ABSTRACT
This Prologue addresses why it is important to write about urban squares. The justification is simple. Streets and squares are the primary and, many would argue, the most important open spaces in the dense urban core of cities throughout the world. They constitute a city’s ground floor: the world of pedestrians and motorists alike. Skylines can be spectacular when seen from afar but it is the nature of their ground floors that largely differentiates one city from another. The qualities of a city’s ground floor create its unique sense of place and its affordances 1 for public sociability. They need to be designed well.
