these
spaces were rarely used for other purposes (Favro, 1994). Chinese streets in Chang’an, dur-
ing the transition from the Tang (618–906 AD) to the Song period, morphed from highly
regulated space in which most activities were prohibited to informally regulated places
allowing diverse activities, including commerce (Heng, 1994). Teotihuacan in Mexico had
a long north-south open axis (today named “Street of the Dead”) lined by major buildings
and segmented by low, stepped, wall-like platforms. At the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan,
key east-west avenues extended from the central precinct (Calnek, 1976, 2003). Roads
1104 STANLEY ET AL.
at Xochicalco, Morelos, continued into the countryside to project state dominance even
though human porters did not require them for transport (Hirth, 2003).
Modern monumental boulevards indicate the durability of this urban form through-
out human history. In Haussmann’s mid-19th century Parisian redevelopment, many new,
straight boulevards were constructed through previously dense, twisting neighborhoods
dating to the medieval era (Vidler, 1978). Haussmann’s reforms in Paris were ostensibly
guided by traffic and sanitary concerns, but it has become clear that this redevelopment
had political and commercial motives as well (Kostof, 1994; Harvey, 2006). By breaking
up dead-end streets considered breeding grounds of grassroots political resistance, the
government was better able to mobilize security forces and patrol lower-income neigh-
borhoods—an example of a state effort to improve “legibility” and government order
(Scott, 1998). Many Soviet bloc cities featured monumental boulevards which, alongside
state-planned plazas and buildings, projected government power (French and Hamilton,
1979; Bernhardt, 2005)—for example, the 1930s rehabilitation of Moscow’s Gorki Street
(Castillo, 1994). Modern Chinese cities have continued the trend towards monumental
boulevards in the intensive redevelopment of most urban cores (Abramson, 2007).
Intermediate level. In many historical contexts, secondary streets have been the cultural
and functional heart of urban open space, home to a wide diversity of uses. In “Arab-
Islamic” cities, generally lacking in other open public spaces, primary streets functioned
as critical transportation corridors between extra-mural trading plazas and urban store-
fronts as well as marketplaces (Bianca, 2000). Under the Islamic tradition of generative
building, streets can become progressively narrower over time; Cairo’s Bayn al-Qasrayn,
for example, began as a notable plaza in the 11th century but shrank to street width due
to political manipulation and the consistent encroachment of residential buildings and
shops (AlSayyad, 1994). In medieval European cities, streets often represented extensions
of working households and became sites of economic production, sales, play, and social
interaction (Mumford, 1961; Schlumbohm, 1980).
Beginning in the 19th century, Western urban planners sought to establish order by
imposing open, grid-like streets in dense urban zones or in newly planned districts, a
phenomenon culminating in the modernist emphasis on streets as monofunctional vehicu-
lar corridors, backed by standardized codes (Trancik, 1986; Southworth and Ben-Joseph,
1997). Informal settlements in modern developing countries, representing much of the
world’s newly created urban space, have trended in the opposite direction—the lack of
planned open space forces transportation to share streets with a wide variety of social,
recreational, and economic activities (Habitat, 1982). Housing in many ancient cities was
probably constructed informally (Smith, 2010), suggesting similar patterns in many but
not all pre-modern cities. Cantona, in Mexico, had a network of built streets and pas-
sageways, some converging on the main precinct but most serving neighborhoods (García
Cook, 2003). Aztec Tenochtitlan was honeycombed with canals and streets serving resi-
dences (Calnek, 2003).
Residence level. Alleys and pedestrian pathways differ from streets in their scale and
function. Alleys include all paths too small for large vehicular transportation or multi-
purpose commercial activity. In many contexts, alleyways become a sort of transition zone
between the private sphere of the household and the public sphere of the street, where
neighborhood interactions can occur on a more intimate social scale and access is dictated
by informal social norms (Madanipour, 2003). In other, more legalized contexts, alleys
between buildings can become fully private, gated spaces that become underused or mar-
ginalized (Trancik, 1986; Ford, 2000).
The nested hierarchy of streets and alleys in many Arab-Islamic cities provides an
example of these scalar differences. Whereas main streets tend to be critical transportation
and economic corridors, open to all ethnicities and clans, a successive array of smaller cul-
de-sac alleys leading to family compounds and individual households are progressively
restricted by gates and social surveillance, increasingly the sites of more intimate social
interaction within the same ethnicity or extended family (Abu-Lughod, 1987; Bianca,
2000). In Japanese cities, Nagaya lanes form short passageways, much like a shared drive-
way, leading to multiple small dwellings, although these spaces do not have the same
level of physical exclusion and social control as in Arab-Islamic cities (Shelton, 1999).
In contrast, American urban alleys—traditionally a product of planning doctrine popular
between the late 19th century and 1930—were conceived as corridors for transportation
access and waste management (Ford, 2000).
In Indonesian cities of the 19th and 20th century, a similar dichotomy between pub-
lic streets and semi-private alleys is manifest in a culturally distinct manner. Main thor-
oughfares lined with permanent storefronts and residences host a variety of economic,
cultural, and transportation uses, but intersecting paths leading to traditional kampong
behind the street frontage plunge visitors into a maze of narrow alleyways. Residents rely
on these spaces for work and social interaction; the spaces are managed according to both
state direction and informal governance. Significant cultural and class-based distinctions
between kampong residents and “streetsiders” are reflected in the urban geography of these
peculiar street patterns (Sullivan, 1980, 1992; Guinness, 2009). At prehispanic C antona,
elite walled residences had a passage or private alley to reach a street, but commoner com-
pounds had only a stair to reach adjacent passages (García Cook, 2003).
General observations. Boulevards, streets, and alleys in urban history reflect a range of
origins, from intensive state projects of development to passageways slowly carved out by
local initiative. Modern planning intended to accommodate fossil fuel–based vehicles has
drastically increased the functional specialization and top-down control of many streets
and boulevards, culminating in expressways that are completely inhospitable to pedestri-
ans. This drive towards transportation efficiency and increased city size represents a break
from the multi-purpose use of streets in most historical urban cultures. Clearly, technol-
ogy can transform the form and function of open spaces. Yet regardless of technological
level, streets have been historically critical sites of grassroots social and economic activity
for urban classes lacking much private enclosed space; recent functional specialization
threatens these resources. The historical dichotomy between institutional and “plebian”
planning is manifest in the newly developed, peri-urban areas of Western and Global South
cities: whereas wealthy suburban streets are meticulously planned for transport, based on
institutional safety codes, streets in informal settlements are often irregular, multi-purpose
spaces that do not accommodate automobiles.
Transport Facilities
Transportation areas represent spaces in which the transfer and distribution of goods is
conducted close to forms of transport. This is a specialized functional category, and these
1106 STANLEY ET AL.
areas vary based on the mode of transport. These spaces may include some marketplace
functions, but marketplaces and shops may exist separately in plazas or buildings.
City level. City-scale facilities today include airport, train, and bus station parking,
where shipped goods are transferred to vehicles for further distribution, or passengers
transfer themselves and their bags. Likewise, some cities have docks and associated park-
ing. The Mesopotamian city of Ur had two large harbors located within the city walls
that were undoubtedly areas of exchange as well (Woolley, 1963). In Middle Eastern and
Central Asian cities with Islamic influence, spaces of trade and unloading of wholesale
merchandise were common at select gates in city walls (Giese, 1979; Bianca, 2000). In
Ottoman Algiers, dock space near the harbor and open space outside the Bab Azoun Gate
were critical sites of economic transfer as well as spaces of diverse social interaction and
recreational meditation (Çelik, 1997; Clancy-Smith, 2009). Trading zones on the urban
fringe were also found outside the walls of medieval European cities (Mumford, 1961;
Laughton, 2008). The Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan had docks for canoes at varied loca-
tions in a web of urban waterways, including a location near the central precinct that may
have been used for the transfer of goods (Calnek, 1976, 2003).
Intermediate level. In automobile-oriented cities of the 20th century, mall parking lots
represent transport facilities. Large parking areas accommodate the critical holiday shop-
ping season, constantly turning over vehicles and their “cargo.” Smaller strip malls with
parking may serve either a reduced economic district or a neighborhood. With other trans-
port modes, such as animal-drawn vehicles or mounts, stables and corrals are a specialized,
sometimes open-air facility. In cities oriented around mass transit, such as Osaka, Japan,
underground rail stations can generate intense pedestrian activity in the spaces above as
people transfer to buses, elevated rail, taxis, and cars (Treib, 1994). Other examples clearly
influenced by modern technology include trucking distribution facilities.
Residence level. In modern suburban areas developed around the automobile, front-
facing garages with paved driveway parking are common features of single-family homes,
and driveways are used for the transfer of goods from vehicles to dwellings. When animal
transport was common, barns were typically located deeper within the property unless
animals were kept at separate stables. In ancient Mesoamerica, the lack of pack animals
led to reliance on human portage and few transport facilities, but the Aztec capital of
Tenochtitlan had docks and canals for canoe transport (Calnek, 1976, 2003).
General observations. Transportation technology is a major determinant of the form
and function of transport facilities at diverse scales. Some transport spaces represent
governmental or institutional installations, whereas others reflect residential choices or
informally designated transfer points; the degree of state or local influence is predicated
upon a city’s specific political economy. Transport facilities are often break-of-bulk points
and linked to locations of market exchange, which may be roofed, exist in other open
spaces, or overlap with the transport facilities.
Incidental Space
Incidental space, also referred to as marginalized or amenity space, is defined here as

any green or grey space located on the margins of other spaces or buildings that is either
ignored or not intended for a specific use other than safety, visual amenity, or physical
separation (Garde, 1999; Al-Hagla, 2008). These spaces are not easily amenable to either
formal or functional classification.
City level. Semi-wild and “natural” open spaces—whether planned or unplanned—
represent the largest scale of incidental space. Semi-wild areas are sometimes conceived as
wildlife habitats or green buffers offering a connection to “nature” in an otherwise urban-
ized environment. These areas easily become dumping grounds for waste or spaces of
social deviance. In many 19th- and 20th-century colonial cities in South Asia and Africa,
colonial planners segregated native urban areas from the homes of colonists with green-
belts, citing the miasmic theory of disease transmission which posited that intermediary
vegetation and physical distance would arrest the spread of “foreign” diseases (King,
1976). In Soviet cities, the buffer function of planned greenbelts distanced industrial pol-
lution instead of specific ethnic groups (French and Hamilton, 1979). We have not located
information on city-level incidental space in ancient cities, in part because of an archaeo-
logical bias toward investigating architecture. In contrast to modern contexts, we suspect
that fields, gardens, groves, and parks would have accounted for most large-scale green
spaces.
Intermediate level. Smaller-scale incidental space has been traced to the transportation
revolution, explosion of city size, and decline of the walking city during the 20th century.
Underused paved spaces have been generated by modernist planning and zoning ordi-
nances mandating separations between large buildings, like New York City’s 1961 zoning
law (Southworth and Ben-Joseph, 1997; Garde, 1999). Trancik (1986, p. 4) describes these
as “lost spaces . . . the leftover unstructured landscape at the base of high-rise towers or the
unused sunken plaza away from the flow of pedestrian activity.” The idea of “lost space” is
normative, inasmuch as incidental spaces exist for particular reasons. For example, some
planned incidental spaces are found along linear borders, such as transportation corridors
like highways and railroads, or landscaped fringes surrounding institutions and parking
lots. While these spaces derive from safety concerns or aesthetic reasons related to prop-
erty values and cultural symbolism, they are clearly incidental byproducts of socioeco-
nomic processes based in other city spaces.
Empty lots in urban areas, present at both intermediate and residence scales, have rarely
been a focus of academic study but constitute another form of incidental space influenc-
ing the economic functioning of the city. Empty residential lots—whether overgrown
with vegetation, bare packed dirt, filled with trash, or reused as a community garden—
have been both used and ignored. Garde (1999) argues that because open space is now
over one-third of neighborhood space, marginal spaces deserve serious urban study and
productive re-use. In fact, large empty lots are surprisingly common in some developed,
growth-oriented cities, where they may be a byproduct of capitalist land speculation and
development. For example, the Phoenix metropolitan area is home to a number of munici-
pal “downtowns,” including Phoenix, Tempe, and Mesa, and all have featured significant
clusters of empty, packed dirt lots in both recessionary and boom periods.
Archaeologists can detect abandoned residences and their lots when they serve as trash
dump locations or because floor surfaces show weathering from the elements. However,
study of this form of incidental space is usually part of an examination of sequences of res-
idential occupation, reoccupation, and rebuilding rather than part of broader urban study.
In one exception, Baker (2009) uses textual data from ancient Babylonian cities to show
that unbuilt, privately owned residential lots existed.
1108 STANLEY ET AL.
Residence level. Given the varied uses of the space around dwellings and commercial
buildings, it is hard to determine where purposive space stops and incidental space begins.
Ford (2000) notes this dilemma but still highlights how planning measures have created
“fragments of anonymous space” around buildings in contemporary American cities. The
standard deployment of planning templates where buildings are constructed in rectangles
(regardless of lot shape), along with fire codes and other municipal regulations, tends to
generate slivers of unused space—a practice in American cities that contrasts with many
others throughout history. Clay (1973) termed this process “fragging,” where marginalized
spaces between buildings can house long-term “stacks” of materials or “sinks” for urban
refuse. Ford (2000, p. 24) ultimately linked these spaces to the broad American trend
“away from urban spaces tightly surrounded and defined by buildings and toward the pro-
liferation of free-standing structures lost in space.”
In premodern states, governmental regulation was often limited to the central civic
sectors, leaving individuals and families freer to use residential lots. Cultural or religious
codes have sometimes provided strong land use principles that tend to minimize wasted
space, as in the case of Islamic cities (Hakim, 1986). Occasionally, as in the building
of apartment compounds at Teotihuacan (likely partly state-directed; Millon et al., 1973;
Murakami, 2010), a particular residential form was established that subsequently changed
the nature of adjacent open spaces, although we have scant archaeological data concerning
the functions of spaces among compounds.
General observations. The rise of industrial and post-industrial capitalist societies and
the dramatic spatial city growth related to advances in transport technology both seem
causally related to the amount and variety of incidental spaces. Incidental space appears
inseparable from the highly organized planning of state and institutional entities, aris-
ing when city zoning ordinances are applied en masse to a diversity of neighborhoods,
lots, and uses, or when large-scale transportation planning displaces previous uses. The
functional specialization of urban open space, perhaps emphasized more in modern than
ancient cities, clearly helps create marginalized space. In ancient cities, empty lots may
reflect family decisions and neighborhood activities more than state or municipal projects.
DISCUSSION: INSTITUTIONAL AND POPULIST INFLUENCES

ON THE (RE)PRODUCTION OF URBAN OPEN SPACE
We identify urban open-space types that vary greatly in prominence according to

technological, social, and cultural conditions, yet have relevance across a broad range of
cities and urban contexts. Noteworthy is the flexibility of open-space uses among ordi-
nary urbanites; in fact, the flow of information and material among people interacting in
open spaces represents a fundamental dimension of urban life. Many open-space roles are
poorly attested in historical documents that favor the concerns and actions of literate upper
classes. In archaeology, many open spaces are under-investigated compared to buildings
and artifacts. Thus, we stress not only the utility of a broad historical and spatial compari-
son, but also the research potentials of urban open spaces.
Urban open spaces differ dramatically in their ecological, social, and symbolic roles,
which we have scarcely touched upon in the scope of this paper. They are the cultural
products of the settings in which they develop and have always projected complex
social and political meanings to a great variety of people. Their symbolic significance is
c ontinually produced and reproduced in the practice of everyday life and through political
and e conomic machinations. Furthermore, their relative degree of public accessibility and
the often intricate connections to public and private roofed spaces can closely determine
their cultural and economic functionalities. Thus, our open-space typology should not be
divorced from architecture-based analyses of urban history. It is difficult to identify com-
mon patterns or general conclusions about urban open spaces among the broadest variety
of urban histories, and our open-space typology is intended to organize this search rather
than suggest rules governing urban form and processes. One simple dichotomy represents
a starting point: the interplay between generative, local actions and those of powerful
authorities in major central institutions (which may operate at the city or state levels).
Although major plazas and boulevards can project important messages from domi-
nant elites, frequently such open spaces are not so stringently regulated as to prevent the
emergence of a range of flexible uses. Neighborhood and residential open spaces play
important roles in social life for ordinary inhabitants, whether categorized as poor or
middle class, whether homogeneous or diverse in gender and ethnicity. Our review of case
materials suggests that open space in cities is a more versatile resource for the majority
of inhabitants than roofed space, which is more susceptible to institutional restrictions,
specialization, and exclusion. As places of flexible appropriation by those with limited
means, open spaces represent key political junctures between top-down and bottom-up
interests at multiple scales. As the burgeoning literature on public space attests, public
access to urban open spaces is unavoidability political, and human rights continue to be
negotiated in place-based conflicts between institutional and grassroots interests (Mitch-
ell, 2003). This dynamic also enters into debates about the nature of premodern urban
life. For example, in collective action theory (Levi, 1988), one comparative issue is the
source of state revenues (whether largely obtained internally or externally) and the extent
of governmental responsiveness to collective actions and demands from the populace. The
varied construction and uses of open space help indicate the efficacy of collective action in
states. We suggest that the morphology, distribution, and contexts of open space can be an
important addition to the repertoire of collective action indices examined by Blanton and
Fargher (2008), which includes transportation infrastructure, public water supplies and
control, public safety, redistribution, and other public services. In other words, urban open
spaces, because of their importance for the mass of inhabitants, provide an opportunity
to investigate not only details of urban life and urban form, but also the broader political
fabric of society.
Open spaces are versatile sites of action across both daily and longer temporal scales,
and even specialized, institutionally controlled spaces can be transformed by grassroots
action. Spaces initially constructed in the interests of dominant classes can quickly assume
new political meanings in the face of social unrest. Tiananmen Square, the site of the
founding of the Communist People’s Republic, became a worldwide democratic symbol
when student protests in 1989 led to violent government repression (Lees, 1994). The
political and symbolic importance of city-scale plaza and street space is underlined by
the political tumult that exploded in North African and Middle Eastern cities beginning in
2011. Mass protests in Cairo’s Tahrir Square and the central city streets of Tunis provided
striking imagery for media representations, strongly influencing the protests’ momentum
and world opinion. Although the cyberspaces of social media were often lauded as the
deciding force in these struggles, it is important to recognize that traditional open spaces
1110 STANLEY ET AL.
were utilized in conjunction with electronic communication and became the ultimate
arenas for political contestation. Such events lend credence to critics of modernist cities
that lack traditional open spaces (Trancik, 1986; Lofland, 1998); for example, Lees (1994,
p. 455) has argued that “the lack of civic space in Los Angeles means that people have no
central place to occupy to attract attention; no square to seize to assert symbolic power.”
Thus we emphasize the enduring importance of urban open space for flexible sociopoliti-
cal practice—an importance that has been shared across ancient and modern urbanism and
that should be understood in a broadly comparative, historical perspective.
REFERENCES
Abercrombie, S., 1981, Places for play. In L. Taylor, editor, Urban Open Spaces. New
York, NY: Rizzoli, 39–41.
Abramson, D. B., 2007, The dialectics of urban planning in China. In F. Wu, editor, China’s
Emerging Cities: the Making of New Urbanism. London, UK: Routledge, 66–86.
Abu-Lughod, J. L., 1987, The Islamic city: Historic myth, Islamic essence, and contem-
porary relevance. International Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, Vol. 19, 155–176.
Al-Hagla, K., 2008, Towards a sustainable neighborhood: The role of open spaces. Inter-
national Journal of Architectural Research, Vol. 2, 162–177.
AlSayyad, N., 1994, Bayn al-Qasrayn: The street between the two palaces. In D. Favro,
Z. Çelik, and R. Ingersoll, editors, Streets: Critical Perspectives on Public Space.
Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 71–82.
Alayón-Gamboa, J. and Gurri-García, F., 2008, Home garden production and energetic
sustainability in Calakmul, Campeche, Mexico. Human Ecology: An Interdisciplinary
Journal, Vol. 36, 395–407.
Alemi, M., 2007, Princely Safavid gardens: Stage for rituals of imperial display and politi-
cal legitimacy. In M. Conan, editor, Middle East Garden Traditions: Unity and Diver-
sity: Questions, Methods, and Resources in a Multicultural Perspective. Washington,
D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, 113–137.
Ambrosiani, B. and Clarke, H., 1988, Birka on the Island of Björkö. Stockholm, Sweden:
Central Board of National Antiquities.
Andersson, T., 2008, Swedish mid-century utopia: Park design as a tool for societal
improvements. In M. Conan and C. Wangheng, editors, Gardens, City Life and Culture:
A World Tour. Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection,
157–172.
Baker, H. D., 2009, A waste of space? Unbuilt land in the Babylonian cities of the first
millennium BC. Iraq, Vol. 71, 89–98.
Bedimo-Rung, A., Mowen, A., and Cohen, D., 2005, The significance of parks to physical
activity and public health: A conceptual model. American Journal of Preventive Medi-
cine, Vol. 28, 159–168.
Bergmann, B., 2007, Housing and households: The Roman world. In S. E. Alcock and R.
Osborne, editors., Classical Archaeology. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 224–243.
Bernhardt, C., 2005, Planning urbanization and urban growth in the socialist period: The
case of East German new towns, 1945–1989. Journal of Urban History, Vol. 32, 104–119.
Bianca, S., 2000, Urban Form in the Arab World: Past and Present. London, UK: Thames
and Hudson.
Blanton, R. E. and Fargher, L. F., 2008, Collective Action in the Formation of Pre-Modern
States. New York, NY: Springer.
Boone, C. G. and Modarres, A., editors, 2006, City and Environment. Philadelphia, PA:
Temple U niversity Press.
Bowden, M., Brown, G., and Smith, N., 2009, An Archaeology of Town Commons in
England. London, UK: English Heritage.
Bowles, S., and Gintis, H., 2002, Social capital and community governance. The Economic
Journal, Vol. 112, F419–F436.
Bramwell, B., 1991, Public space and local communities: The example of Birmingham,
1840–1880. In G. Kearns and C. W. J. Withers, editors, Urbanising Britain: Essays on
Class and Community in the Nineteenth Century. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univer-
sity Press, 31–54.
Brosseau, S., 2008, The promenades and public parks of Tokyo: A tradition permanently
reinvented. In M. Conan and C. Wangheng, editors, Gardens, City Life, and Culture:
A World Tour. Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection,
229–245.
Burnham, D. H. and Bennett, E. H., 1909 [1970], Plan of Chicago. New York, NY: Da
Capo.
Butterworth, D. S., 1980, A study of the urbanization process among Mixtec migrants
from Tilantongo in Mexico City. In I. Press and M.E. Smith, editors, Urban Place and
Process: Readings in the Anthropology of Cities. New York, NY: Macmillan, 241–256.
Calnek, E. E., 1976, The internal structure of Tenochtitlan. In E. R. Wolf, editor., The
Valley of Mexico: Studies of Pre-Hispanic Ecology and Society. Albuquerque, NM:
University of New Mexico Press, 287–302.
Calnek, E. E., 2003, Tenochtitlan-Tlatelolco: The natural history of a city. In W. T. Sand-
ers, A. G. Mastache, and R. H. Cobean, editors, El Urbanismo en Mesoamérica/Urban-
ism in Mesoamerica. Mexico City, Mexico: Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Histo-
ria and the Pennsylvania State University Press, 149–201.
Carmona, M., 2010a, Contemporary public space: Critique and classification, Part One:
Critique. Journal of Urban Design, Vol. 15, 123–148.
Carmona, M., 2010b, Contemporary public space, Part Two: Classification. Journal of
Urban Design, Vol. 15, 157–173.
Carmona, M., De Magalhaes, C., and Hammond, L., 2008, Public Space: The Manage-
ment Dimension. London, UK: Routledge.
Carr, S., Francis, M., Rivlin, L. G., and Stone, A. M., 1992, Public Space. Cambridge, UK:
Cambridge University Press.
Castillo, G., 1994, Gorki Street and the design of the Stalin revolution. In D. Favro, Z.
Çelik, and R. Ingersoll, editors, Streets: Critical Perspectives on Public Space. Berkeley,
CA: University of California Press, 57–70.
Castillo, G. E., 2003, Livelihoods and the city: An overview of the emergence of agricul-
ture in urban spaces. Progress in Development Studies, Vol. 3, 339–344.
Cavanagh, W., 2002, Empty space? Courts and squares in Mycenaean towns. In K.
Branigan, editor, Urbanism in the Aegean Bronze Age; Sheffield Studies in Aegean
Archaeology, Vol. 4. Sheffield, UK: Sheffield Academic Press, 119–134.
Çelik, Z., 1997, Urban Forms and Colonial Confrontations: Algiers under French rule.
Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
1112 STANLEY ET AL.
Chandrashekara, U. M. and Sankar, S., 2008, Ecological and socioeconomic dimensions

of homegardens of Kerala, India. In M. Conan and C. Wangheng, editors, Gardens, City
Life and Culture: A World Tour. Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library
and Collection, 248–259.
Clancy-Smith, J., 2009, Exoticism, erasures, and absence: The peopling of Algiers, 1830–
1900. In Z. Çelik, J. Clancy-Smith, and F. Terpak, editors, Walls of Algiers: Narratives
of the City Through Text and Image. Los Angeles, CA: Getty Research Institute, 19–61.
Clay, G., 1973, Close-Up: How to Read the American City. New York, NY: Praeger.
Cleary, R. L., 1999, The Place Royale and Urban Design in the Ancien Regime. Cambridge,
UK: Cambridge University Press.
Clunas, C., 1996, Fruitful Sites: Garden Culture in Ming Dynasty China. London, UK:
Reaktion Books.
Coffin, D. R., 1979, The Villa in the Life of Renaissance Rome. Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press.
Coffin, D. R., 1991, Gardens and Gardening in Papal Rome. Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press.
Conan, M., 2008, Royal gardens and city life in Paris (1643–1789). In M. Conan and C.
Wangheng, editors, Gardens, City Life, and Culture: A World Tour. Washington, DC:
Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, 73–87.
Conzen, M. P., Gu, K., and Whitehand, J. W. R., 2012, Comparing traditional urban form
in China and Europe: A fringe-belt approach. Urban Geography, Vol. 33, 22–45.
Cooper, M. P., 1983, The Early English Kitchen Garden. Nashville, TN: Trinity.
Cowgill, G. L., Altschul, J. H., and Sload, R. S., 1984, Spatial analysis of Teotihuacan: A
Mesoamerican metropolis. In H. J. Hietala, editor, Intrasite Spatial Analysis in Archae-
ology. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 154–195.
Cranz, G., 1982, The Politics of Park Design: A History of Urban Parks in America.
Cambridge MA: MIT Press.
Crouch, D. P., 1981, The historical development of urban open space. In L. Taylor, editor,
Urban Open Spaces. New York, NY: Rizzoli, 7–8.
D’Souza, V.S., 1968, Social Structure of a Planned City: Chandigarh. Bombay, India:
Orient Longmans Limited.
Daunton, M., 1983, Public space and private space: The Victorian city and the working
class household. In A. Sutcliffe and D. Fraser, editors, The Pursuit of Urban History.
London, UK: Edward Arnold, 212–233.
De Vries, S., Verheij, R. A., Groenewegen, P., and Spreeuwenberg, P., 2003, Natural envi-
ronment—healthy environment? An exploratory analysis of the relationship between
green space and health. Environment and Planning A, Vol. 35, 1717–1731.
Duany, A., Speck, J., and Lydon, M., 2010, The Smart Growth Manual. New York, NY:
McGraw Hill.
Evans, D., Pottier, C., Fletcher, R., Hensley, S., Tapley, I., Milne, A., and Barbetti, M.,
2007, A comprehensive archaeological map of the world’s largest preindustrial settle-
ment complex at Angkor, Cambodia. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences,
Vol. 104, 14,277–14,282.
Faiz, M. E., 2008, Marrakech: An ecological miracle and its wanton destruction (1071–
2000 A.D). In M. Conan and C. Wangheng, editors, Gardens, City Life and Culture:
A World Tour. Washington D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection,
193–201.
Farrar, L., 1998, Ancient Roman Gardens. Stroud, UK: Sutton.
Favro, D., 1994, The street triumphant: The urban impact of Roman triumphal parades.
In D. Favro, Z. Çelik, and R. Ingersoll, editors, Streets: Critical Perspectives on Public
Space. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 151–164.
Fletcher, R., 2009, Low-density, agrarian-based urbanism: A comparative view. Insights,
Vol. 4, article 2. Retrieved from https://www.dur.ac.uk/resources/ias/insights/
Fletcher16Jan.pdf
Ford, L. R., 2000, The Spaces Between Buildings. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins Univer-
sity Press.
Foster, K. P., 2004, The hanging gardens of Nineveh. Iraq, Vol. 66, 207–220.
Freeman, D. B., 1991, A City of Farmers: Informal Urban Agriculture in the Open Spaces
of Nairobi, Kenya. Montreal, Canada: McGill-Queen’s University Press.
French, R. A. and Hamilton, F. E. I., 1979, Is there a socialist city? In R. A. French and
F. E. I. Hamilton, editors, The Socialist City: Spatial Structure and Urban Policy.
Chichester, UK: Wiley, 1–21.
Garde, A. M., 1999, Marginal spaces in the urban landscape: Regulated margins or inci-
dental open spaces? Journal of Planning Education and Research, Vol. 18, 200–210.
García Cook, A., 2003, Cantona: The city. In W. T. Sanders, A. G. Mastache, and R. H.
Cobean, editors, El Urbanismo en Mesoamérica/Urbanism in Mesoamerica. Mexico
City, Mexico: Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia and the Pennsylvania State
University Press, 311–343.
Garrioch, D., 1986, Neighbourhood and Community in Paris, 1740–1790. Cambridge,
UK: Cambridge University Press.
Geertz, C., 1980, Negara: The Theatre State in Nineteenth Century Bali. Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press.
Gehl, J. and Gemzoe, L., 2001, New City Spaces. Copenhagen, Denmark: The Danish
Architectural Press.
Giddens, A., 1984, The Constitution of Society: Outline of the Theory of Structuration.
Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
Giese, E., 1979, Transformation of Islamic cities in Soviet Middle Asia into socialist cities.
In R. A. French and F. E. I. Hamilton, editors, The Socialist City: Spatial Structure and
Urban Policy. Chichester, UK: Wiley, 145–165.
Girouard, M., 1985, Cities and People: A Social and Architectural History. New Haven,
CT: Yale University Press.
Gober, P., 2006, Metropolitan Phoenix: Place Making and Community Building in the
Desert. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press.
Grigg, D., 1965, The logic of regional systems. Annals of the Association of American
Geographers, Vol. 55, 465–491.
Guinness, P., 2009, Kampong, Islam, and State in Urban Java. Honolulu, HI: University
of Hawai’i Press.
Habermas, J., 1962, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere [translated by T.
Burger and F. Lawrence, 1989]. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Habitat, United Nations Centre for Human Settlements, 1982, Survey of Slum and Squatter
Settlements. Dublin, Ireland: Tycooly International.
1114 STANLEY ET AL.
Hajer, M. and Reijndorp, A., 2001, In Search of New Public Domain. Rotterdam, Nether-
lands: NAI.
Hakim, B. S., 1986, Arab-Islamic Cities: Building and Planning Principles: London, UK:
Routledge.
Hammond, K. J., 2008, Urban gardens in Ming Jiangnan: Insights from the essays of
Wang Shizhen. In M. Conan and C. Wangheng, editors, Gardens, City Life and Culture:
A World Tour. Washington D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection,
41–53.
Harding, V., 2004, Recent perspectives on early modern London. Historical Journal, Vol.
47, 435–450.
Harvey, D., 2006, The political economy of public space. In S. M. Low and N. Smith,
editors, The Politics of Public Space. New York, NY: Routledge, 17–34.
Heng, C. K., 1999, Cities of Aristocrats and Bureaucrats: The Development of Medieval
Chinese Cityscapes. Honolulu, HI: University of Hawai’i Press.
Hirth, K. G., 2003, Urban structure at Xochicalco, Mexico. In W. T. Sanders, A. G.
Mastache, and R. H. Cobean, editors, El Urbanismo en Mesoamérica/Urbanism in
Mesoamerica. Mexico City, Mexico: Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia and
the Pennsylvania State University Press, 257–309.
Howard, E., 1898 [1965], Garden Cities of To-morrow [edited by Frederic James Osborn].
Cambridge, MA: MIT Press (first published, 1898, as Tomorrow: A Peaceful Path to
Real Reform).
Hyslop, J., 1990, Inca Settlement Planning. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press.
Ihlanfeldt, K. and Scafidi, B., 2002, The neighborhood contact hypothesis. Urban Studies,
Vol. 39, 619–641.
Isendahl, C. and Smith, M. E., 2012, Sustainable agrarian urbanism: The low-density cities
of the Mayas and Aztecs. Cities, in press (http://www.sciencedirect.com.ezproxy1.lib.
asu.edu/science/article/pii/S0264275112001382).
Jacobs, J., 1961, The Death and Life of Great American Cities. New York, NY: Random
House.
Jashemski, W., 2008, Gardens and garden life in Pompeii in the first century A.D. In
M. Conan and C. Wangheng, editors, Gardens, City Life and Culture: A World Tour.
Washington D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, 15–28.
Jenerette, G. D., Harlan, S. L., Stefanov, W. L., and Martin, C. A., 2011, Ecosystem ser-
vices and urban heat riskscape moderation: Water, green spaces, and social inequality
in Phoenix, USA. Ecological Applications, Vol. 21, 2637–2651.
Joassart-Marcelli, P., Wolch, J., and Salim, Z., 2011, Building the healthy city: The role of
nonprofits in creating active urban parks. Urban Geography, Vol. 32, 682–711.
Killion, T. W., Sabloff, J. A., Tourtellot, G., and Dunning, N., 1989, Intensive surface
collection of residential clusters at terminal classic Sayil, Yucatan, Mexico. Journal of
Field Archaeology, Vol. 16, 273–294.
Kimber, C. T., 1973, Spatial patterning in the dooryard gardens of Puerto Rico. Geograph-
ical Review, Vol. 63, 6–26.
King, A. D., 1976, Colonial Urban Development: Culture, Social Power and Environment.
Boston, MA: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
Kostof, S., 1994, His majesty the pick: The aesthetics of demolition. In D. Favro, Z. Çelik,
and R. Ingersoll, editors, Streets: Critical Perspectives on Public Space. Berkeley, CA:
University of California Press, 9–22.
Krier, R., 1979, Urban Space. New York, NY: Rizzoli.
Laughton, J., 2008, Life in a Late Medieval City: Chester 1275–1520. Oxford, UK: Oxbow
Books.
Lees, L. H., 1994, Urban public space and imagined communities in the 1980s and 1990s.
Journal of Urban History, Vol. 20, 443–465.
Levi, M., 1988, Of Rule and Revenue. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
Levy, R. I., 1990, Mesocosm: Hinduism and the Organization of a Traditional Newar City
in Nepal. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
Lloyd, P. C., 1979, Slums of Hope?: Shanty Towns of the Third World. New York, NY: St.
Martin’s.
Lofland, L., 1998, The Public Realm: Exploring the City’s Quintessential Social Territory.
New York, NY: Aldine de Gruyter.
Low, S. M., 1993, Cultural meaning of the plaza: The history of the Spanish-American
gridplan-plaza urban design. In R. L. Rotenberg and G. McDonogh, editors, The Cul-
tural Meaning of Urban Space. Westport, CT: Bergin and Garvey, 75–93.
MacDonald, W. L., 1986, Architecture of the Roman Empire, Volume 2: An Urban
Appraisal. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Ma, L. J. C. and Wu, F., 2005, Restructuring the Chinese city: Diverse processes and
reconstituted spaces. In L. J. C. Ma and F. Wu, editors, Restructuring the Chinese City:
Changing Society, Economy and Space. London, UK: Routledge, 1–20.
Mabogunje, A. L., 1968, Urbanization in Nigeria. London, UK: University of London
Press.
Madanipour, A., 2003, Public and Private Spaces of the City. New York, NY: Routledge.
Metailie, G., 2008, Gardens of Luoyang: The refinements of a city culture. In M. Conan
and C. Wangheng, editors, Gardens, City Life and Culture: A World Tour. Washington,
DC: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, 31–39.
Millon, R., Drewitt, R. B., and Cowgill, G. L., 1973, Urbanization at Teotihuacan, Mexico,
Volume 1: The Teotihuacan Map, Part 2: Maps. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press.
Mitchell, D., 2003, The Right to the City: Social Justice and the Fight for Public Space.
New York, NY: Guilford.
Moore, J. D., 1996, Architecture and Power in the Ancient Andes: The Archaeology of
Public Buildings. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.
Mumford, L., 1961, The City in History: Its Origins, Its Transformations, and Its Pros-
pects. New York, NY: Harcourt, Brace & World.
Murakami, T., 2010, Power Relations and Urban Landscape Formation: A Study of Con-
struction Labor and Resources at Teotihuacan. Unpublished doctoral dissertation,
School of Human Evolution and Social Change, Arizona State University.
Newman, P. and Jennings, I., 2008, Cities as Sustainable Ecosystems. Washington, DC:
Island Press.
Ojo, G. J. A., 1966, Yoruba Palaces: A Study of Afins of Yorubaland. London, UK: Univer-
sity of London Press.
Owens, E. J., 1991, The City in the Greek and Roman World. London, UK: Routledge.
1116 STANLEY ET AL.
Reibel, M., 2011, Classification approaches in neighborhood research: Introduction and

review. Urban Geography, Vol. 32, 305–316.
Revault, J., 1983, Palais et Demeures de Tunis [Palaces and Mansions of Tunis]. Paris,
France: Editions du Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique.
Richardson, H. W., 1979, Regional Economics. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press.
Rosenzweig, R. and Blackmar, E., 1992, The Park and the People: A History of Central
Park. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
Sandercock, L., 1998, Towards Cosmopolis: Planning for Multicultural Cities. New York,
NY: John Wiley and Sons.
Saunders, J. C., 2010, Seattle and the Roots of Urban Sustainability: Inventing Ecotopia.
Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press.
Scarborough, V. L. and Wilcox, D. R., editors, 1991, The Mesoamerican Ballgame. Tucson,
AZ: University of Arizona Press.
Schlumbohm, J., 1980, “Traditional” collectivity and “modern” individuality: Some ques-
tions and suggestions for the historical study of socialization. The examples of the
German lower and upper bourgeoisies around 1800. Social History, Vol. 5, 71–103.
Scott, J. C., 1998, Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human
Condition Have Failed. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Sennett, R., 1971, The Uses of Disorder. New York, NY: Vintage.
Sennett, R., 1990, The Conscience of the Eye: The Design and Social Life of Cities. New
York, NY: Knopf.
Seo, T., 1986, The urban systems of Chang’an in the Sui and T’ang dynasties. In M. A.
J. Beg, editor, Historic Cities of Asia: An Introduction to Asian Cities from Antiquity
to Pre-modern Times. Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia: Percetakan Ban Huat Seng, 159–200.
Sewell, W. H., 2001, Space in contentious politics. In R. Aminzade, editor., Silence and
Voice in the Study of Contentious Politics. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press,
51–88.
Shaw, A., 2009, Town planning in postcolonial India, 1947–1965: Chandigarh Re-exam-
ined. Urban Geography, Vol. 30, 857-878.
Shelton, B., 1999, Learning from the Japanese City: West Meets East in Urban Design.
London, UK: E. and F. N. Spon.
Simon, D., 2008, Urban environments: Periurban issues. Annual Review of Environment
and Resources, Vol. 33, 167–185.
Sitte, C., 1889 [1965]. City Planning According to Artistic Principles [translated by G. R.
Collins and C. C. Collins]. London, UK: Phaidon.
Smith, J. F. H., 1992, Gardens in Ch’i Piao-chia’s social world: Wealth and values in late-
Ming Kiangnan. The Journal of Asian Studies, Vol. 51, 55–81.
Smith, M. E., 2010, Sprawl, squatters, and sustainable cities: Can archaeological data shed
light on modern urban issues? Cambridge Archaeological Journal, Vol. 20, 229–253.
Smith, N. and Low, S. M., 2006, Introduction: The imperative of public space. In S. M.
Low and N. Smith, editors, The Politics of Public Space. New York, NY: Routledge,
1–16.
Smyth, M. P., Dore, C. D., and Dunning, N. P., 1995, Interpreting prehistoric settlement
patterns: Lessons from the Maya center of Sayil, Yucatan. Journal of Field Archaeol-
ogy, Vol. 22, 321–358.
Southworth, M. and Ben-Joseph, E., 1997, Streets and the Shaping of Towns and Cities.
New York, NY: McGraw-Hill.
Stark, B. L. and Ossa, A., 2007, Ancient settlement, urban gardening, and environment in
the Gulf lowlands of Mexico. Latin American Antiquity, Vol. 18, 385–406.
Stronach, D., 1990, The garden as a political statement: Some case studies from the Near
East in the first millennium B.C. Bulletin of the Asia Institute, Vol. 4, 171–182.
Sullivan, J., 1980, Back Alley Neighbourhood: Kampung as Urban Community in Yogya-
karta. Melbourne, Australia: Monash University Press.
Sullivan, J., 1992, Local Government and Community in Java: An Urban Case-Study.
Singapore: Oxford University Press.
Talen, E. and Anselin, L., 1998, Assessing spatial equality: An evaluation of measures of
accessibility to public playgrounds. Environment and Planning A, Vol. 30, 595–613.
Tibbalds, F., 1992, Making People Friendly Towns: Improving the Public Environments in
Towns and Cities. Harlow, UK: Longman.
Tilly, C. and Tarrow, S., 2006, Contentious Politics. Boulder, CO: Paradigm.
Trancik, R., 1986, Finding Lost Space: Theories of Urban Design. New York, NY: Van
Nostrand Reinhold.
Treib, M., 1994, Underground in Umeda. In D. Favro, Z. Çelik, and R. Ingersoll, editors,
Streets: Critical Perspectives on Public Space. Berkeley, CA: University of California
Press, 35–44.
Vidler, A., 1978, The scenes of the street: Transformations in ideal and reality, 1750–1871.
In S. Anderson, editor, On Streets. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 29–112.
Waldheim, C., editor, 2006, The Landscape Urbanism Reader. New York, NY: Princeton
Architectural Press.
Ward-Perkins, J. B., 1974, Cities of Ancient Greece and Italy: Planning in Classical Antiq-
uity. New York, NY: George Braziller, Inc.
Weissman, R. F. E., 1982, Ritual Brotherhood in Renaissance Florence. New York, NY:
Acadamic.
Whyte, W. H., 1980, The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces. Washington, DC: The Con-
servation Foundation.
WinklerPrins, A. M. G. A. and de Suza, P., 2005, Surviving in the city: Urban home gar-
dens and the economy of affection in the Brazilian Amazon. Journal of Latin American
Geography, Vol. 4, 107–126.
Wolch, J., Wilson, J. P., and Fehrenbach, J., 2005, Parks and park funding in Los Angeles:
An equity-mapping analysis. Urban Geography, Vol. 26, 4–35.
Woolley, L. C., 1963, Excavations at Ur. London, UK: Ernest Benn Limited and Barnes
and Noble.
Wycherley, R. E., 1976, How the Greeks Built Cities. New York, NY: W. W. Norton and
Company.
Zucker, P., 1959, Town and Square: From the Agora to the Village Green. New York, NY:
Columbia University Press.
View publication stats

Urban Open Spaces in Historical Perspective: A Transdisciplinary Typology and Analysis

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Urban Open Spaces in Historical Perspective: A Transdisciplinary Typology and Analysis

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Urban Open Spaces in Historical Perspective: A Transdisciplinary Typology and Analysis

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

See discussions, stats, and author profiles for this publication at: https://www.researchgate.

Urban Open Spaces in Historical Perspective: A Transdisciplinary

Article in Urban Geography · November 2012

Benjamin W. Stanley Barbara L. Stark

SEE PROFILE SEE PROFILE

Transparent Urban Development View project

The user has requested enhancement of the downloaded file.

Urban Geography, 2012, 33, 8, pp. 1089–1117. http://dx.doi.org/10.2747/0272-3638.33.8.1089

CRITICAL AND HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVES ON URBAN OPEN SPACE

A HISTORICAL TYPOLOGY OF URBAN OPEN SPACE

Food Production Areas

Parks and Gardens

Incidental space, also referred to as marginalized or amenity space, is defined here as

DISCUSSION: INSTITUTIONAL AND POPULIST INFLUENCES

We identify urban open-space types that vary greatly in prominence according to

Chandrashekara, U. M. and Sankar, S., 2008, Ecological and socioeconomic dimensions

Reibel, M., 2011, Classification approaches in neighborhood research: Introduction and

View publication stats

You might also like

Pfad - The Proxy pFad of © 2024 Garber Painting. All rights reserved.