Davis - Living over the store: architecture and local urban life

This book has its origin on the streets of Manhattan where, during a walk in the summer of 2001, I realized that I was surrounded by buildings that had fascinated me for most of my life, but that I had never really stopped to think about. In New York, and in my travels, I was always attracted to the straightforward complexity of the historic mixed-use building, and saw in it the richness of the city and of urban life. This kind of building was not getting the attention and research it deserved but was passed over, in practice and scholarship, in favor of the building with a singular and less-mundane purpose.

Several things about these buildings always appealed to me. First was their spatial complexity, and the way different functions were deftly fitted into each other. Second was often a beautiful resolution of their faades. And there was often a four-squareness and ordinariness about the buildings, which appealed to that part of me that also liked subway cars and thinking about the people with brown shopping bags who rode in them, many of whom were going home to apartments located over stores.

But above all, perhaps, these buildings are purposeful. The story I have tried to write in this book is one that describes the shop/house as embedded in the social and economic life of the urban district, that recognizes its continuities across different cultures and historic periods, and that sees it not only as a historical curiosity but as a kind of building that has relevance for the future. As global urbanization continues, as there is an increasing need to (re-)discover sustainable forms of city life, and as the restructuring of economies continues, there is a growing need for urban and architectural forms that can flexibly accommodate innovation and enterprise at the grassroots.

So although this book includes historical descriptions of buildings in different cultures, and accounts of their transformation over time and geography, this is also a work of advocacy. One of my intentions is simply to understand a phenomenon that is one of the most ubiquitous in cities - that fact alone gives the study justification. But at the same time, as people continue to search for more connected ways of living in cities, the historical and cross-cultural evidence may provide one foundation for maintaining and reinterpreting these kinds of buildings.

Two years before she died, I was able to thank Jane Jacobs for her contributions to our urban future. The ideas in this book owe a lot to her work, and particularly to her common-sense way of observing the city - no less vital now than it was when she wrote The Death and Life of Great American Cities. Conversations with different people helped me develop these ideas. Matt Brown and I have talked extensively about the relationships between building types, urban morphology and local economic life, and are continuing this research. Tom Hubka has been a passionate and knowledgeable guide to American working-class housing, and more generally to the importance of including the most humble buildings in our view. John Rowell, Greg Brokaw and the staff of their firm have helped me understand the issues in contemporary mixed-use projects. And my friend and mentor Christopher Alexander helped me see the shop/house as an economic/social phenomenon at least as much as an architectural one.