Sidewalks - The MIT Press

May 2009
7 x 9, 336 pp., 35 illus.
$28.00/£18.95 (CLOTH)
Short

ISBN-10:
0-262-12307-X
ISBN-13:
978-0-262-12307-5

Urban and Industrial Environments

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Sidewalks
Conflict and Negotiation over Public Space
Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris and Renia Ehrenfeucht

Table of Contents and Sample Chapters

Urban sidewalks, critical but undervalued public spaces, have been sites for political demonstrations and urban greening, promenades for the wealthy and the well-dressed, and shelterless shelters for the homeless. On sidewalks, decade after decade, urbanites have socialized, paraded, and played, sold their wares, and observed city life. These many uses often overlap and conflict, and urban residents and planners try to include some and exclude others. In this first book-length analysis of the sidewalk as a distinct public space, Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris and Renia Ehrenfeucht examine the evolution of the American urban sidewalk and trace conflicts that have arisen over its competing uses. They discuss the characteristics of sidewalks as small urban public spaces, and such related issues as the ambiguous boundaries of their "public" status, contestation over specific uses, control and regulations, and the implications for First Amendment speech and assembly rights.

Drawing on historical and contemporary examples as well as case study research and archival data from five cities—Boston, Los Angeles, New York, Miami, and Seattle—the authors focus on how the functions and meanings of street activities have shifted and have been negotiated through controls and interventions. They consider sidewalk uses that include the display of individual and group identities (in ethnic and pride parades, for example), the everyday politics of sidewalk access, and larger political actions (including Seattle's 1999 antiglobalization protests) and examine the complex regulatory frameworks that manage street and sidewalk life. The role of urban sidewalks in the early twenty-first century depends, the authors conclude, on what we want from sidewalk life and how we balance competing interests.

Urban and Industrial Environments series

About the Authors

Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris is Professor and Chair of UCLA's Department of Urban Planning. She is the coauthor of Urban Design Downtown: Poetics and Politics of Form.

Renia Ehrenfeucht is Assistant Professor in the Department of Planning and Urban Studies at the University of New Orleans.

"Sidewalks may be at the margins of streets but this broad-ranging book demonstrates how central they are to any sophisticated understanding of contemporary public space. Loukaitou-Sideris and Ehrenfeucht effectively show how sidewalks shape the design politics of everyday life in American cities. The volume commendably transcends too-simple and romanticized celebrations of diversity and encounter to view sidewalks in their full complexity: as places of contestation, sites of moral judgment, sources of economic livelihood, barometers of societal inequality, spaces of performance and display, legal and regulatory battlegrounds, and contributors to both arboreal beauty and desolation. Combining rich observation with interviews and archival research, this fine book shows how sidewalks are designed, how they are governed, how they are shared, and why all of this matters to the future of urbanity."
—Lawrence Vale, Department of Urban Studies and Planning, MIT

"One of the most overlooked public spaces, the sidewalk, deserves serious consideration for its social, cultural, and political importance. Sidewalks now take their rightful place as contested sites that offer opportunities for both democracy and oppression. Loukaitou-Sideris and Ehrenfeucht provide the guidance and balance needed to defend one of the last public spaces."
—Setha M. Low, Professor of Environmental Psychology, Anthropology, and Geography, The Graduate Center, City University of New York

"Design of public space to encourage pedestrian life is an urgent need in neighborhoods and cities. As a major part of the public city, sidewalks are more than simple paths of circulation and can be settings for casual social interchange, promenading, and celebration, as well as many types of recreation, from jogging and games to roller skating. This book presents exciting new research on the social dimensions of public sidewalk space that urban planners and designers need to understand."
—Michael Southworth, Professor of Urban Design and Planning, University of California, Berkeley

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