There is a curious usage os "spaces" that seems to be incleqasingly
common, especially in academic writing -- the uses of "spaces" for
"places" or "areas".
Where I would say "urban areas" or "cities", these academics write
"urban spaces".
When I hear or read "urban spaces" my first picture is of parks,
playgrounds, sportsfields etc -- parts of cities with no buildings,
but recently people seem to be using it to refer to built-up areas as
well.
Have any others come across this usage?
Any thoughts about it?
There is a curious usage os "spaces" that seems to be incleqasingly
common, especially in academic writing -- the uses of "spaces" for
"places" or "areas".
Where I would say "urban areas" or "cities", these academics write
"urban spaces".
When I hear or read "urban spaces" my first picture is of parks,
playgrounds, sportsfields etc -- parts of cities with no buildings,
but recently people seem to be using it to refer to built-up areas as
well.
Have any others come across this usage?
Any thoughts about it?
There is a curious usage os "spaces" that seems to be incleqasingly
common, especially in academic writing -- the uses of "spaces" for
"places" or "areas".
Where I would say "urban areas" or "cities", these academics write
"urban spaces".
When I hear or read "urban spaces" my first picture is of parks,
playgrounds, sportsfields etc -- parts of cities with no buildings,
but recently people seem to be using it to refer to built-up areas as
well.
Have any others come across this usage?
Any thoughts about it?
There is a curious usage os "spaces" that seems to be incleqasingly
common, especially in academic writing -- the uses of "spaces" for
"places" or "areas".
Where I would say "urban areas" or "cities", these academics write
"urban spaces".
When I hear or read "urban spaces" my first picture is of parks,
playgrounds, sportsfields etc -- parts of cities with no buildings,
but recently people seem to be using it to refer to built-up areas as
well.
Have any others come across this usage?
Any thoughts about it?
----
Steve Hayes from Tshwane, South Africa
Web: http://www.khanya.org.za/stevesig.htm
Blog: http://methodius.blogspot.com
E-mail - see web page, or parse: shayes at dunelm full stop org full stop uk
There is a curious usage os "spaces" that seems to be
incleqasingly common, especially in academic writing -- the uses
of "spaces" for "places" or "areas".
Where I would say "urban areas" or "cities", these academics write
"urban spaces".
When I hear or read "urban spaces" my first picture is of parks,
playgrounds, sportsfields etc -- parts of cities with no
buildings, but recently people seem to be using it to refer to
built-up areas as well.
Have any others come across this usage?
Any thoughts about it?
Le 22/08/2026 |a 04:51, Steve Hayes a |-crit :
There is a curious usage os "spaces" that seems to be incleqasingly
common, especially in academic writing -- the uses of "spaces" for
"places" or "areas".
Where I would say "urban areas" or "cities", these academics write
"urban spaces".
When I hear or read "urban spaces" my first picture is of parks,
playgrounds, sportsfields etc -- parts of cities with no buildings,
but recently people seem to be using it to refer to built-up areas as
well.
Have any others come across this usage?
Any thoughts about it?
'Urban space' is certainly recent:
<https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=urban+space%2Curban+spaces&year_start=1800&year_end=2022&corpus=en&smoothing=3>
I have the impression that 'urban space' is pretty elastic, can apply to
a single park or a whole city. An 'urban area', on the other hand, is >delimited by areas that are not urban (sea or countryside). The Collins >gives examples of 'urban space', but no definition:
<https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/urban-space>
There is a curious usage os "spaces" that seems to be incleqasinglyI often hear it used in a non-physical sense.
common, especially in academic writing -- the uses of "spaces" for
"places" or "areas".
There is a curious usage os "spaces" that seems to be incleqasingly
common, especially in academic writing -- the uses of "spaces" for
"places" or "areas".
Where I would say "urban areas" or "cities", these academics write
"urban spaces".
When I hear or read "urban spaces" my first picture is of parks,
playgrounds, sportsfields etc -- parts of cities with no buildings,
but recently people seem to be using it to refer to built-up areas as
well.
Have any others come across this usage?
Any thoughts about it?
Space (in Urban Studies at least) generally refers to the physical >characteristics of a town, city etc.
RJH <patchmoney@gmx.com> wrote or quoted:
Space (in Urban Studies at least) generally refers to the physical
characteristics of a town, city etc.
| The concept of architecture as "space" was invented by German art his-
| torians and theorists in the late 19th century. They used the German
| word "Raum" (which encompasses room, space, and scope) to revolution-
| ize design theory.
|
| When German architects and critics (such as those from the Bauhaus
| school) fled to Great Britain and the United States in the 1930s,
| they translated Raum into the English word "space".
|
| Architects like Frank Lloyd Wright manipulated space by creating
| compression points (low ceilings opening into grand volumes), while
| Mies van der Rohe declared that "architecture is the will of an epoch
| translated into space."
|
| Sigfried Giedion's influential 1941 book, "Space, Time and Architec-
| ture", solidified this vocabulary. Giedion linked architectural his-
| tory to scientific breakthroughs (like Einstein's space-time theory),
| arguing that modern materials like reinforced concrete and plate glass
| finally allowed architects to treat space as a continuous, weightless
| fluid.
|
| Details on that German development
|
| August Schmarsow (1893) In his seminal lecture, Schmarsow argued
| that the essence of architecture was not the walls or the roof, but
| the "intuition of space" (Raumgestaltung). He claimed architecture is
| defined by the interior space that humans occupy and perceive through
| movement.
|
| Gottfried Semper He proposed that the earliest architectural act was
| not building a solid wall, but weaving a textile screen to enclose a
| spatial volume. The wall was merely the dressing; the enclosed "Raum"
| was the goal.
Lines marked with "| " come from my editing, where I start by writing--
prompts for the chatbot and then edit the generated texts and format
them for USENET. Chatbot might make mistakes and misrepresent or hal-
lucinate facts.
There is a curious usage os "spaces" that seems to be incleqasinglySpaceX ("space ex") just went IPO!!! :)
common, especially in academic writing -- the uses of "spaces" for
"places" or "areas".
Where I would say "urban areas" or "cities", these academics write
"urban spaces".
Lines marked with "| " come from my editing, where I start by writing
prompts for the chatbot and then edit the generated texts and format
them for USENET. Chatbot might make mistakes and misrepresent or hal-
lucinate facts.
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