Berkeley Planning Journal

Concern for the design and use of city streets and sidewalks has long been a preoccupation of city planners and urban designers. Middle class reformers of the late 19th and early 20th century, from whom the roots of our profession spring, sought to cleanse industrial cities of their physical and social “maladies.” Later, the modernists attempted to design human interaction out of the street altogether, turning the city in on itself and the street over to the automobile. By the 1960s, Jane Jacobs and others were calling for reclamation of city streets and sidewalks and helped planners recognize the value of an active public realm. In Sidewalks, Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris and Renia Ehrenfeucht sensitively continue this long- running discussion of the proper role of sidewalks for creating a diverse and just urban environment.