在欧洲，城市广场是一种古老的文化；在中国，城市广场是城市建设中广受关注的问题。
本书以对国外(从古希腊至现代)的40个典型城市广场的观察、分析为线索，阐明城市广场发生、发展的社会动力，力图从社会学和建筑学的双重视角建构城市广场的整体轮廓，认为城市广场的综合品质应是空间品质和社会品质的有机统一，并尝试将其进行量化研究，提出一种城市广场品质的客观评价体系。
按照这个体系，对我国典型城市广场(从近代至今14个城市的18个城市广场)的建设历史与现状进行梳理，分析中国传统城市的空间特征及其社会动力，指出传统的中国城市缺少城市广场这一空间元素，中国城市广场的出现来自于西方城市文化的影响，而当今中国的城市广场大多只是一种展示性元素，缺少与城市及市民生活的关联。
书中史料剖析部分图文资料详实，脉络清晰；对广场品质的分析、评价客观明晰，尤其是细分出各影响因素，颇具可操作性，适于在设计中应用。
本书可供建筑设计、城市设计、城市规划、城市管理以及相关领域的研习、实践者阅读参考。

《上海城市社会生活史：近代上海城市公共空间（1843-1949）》为上海城市社会生活史丛书之一种，选取了1843-1949年上海城市公共空间的几种典型类型，如公园（包括租界公园、开放性私园）、戏园、电影院、游乐场、咖啡馆、跑马场等，叙述其沿革兴衰的历史过程，或考察其内部组织形式、日常经营方式、功能，着重探讨其与上海城市社会生活之间的关系。近代上海城市公共空间，集现代化、大众化、多元化与商业化于一体，生动、深刻地体现这个城市社会的民族关系、阶级关系、移民区域特点，反映了上海这座城市世界性与地方性并存、摩登性与传统性并存、先进性与落后性并存、殖民性与爱国性并存的特性。

In 1980, William H. Whyte published the findings from his revolutionary Street Life Project in The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces. Both the book and the accompanying film were instantly labeled classics, and launched a mini-revolution in the planning and study of public spaces. They have since become standard texts, and appear on syllabi and reading lists in urban planning, sociology, environmental design, and architecture departments around the world.
Project for Public Spaces, which grew out of Holly’s Street Life Project and continues his work around the world, has acquired the reprint rights to Social Life, with the intent of making it available to the widest possible audience and ensuring that the Whyte family receive their fair share of Holly’s legacy.
Summary: This book is great
Rating: 5
I read this book for school... but I would recommend it to anyone interested in the subject matter. (Reading it, I was always wandering around talking to friends and family about it). The book is short, but there is a lot to think about. :)
Summary: How urban areas work
Rating: 5
Years ago I watched an episode of NOVA on PBS on William H. Whyte that explained the background and purpose and accomplishments of his project to study what makes urban spaces in cities work. I sat there riveted, as he methodically and carefully unveiled a vast range of urban phenomena of which I had hitherto been unaware.
The background to his study was this: following the enormous success of the plaza of Mies van der Rohe's Seagram Building in New York in the mid-1950s, the city began to give tax breaks to new buildings that included plazas as part of their design. At the Seagram, people found in the heart of the city a marvelous space in which to congregate, to eat lunch, to sit and talk, and just enjoy a few minutes away from the office. While the idea of providing an incentive to new plaza development was unquestionably a great aim, a small problem developed: many of the new plazas were, unlike that of the Seagram, just dreadful. Cold, austere, people unfriendly, unwelcoming, many of them seemed designed more to keep people away than give them a place to enjoy themselves. This is where Whyte comes in. New York City was concerned with codifying what made a successful plaza, and giving tax breaks based more on the kind of plaza being built, rather than any kind of plaza at all. So, Whyte was charged with discovering precisely what goes into a successful urban space. The results of his exhaustive study are summed up in this brilliant monograph.
Whyte took cameras and began filming all kinds of urban spots in plazas and parks, and on regular sidewalks. As a result of this study, he was able first to analyze how urban spaces work, and secondly on the basis of this make, to make suggestions as to how to make successful spaces. He discusses the enormous value and utility of using fountains or falling water both to provide aesthetic benefits and to create a barrier of white noise between an urban space and the street. He shows the value of having a variety of steps and levels in providing fun places to sit. He allays the fears of those who are afraid that a plaza will attract undesirables by showing that the homeless tend to go where other people are not. He displays the patterns of traffic on sidewalks and the function that street food can play. Whyte comes across not merely as a sophisticated urban planner and social scientist: he is revealed as a visionary.
I think that this ought to be a must-read for anyone with any curiosity about cities and the potential they possess for a vibrant and exciting social life. Here in my own city of Chicago, I constantly lament that Whyte's lessons go unheeded and unlearned. We Chicagoans take pride in how clean our downtown area is, but we possess very, very few plazas, instead having virtually all of our buildings coming all the way to the edge of the sidewalk. I lament that there are so few places in the Loop and the near North to sit at lunch, that so very, very little has been done along the river to make it people friendly, and that there are so few places to congregate. We have a gorgeous, inpirational skyline, but on the sidewalk level, things are different. I wish our city planners had more of Whyte's view of things.
Summary: A classic case study for urban design professionals
Rating: 5
Although the photographs are dated, the material is classic. This book is a must for anyone who is involved with design or review of open spaces. It shows how people use open space and identifies the common elements of successful spaces. While the elements all seem logical, the book shows how we often fly in the face of logic when using these spaces. The book focuses primarily on plazas and small parks in New York City, but includes a section for smaller cities with low rise buildings. The information can also be applied to parks in any size town. This book is a facinating case study in social ecology.

《公共领域的结构转型》的目的是分析“资产阶级公共领域（burgerlicheOffentlichkeit）。研究对象特别难以把握，这就对研究方法提出了挑战。首先，由于研究对象比较复杂，用单一某个学科的方法是难以奏效的。因此，我们必须把公共领域范畴放到传统“政治学”曾经关注的那样一个比较开阔的视野里加以探讨；①研究对象就其自身而言打破了社会科学各学科之间的界限。社会学和经济学、宪法学和政治学以及社会思想史等各学科一体化所带来的难题是很清楚的：从目前社会科学学科分化和专业化水平来看，没有谁能“掌握”多门学科，更不用说“掌握”所有学科了。