Multidimensional Reflection on New York’s Shared Spaces

A new book by Ana Morcillo Pallarés, assistant professor of architecture, explores the complex relationship between architecture and public space in America’s largest city.

Manhattan’s Public Spaces: Production, Revitalization, Commodification (Routledge, 2022) analyzes a series of architectural works and their contribution to New York’s public space over the past few decades. By exploring how various elements, including legal systems and planning guidelines, have transformed these collective spaces, Morcillo Pallarés frames Manhattan as a controversial landscape of interests and concerns to authorities, communities, and developers.

“This book is a remarkable window onto a unique moment in the history of New York — and the history of contemporary urban design — when squalor, decline, innovation, and opportunity somehow existed simultaneously,” said Robert Fishman, professor of architecture and urban and regional planning at Taubman College, who wrote the forward for the book.

Read the full article here.

Recommended by Luisa Bravo