ABSTRACT
Anyone who wants to claim a share of public space in a modern city is forced to share it with some of the people of the underclass, and so to think about where he stands in relation to them.… Most of the great public spaces in history—Greek agoras, Italian piazzas, Parisian boulevards—would rate as failures, because all were turbulent places, and needed large police forces on hand to keep the seething forces from exploding. On the other hand, some of the world’s most sterile shopping malls would rate as shining successes. … the real failures in public spaces are not the streets full of social, sexual and political deviants, but rather the streets with no deviants at all.
