Public Spaces, NY maps Manhattan's parks, streets, cemeteries, community gardens, and privately owned public spaces through detailed drawings and speculative illustrations, building a case that public space is never neutral — it is shaped by law, ownership, and the negotiations of daily use.
About This Book
There are no perfect public spaces. That proposition anchors this ambitious survey of Manhattan's public realm, in which architects Michael Meredith and Hilary Sample document and analyse the full spectrum of the city's publicly accessible spaces — from waterfronts and recreation areas to the legally complex terrain of privately owned public spaces. Rather than presenting these sites as finished civic achievements, the book treats them as contested ground: formed by regulation, managed by competing interests, and perpetually reshaped by the people who inhabit them. For anyone working at the intersection of urban design, landscape architecture, and public policy, this is a rare volume that takes the politics of public space as seriously as its physical form.
Key Features
- 632 pages of documentary drawings, speculative illustrations, and analytical content spanning Manhattan's diverse public realm
- Authors: Hilary Sample and Michael Meredith
- Case studies span parks, streets, community gardens, privately owned public spaces, recreation areas, waterfronts, and cemeteries across Manhattan
- Published by Park Books, ISBN 9783038604341
What You'll Discover
- How the legal frameworks of private ownership and city management produce spaces that appear public but operate under constrained terms of access and use
- The role of detailed drawing — both documentary and speculative — as a tool for understanding how public spaces are designed, built, and inhabited over time
- How inclusion and exclusion are encoded in the physical design of Manhattan's parks, streets, and open spaces, and the conflicts those conditions generate
- A framework for reimagining public life in dense urban environments, grounded in the specific conditions of America's most populous city
About the Author
Hilary Sample and Michael Meredith are the founding principals of MOS Architects. Their practice and scholarship sit at the intersection of architectural design, urbanism, and critical theory, and this book extends their research into the spatial and political dimensions of public life in New York City.
Specifications
- Format: Paperback
- Pages: 632
- Dimensions: 15.5 x 23 cm
- Language: English
- ISBN: 9783038604341
- Publisher: Park Books
- Publication Date: [Details available upon request]
Perfect For: Urban designers, landscape architects, planners, and researchers concerned with the politics and spatial design of public space in contemporary cities.