![]() ![]() ![]() The city square may take on different identities at different times in history - or even in the course of one day, perhaps being a market by day and a place for lovers to stroll by night. Think Tahrir Square in Cairo in 2012 or Tiananmen Square in Beijing in 1989. ![]() Or it may mean a place where revolutions are born - and sometimes die. But on other days, it may mean coming together in common mourning, as in New York City’s Union Square after 9/11. On an ordinary day, that might just mean having lunch on a bench with other city residents. What they all share is that they are gathering places for the people: great democratic spaces where we come to be together. At the heart of many of those cities lie the public spaces we call squares - even though most are not in the shape of squares at all. We live in a unique period of human history and the history of urbanism: more than half of the global population now lives in cities. It imagines what Walter Benjamin might have written about New York, had he survived World War II. Then we re-air our 2015 interview with urban philosopher David Kishik about his book, The Manhattan Project. Her new book is titled City Squares: Eighteen Writers on the Spirit and Significance of Squares Around the World. We talk with Catie Marron about her celebration of the essential urban space, the city square. ![]()
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