Introduction to Everyday Streets

Abstract

Everyday streets are both the most used and the most undervalued of cities’ public spaces. They constitute the inclusive backbone of urban life – the chief civic amenity – though they are challenged by optimisation processes. Everyday streets are as profuse, rich and complex as the people who use them; they are places of social aggregation, bringing together those belonging to different classes, genders, ages, ethnicities and nationalities. They comprise not just the familiar outdoor spaces that we use to move and interact and the facades that are commonly viewed as their primary component but also urban blocks, interiors, depths...