Place and Non-Place

Here’s another one. It’s everywhere:

Creating Sustainable Communities: Delivering Greenspace in the Thames Gateway

Don’t you love that terminology? “Delivering Greenspace.” Like it was a commodity that flows down a pipe. How about “Build a Park?” And what is so goddamn “sustainable” about “greenspace”? Do you plan to graze goats or something?

One of the basic problems with Non-Place is that it’s contagious. When you start introducing Non-Places into a city design, you tend to add more and more Non-Places to try to fix the problems caused by the original Non-Places. If you have two Places next to each other, like an apartment building and a store, then you can easily walk from the apartm... See more