City

by Whyte, William H.; Underhill, Paco

• ISBN13: 9780812220742
• ISBN10: 0812220749
• Edition: Revised
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2009-08-25
• Publisher: Univ of Pennsylvania Pr

Summary

For sixteen years William Whyte walked the streets of New York and other major cities. With a group of young observers, camera and notebook in hand, he conducted pioneering studies of street life, pedestrian behavior, and city dynamics.City: Rediscovering the Centeris the result of that research, a humane, often amusing view of what is staggeringly obvious about the urban environment but seemingly invisible to those responsible for planning it. Whyte uses time-lapse photography to chart the anatomy of metropolitan congestion. Why is traffic so badly distributed on city streets? Why do New Yorkers walk so fast-and jaywalk so incorrigibly? Why aren't there more collisions on the busiest walkways? Why do people who stop to talk gravitate to the center of the pedestrian traffic stream? Why do places designed primarily for security actually worsen it? Why are public restrooms disappearing? "The city is full of vexations," Whyte avers: "Steps too steep; doors too tough to open; ledges you cannot sit on. . . . It is difficult to design an urban space so maladroitly that people will not use it, but there are many such spaces." Yet Whyte finds encouragement in the widespread rediscovery of the city center. The future is not in the suburbs, he believes, but in that center. Like a Greek agora, the city must reassert its most ancient function as a place where people come together face-to-face.

Author Biography

William H. Whyte (1917-1999), author of the bestselling Organization Man, also available from the University of Pennsylvania Press, was born in Pennsylvania and educated at Princeton. Paco Underhill, founder, CEO, and President of Envirosell, is the author of Why We Buy: The Science of Shopping and Call of the Mall: The Geography of Shopping.

Table of Contents

Foreword

Introduction

The Social Life of the Street

Street People

The Skilled Pedestrian

The Physical Street

The Sensory Street

The Design of Spaces

Water, Wind, Trees, and Light

The Management of Spaces

The Undesirables

Carrying Capacity

Steps and Entrances

Concourses and Skyways

Megastructures

Blank Walls

The Rise and Fall of Incentive Zoning

Sun and Shadow

Bounce Light

Sun Easements

The Corporate Exodus

The Semi-Cities

How to Dullify Downtown

Tightening Up

The Case for Gentrification

Return to the Agora

Appendices

Digest of Open-Space Zoning Provisions in New York City

Mandating of Retailing at Street Level

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Acknowledgments

Table of Contents provided by Publisher. All Rights Reserved.