Product Description

In this wide-ranging, multi-disciplinary study, Setha M. Low explores the interplay of space and culture in the plaza, showing how culture acts to shape public spaces and how the physical form of the plaza encodes the social, political, and economic relations within the city. Low centres her study on two plazas in San Jose, Costa Rica, with comparisons to public spaces in the United States, Europe, Asia, and Latin America. She interweaves ethnography, history, literature, and personal narrative to capture the ambience and meaning of the plaza. She also uncovers the contradictory ethnohistories of the European and indigenous origins of the Latin American plaza and explains why the plaza is often a politically contested space. Setha M. Low is Professor of Environmental Psychology and Anthropology and Director of the Public Space Research Group at the Graduate School and University Center of the City University of New York.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #84950 in Books
• Published on: 2000-01-01
• Original language: English
• Dimensions: 1.08 pounds
• Binding: Paperback
• 296 pages

Review
"This is one of the best accounts of a place's history and meaning I have ever read. Low's work should be widely used in courses in architecture, urban design, planning, landscape architecture, and historic preservation, as well as Latin American studies and anthropology. What a wonderful book!" -Dolores Hayden, Professor of Architecture, Urbanism, and American Studies, Yale University "Combining ethnography, history, and spatial theory, this interdisciplinary book brings the Latin American plaza to life as a spatial expression of culture and politics. A paean to the plaza as democratic public space, it is as absorbing as it is unconventional." -Neil Smith, Department of Geography and Center for the Critical Analysis of Contemporary Culture, Rutgers University