Images of the Street: Planning, Identity and Control in Public Space

Streets are the terrain of social encounters and political protest, sites of domination and resistance, places of pleasure and anxiety. The essays in Images of the Street explore how we imagine, create, experience, interact with and naturally transform the street. Using case studies of cities including New York, San Francisco, Washington, DC, Toronto and Vancouver, the contributors subject the street to sustained critical scrutiny. The essays examine the interplay between politics and planning, how social identities are shaped by the use of the street, and how these identities are represented in fiction and in films such as Independence Day, Twelve Monkeys, and The Fisherking, and how social life is increasingly regulated both directly by agencies such as the police, and indirectly through architecture and urban design. This book enriches and extends our understanding of the making and meaning of a key urban space.