The book uniquely brings sociological approaches to what are often considered architectural concerns, revealing challenges as London's public spaces are designed, regulated and lived. Through in-depth research, Ed Wall identifies how uncertainty caused by large-scale urban strategies, the realisation of visual priorities, and uneven relations between private interests, public organisations and daily lives determine the public realm of global cities.
This work is intended for readers interested in how the urban spaces of their cities are continually produced in competing ways—from architecture and urban studies scholars to planners and politicians.
Ed Wall is Academic Lead of Landscape Architecture and Urbanism and co-director of the Advanced Urban (AU) research group at the University of Greenwich, London. He is a visiting professor at Politecnico di Milano, and in 2017, was City of Vienna Visiting Professor: Urban culture, public space and the future–urban equity and the global agenda (SKuOR/TU Wien). His research and design work explores practices of public space and processes of landscapes through concerns for spatial justice.