ABSTRACT
The development of our great historic towns and cities is often regarded as a happy accident but some places seem more accidental and much less happy. Rapid technological change since the industrial revolution combined with the emergence of new approaches to planning and architecture have often resulted in urban landscapes and environments of variable and sometimes very poor quality. Changing transportation systems and development patterns in growth and decline have created diverse and often ‘disorganized’ townscapes. This chapter examines the characteristics, both good and bad, of modern cities on an international scale with particular reference to the European experience. It seeks to explain how their changing development patterns have influenced the nature of space in the modern city. With these themes in mind, the chapter presents a review of the different qualities of space found in cities and attempts to relate these spatial qualities to the main activities of the city’s commercial, residential, industrial and retail functions by exploring the relationship between these functions and the urban spaces they generate, and by indicating some aspects which are negative and some which are positive. Examples are used to suggest how places work and how they have evolved through time, and to explore the suggestion that not all public squares are exclusively dependent upon the quality of either the architecture or the space itself.
