A study of the shape and appearance of civic places and the social, political, and cultural circumstances that bring them into existence.
A civic place belongs to everyone and yet to nobody in particular. In Civic Realism, Peter G. Rowe looks at the shape and appearance of civic places, and at the social, political, and cultural circumstances that bring them into existence. The book is as much about the making and reshaping of civic places as it is about urban architecture per se. According to Rowe, the best civic place-making occurs across the divide between the state and civil society. By contrast, the alternatives are not very attractive. On the one side are state-sponsored edifices and places of authoritarian nature. On the other are the exclusive enclaves of corporate-dominated urban and suburban environments.
- ISBN10 0262681056
- ISBN13 9780262681056
- Publish Date 18 February 1999 (first published 1 June 1997)
- Publish Status Transferred
- Publish Country US
- Publisher MIT Press Ltd
- Imprint MIT Press
- Format Paperback (US Trade)
- Pages 266
- Language English
- URL http://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262681056