wilderness and urban texture

Since the earliest beginnings of civilization, mankind has strived to form urban space by limiting its outlines and bringing a system of order to the wilderness of nature. Thus street and place mark the public space clearly bound by built mass, the enclosure of the more private space.

In many modern cities of the United States the urban counterpart of street and place the continuous building mass is largely missing. Colin Rowe describes this phenomena as the unpleasant condition of urban texture of the modern city. If we want to fix that urban wilderness of the American City, we have to redraw its outlines and redefine its spaces.