ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the significance of the boulevard and, in doing so, summarises a human-focused science of street life. Speculating that the survival of the urban main street is essential in addressing the climate emergency and delivering the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals, it places the boulevard at the heart of an alternative urban future. Twentieth-century car-based planning led to the fragmentation of towns and cities. In other words, an urban science would need to embrace — and integrate — the physical sciences and the social sciences into a science of urban space and human behaviour. In short: a science of urban street life. The priority of the street network in cities is shared by the work of the British urbanist Bill Hillier and the ‘space syntax’ approach that he and colleagues developed at University College London.
