ABSTRACT
London is a metropolis with almost 2,000 years of history, but for three-quarters of its history it occupied little more than the square mile of what is today the City of London, and later a smaller area to the west, part of today’s City of Westminster (Trent 1965). It was not until the seventeenth century and, more significantly, the eighteenth century that London really began to expand. It is not the intention of this book to offer a history of London’s urban form and expansion, that is well covered elsewhere, but it would be remiss in a book on contemporary London public space not to discuss the city’s great gift to international urbanism, the garden square, or to establish a historical lens through which to view public space in London today.
