City Squares: Eighteen Writers on the Spirit and Significance of Squares Around the World

by Catie Marron

In this important collection, eighteen renowned writers, including David Remnick, Zadie Smith, Rebecca Skloot, Rory Stewart, and Adam Gopnik evoke the spirit and history of some of the world’s most recognized and significant city squares, accompanied by illustrations from equally distinguished photographers.

Over half of the world’s citizens now live in cities, and this number is rapidly growing. At the heart of these municipalities is the square—the defining urban public space since the dawn of democracy in Ancient Greece. Each square stands for a larger theme in history: cultural, geopolitical, anthropological, or architectural, and each of the eighteen luminary writers has contributed his or her own innate talent, prodigious research, and local knowledge.

Divided into three parts: Culture, Geopolitics, History, headlined by Michael Kimmelman, David Remnick, and George Packer, this significant anthology shows the city square in new light. Jehane Noujaim, award-winning filmmaker, takes the reader through her return to Tahrir Square during the 2011 protest; Rory Stewart, diplomat and author, chronicles a square in Kabul which has come and gone several times over five centuries; Ari Shavit describes the dramatic changes of central Tel Aviv’s Rabin Square; Rick Stengel, editor, author, and journalist, recounts the power of Mandela’s choice of the Grand Parade, Cape Town, a huge market square to speak to the world right after his release from twenty-seven years in prison; while award-winning journalist Gillian Tett explores the concept of the virtual square in the age of social media.

This collection is an important lesson in history, a portrait of the world we live in today, as well as an exercise in thinking about the future. Evocative and compelling, City Squares will change the way you walk through a city.

Contributors include:
David Adjaye on Jemma e-Fnna, Marrakech • Anne Applebaum on Red Square, Moscow and Grand Market Square, Krakow • Chrystia Freeland on Euromaiden, Kiev • Adam Gopnik on Place des Vosges, Paris • Alma Guillermoprieto on Zocalo, Mexico City • Jehane Noujaim on Tahrir Square, Cairo • Evan Osnos on Tiananmen Square, Beijing • Andrew Roberts on Residential Squares, London • Elif Shafak on Taksim Square, Istanbul • Rebecca Skloot on American Town Squares • Ari Shavit on Rabin Square, Tel Aviv • Zadie Smith on the grand piazzas of Rome and Venice • Richard Stengel on Market Square, Grand Parade, Cape Town • Rory Stewart on Murad Khane, Kabul • Plus contributions by Gillian Tett, George Packer, David Remnick, and Michael Kimmelman; illustrations and photographs from renowned photographers, including: Thomas Struth, Philip Lorca di Corcia, and Josef Koudelka

Genres: Travel, Nonfiction, History, Cities, Urbanism, Essays, Architecture

304 pages, Paperback

First published April 12, 2016

About the author

Marron’s career has encompassed investment banking, magazine journalism,
public service, and book publishing. Catie Marron is the creator and editor of two
anthologies published by HarperCollins which explore the value and significance
of urban public spaces: City Squares, Eighteen Writers on the Spirit and Significance of
Squares Around the World (2016), and City Parks: Public Places, Private Thoughts (2013).
She is currently working on a third book for HarperCollins, which centers on how
gardens and the process of their creation enrich lives.

She is a trustee and Chair Emeritus of The New York Public Library, where she
was Chairman of the Board from 2004 to 2011. Marron is also a trustee of Friends
of the High Line, where she was also Board Chair, and a trustee of The
Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation.

Her first career was in investment banking, at Morgan Stanley and then at Lehman
Brothers. She then became Senior Features Editor at Vogue, where she has been a
contributing editor for twenty years. While writing her books, Marron launched
GoodCompanies, a curated, online guide to companies that strive to do good
while also making a profit. This venture was shaped in part by the success of
Treasure & Bond, a pop-up store that she co-founded with Nordstrom and Anna
Wintour in 2011. All of the store’s profits went to charities benefiting NYC
children.

Reviews

[Andrew · Rating 2 out of 5]

City Squares: Eighteen Writers on the Spirit and Significance of Squares Around the World is a collection of essays revolving around city squares and their importance to the social fabric of urban spaces. These essays cover a wide variety of topics in this field, centering on themes of personal and public spaces, urban renewal, social interactions, and art, to name a few. A large number of contributors have left their mark on this book, including famous author Zadie Smith, Polish/Russian scholar Anne Applebaum, and many more.

The topics in this book are varied and wide, although they all felt shallow to me. This book feels like a continuation of the Occupy movement (and this movement is indeed mentioned numerous times). The topics centre around themes that are largely urban, white collar, and professional. The authors are all journalists, authors, or left wing scholars/personalities, and there is little substance to what is written here. To be frank, this will be a short review, as I struggled to complete this book in its entirety.

On the positive side, this book does offer some interesting discourse in certain fields. One author writes about his experience trying to build a city square in war torn Kabul to increase residents ability to socialize, and to create an area focused on relaxation, education and other public institutions. However, this space was taken over by the more private and secluded nature of Kabul urbanism - as courtyards slowly invaded private space, and the city overtook his attempt to paratroop in foreign/external practices. This was one of the more interesting pieces in the book, and in my opinion well criticized the others. This book is filled with considerations and musings on topics that seem rather bourgeois, Liberal, and overly western. Seeing as many of the locales are not (Kabul, Moscow, Ankara, Israel, etc.), this seems to detract from any actual study or discourse of local squares and city centres, and focuses more on the whimsical nature of the authors particular musings on art, architecture, and so on. Other topics I found interesting included private vs. public in a city, and city squares as centres of public political discourse. The rest of the topics I found to be rather bland and meaningless. I was largely disappointed in this book personally, although this may come down to personal taste. There is certainly something of interest for many readers in this book, and it is an interesting and well laid out text on an interesting subject. However, I felt it was not my cup of tea.

[Caleb Liu · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a wonderfully conceived and beautifully designed book. The concept is simple but alluring get 16 writers to write about 16 famous squares, using these essays as a frame to examine the political, social, cultural and of course historical significance of the city square. It is an alluring look at how city squares can become enormously powerful symbols not just of cities but nations - sites of not just jingoistic nationalism but protest.

The book works partly on the basis of the strength of the writing and the best essays were deeply personal: Rory Stewart writing about his attempts to recreate a public space in Afghanistan; Avi Shalit writing about Rabin square in Tel Aviv sterile and symbolic; a Mexican writer sharing her experiences of the main square in Mexico City. Some were of course notable for the expertise of the writers: Anne Applebaum on Russia; Evan Osmos on China; Adam Gopnik on Paris.

If I could have one complaint it would be the lack of more local and personal voices. As good as Osmos is on the historical significance of Tiananmen I would have loved to hear a young Chinese protester talk about the significance of the square to them. The predominance of Western voices even in writing about non-Western places is a problem but thankfully not fatal as most of the writers are deeply immersed in their subject.

Each essay also came with beautiful and very well chosen photos that also played a crucial role in helping to illuminate the squares. The overall book design and the quality paper made it a joy to read and own. All in all, definitely worth getting.

[Lisa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Beautiful and thoughtful meditations on city squares. Sort of indulgent for the travelers among us. :)

[Nadiya · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was an interesting idea for a book. The execution however was rather weak.

[Matt Chester · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've always been interested in the layouts of cities, the contrast between old and new, how one would go about designing a city from scratch and how that differs from organically evolved cities, and the general masses of people living in on area-- the the point I sometimes question whether I should have studied that more in my education. This book does a great job on touching on many of these aspects of urban design, centered on the 'city square' and how it affects and shapes a city's culture and how the culture comes back and shapes the square.

The main themes in this book are how squares have always been around and always had a political tilt-- both in the democratic sense of people protesting and overthrowing those in power or the converse where dictatorships utilize the squares to demonstrate their military might over the people. It's a story that's been told 1,000 different ways throughout various lands and times. This book does a good job of going through varied different countries, eras, and cultures and hands the reigns on writing about those squares to different authors with personal connections to them. The downside to this is that sometimes the authors seem to assume a base knowledge about a specific era of history that I didn't always have, but their expert insights and firsthand experiences were worth the momentary catching up I always felt I had to do.

Some interesting other tidbits, in no particular order, I made notes of:
- Social media is the new virtual square, and that's both exciting and scary. Physical squares as a means of gathering people were structured and evolved over many many years, but with cyberspace being the new place for people to rally around a single cause the question arises-- who controls the architecture of that square? And does it help unite us or are we only digitally discussing with people who agree and shouting insults at those who don't?
- Many times dictators have used the square to demonstrate their strength, but time and again it becomes apparent that they don't realize the danger squares have on their unquestioned power.
- A square is porous and has a focal point, it is not where people come to escape a city (like a park) but rather where they go to be inside of it and see the hustle and bustle around them outside the square.
- The 21st century is the first urban century, where people are moving downtown in droves for the pleasures and benefits of culture exchange, walkable streets, parks, and public squares.
- The miracle of cities is that they exist both in the past and in the now, and a public square is key to that.
- "In democratic cities, political life takes place mainly in Houses of Parliament, government offices, courtrooms, polling places, and Twitter, not in city squares. Great European squares are now magnets for tourists and locals to be out in the open and take in the human scene. People in Beijing, Tehran, Cairo, or Baghdad might regard this absence of public debate and action as a luxury."

[Kes · Rating 4 out of 5]

I loved the way the essays described City Squares and their impact on public life. It's divided thematically, but the common threads are briefly:

1. Squares as a place for public displays (intermittent but intense social action) vs squares as a place for public relaxation.

2. When squares are used as a place for public protests, their use tends to be sporadic. But they do provide an easy place to organise.

3. Who builds squares and has an interest in maintaining them? How often do private interests intrude and recolonise the square (see Taksim Square and Djemaa El-Fnaa)? And how does that apply to digital squares?

Brief summaries of the essays are:

Part One: Culture: Power of the Place

This section felt rather nostalgic in describing public squares and their history. Rory Stewart's essay on Kabul's square deals with the history of the square and how private interests tend to come back to colonise the square. Perhaps it's a function of the culture - as he observes that people usually stick to the shelter of the old streets. Adam Gopnik's essay on Place Des Vosges (in Paris) talks about the two types of squares which he identifies as the declamatory and the domestic. He suggests that the latter is a shared garden, which he lovingly describes as the Place Des Vosges: We see its shadowy arcades and hear the twilight sound of heels on granite, we recall children playing on the slide in the inner park beneath the plane trees, and imagine how, centuries before, horses would be put silently through their paces in the sand.

Anne Applebaum describes the Red Square in Moscow and the Grand Market Square in Karkow. I loved the vivid description of history:

The soldiers marched past Stalin across the square - and then kept marching stright back to the front, back to blood and death. I first saw Red Square in the summer, but in truth it makes the deepest impression in winter, when it more clearly evokes that moment. When empty of people and covered in snow, it most vividly evokes the wide-open spaces of the Russian east: the steppe, the taiga, the tundra, and the conquering horsemen who have roamed across them.

I wasn't that keen on Zadie Smith's description on Rome and Venice: though the writing is lovely, it felt more like a reminiscence rather than an essay. David Adjaye's writing on Djemaa El-Fnaa, Marrakech explicitly views the square through an architect's eyes, remarking on how people use the space according to distinctive local patterns.

Part Two: Geopolitics: Strength in Numbers

This section deals with the gathering of people in a public square. We start with Jehane Noujaim's essay on Tahrir Square in Cairo, written during the Arab Spring:

We often see the greatest hits of change. We see Martin Luther King, Jr., lead a march on Washington; we see Nelson Mandela freeing South Africa. But we don't see the process of change. We don't experience the agony of King's family over the years, and we don't spend twenty-seven years in prison with Mandela. In the square, I saw the quiet, determined, and relentless fight for change.

Change doesn't happen overnight. One speech doesn't change things. Other movements have taken a very long time. But a certain consciousness is what has been found and what will grow. The events of the square will be a reference point. They will be the lost-and-found bag. Ahmed found his camera and, like many others of his generation, found his voice in that square. That moment is not lost. The square formed, and will continue to form, the consciousness of an entire generation.

(This quote reminded me of New York 2140, where the citizen talks about the process of enacting systemic change as well.)

Ari Shavit writes on Rabin Square in Tel Aviv and how the square is a void:

But Rabin Square is a sterile zone. It does not say anything; nor does it tell anything. It neither consoles the heart nor lifts the spirit. It is barren. So the protest rallies that gather here now and again are also, in some sense, sterile. The protesters here are not standing across from the White House or 10 Downing Street or the prime minister's residence in Jerusalem. They are not marching on the Pentagon, or surrounding Westminster, or massing at the Knesset. All they are doing is gathering at the food of the terrace of an unimportant municipal building demarcated by nondescript residential blocks. All they are doing is standing on the beige granulite tiles and waiting for the helicopters from the evening news to document them and estimate their number and report that Rabin Square is again overflowing with protesters. even when they come out in anguish, their anguish has no address. They do not expect to be heard. This is why they gather in a banal plaza, surrounded by banal buildings, and shout out banal exclamations against a banal political adversary whose hold on power is tenuous at best.

Elif Shafak writes on Taksim Square, Istanbul - and the process of protecting the square amidst gentrification. Evan Osnos writes on Tiananmen Square and his writing tends to focus on the crackdown on Tiananmen Square. This is not a new topic, and his thoughts on it treaded the same ground. I found the parts where he talks about the hutong off Tiananmen more interesting - those too, could serve as public squares on their own.

Chrystia Freeland writes about Euromaidan, Kiev and the protests therein. I loved that he observes that during the protests on the Maidan, the most poplar search term in Ukraine that year was "Molotov cocktail". I thought that his description of the DigitalMaidan that provided online support added another layer to the concept of the square lending its name to organising.

Part Three: History: Influence on Humanity

I loved the introduction by George Packer, who talks about how squares are planned absences. As he observes:

City squares seem to be waiting for a crowd to fill them up - to assume a collective character and confer a public identity on private individuals. They possess a theatrical quality, as if the square is a stage and everyone in it a performer, even if the assigned role is that of an audience member. ... Squares are places where people go to shape an idea of society itself. For this reason, they are contested spaces.

Richard Stengel then talks about the Grand Parade in Cape Town - the day Mandela was released. Unlike the other examples in the book, Mandela's speech is raised as bridge building between two communities. Andrew Roberts writes about residential squares in London and deals with the class changes and associations of these squares over time. Alma Guillermoprieto writes about Zocalo in Mexico City and how full of history it is. Ann Beatie writes about the crowd and the life of Harvard Square, Boston.

Finishing off the book, Gillian Tett provides what is perhaps the most interesting essay of this book by talking about the Virtual Square (places where people gather online) and Hacker Square (which is a physical location). I loved the description of virtual squares - like public squares, "our public places are where we swap ideas, display out identities, interact with humans - and, above all, define and create social groups." However, as Tett points out, "most people give little thought to the question of how these meeting places are designed."

I loved how thought-provoking this book was. Very worth reading.

[S'hi · Rating 4 out of 5]

with parallels to my Picnic Diaries work, this book looks at the public space for celebration marketing exchanges and political discontent. It is now a stage more easily projected internationally than any other time in history yet Australian conversations seem to be about comparing the fireworks of new year between Sydney Harbour and along the Melbourne Yarra and Docklands precincts. These are often people of Italian descent who seek to have a piazza in every locality and yet there is no real conversation - only toxic put downs of people who seek discourse and understanding of all our differences of opinion and backgrounds toward harmonious futures. The question has to be faced about how we respect each other privately so that when we share publicly difference of opinion and experience sits where it sits without having to push anyone else aside as less or not relevant or whatever, because obviously even bad attitudes can be changed only through discourse rather than silence. Rather than appropriate (to take over someone's territory) we need to be appropriate (in right relationship of time and place and perspective) by stating the little we know as an invitation to be broadened not flattened. Even God seems to have got it wrong sometimes - even if only as an example that it can happen to anyone. To "be on the square" or "meet in the round" are phrases that give different perspectives just as those within these photographs will have experienced differently than those looking at them. Time and distance also expand or contract views. Where we stand can alter how we sound, or how sound we are. The journey through these pages helps clarify many of these ideas and perspectives.

[Milo Bitters · Rating 4 out of 5]

I liked this passage
“We’re all familiar with the way we navigate familiar areas: We look for the landmarks and at the same time we want to think the place is “ours,” that we have some information, or memory, or anecdote or some unstated desire about a place—perhaps unstated even to ourselves—that makes it both public and personal, both real and exposed, yet still private.
“Either perception impinges on the other, but that’s another thing we’re familiar with: not having to reconcile our daily tuned-out movement down a busy sidewalk, or through a park, or a square, with the same place that sometimes appears in our dreams; the place we can see as being entirely different when we return after dark. The dynamic changes: the light affects your mood and perceptions. There’s no simple description of place- unless we tune our contractions and ignore inherent mystery.

There are just a few types of squares in the world—most typologies recognizable in just a few seconds—and I think that that in itself is amazing! In then we rally, or avoid, self-reflect, or assimilate, buy, or sell, perform, or watch, and live, or die. Of course squares are the stage for events that shape the world. I love that we humans have always needed them and always will.

You all need to spend more time in city squares! Lest we fall used to this little digital square of Goodreads where we briefly glance and observe before continuing staring ahead as we briskly trot through

[Rrlgrrl · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was one of those books where it listed some of the places I have visited, and I was curious to read what other peoples impressions were of those places. The photographs are lovely, but are without a caption, so it's hard to locate, especially within the narrative of each essay. Some of the essays were great to read, but some were hard to get into. The most interesting essay was on "Hacker Square", and the idea that kids these days don't necessarily roam out in parks and public spaces like I did as a kid. Rather, they roam around in virtual public places, like social media platforms.

[eve · Rating 4 out of 5]

This would make such a lovely coffee table book gift for someone who loves history and travel. A languid trip across time & space - window views into the world’s history through a tour of its significant squares, from Beijing to Cairo, London to Boston. Lastly I love how cyberspace and social media is being considered as a virtual square, replacing the neighbourhood square for today’s generation of children. Very insightful and comfortable read in the short essay format. Hidden find in the art library!

[Akshat · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some essays worked for me and some did not. It's like reading a New Yorker Cities special since most of the contributors also write for the New Yorker. The categorization of essays into history, culture, etc just does not seem to make sense and perhaps may limited the author's ability while writing assuming the classifications were shared in advance. Also the book lacks Asian voices which in turn would have helped make the collection more diverse.

[Lucas · Rating 3 out of 5]

An uneven collection of essays on an interesting topic. Adored the essays on Kabul, Tel Aviv, Beijing, Cape Town, and Facebook's Hacker Square.

[Serena Marron · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was absolutely incredible. Amazing essays by a great group of writers and strong photos paired with them. Definitely recommend. :)

[Kellen Denny · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 - the essays that were good were GOOD. I enjoyed learning about squares around the world, specifically, Kabul, Moscow, Krakow, Tel Aviv, Cape Town, and Hacker Square.

[Terry · Rating 4 out of 5]

Rory Stewart, whose book The Places In Between I commented upon a few years back, has a piece in this collection. Stewart seems to carry the old Empire around on his back. In his essay, he writes about trying to impose a European style square upon the people in a section of Kabul. The title of his essay, "Resisting the Square," probably is sufficient as to describing his success.
In spite of Stewart's gambit very early in the collection, the essays are generally educational (not pedantic) on issues of architecture and society, especially where the two meet in the political sphere. They tend to describe what is already there, how it came to be there, its significance to the people who affect it and to the effect it has upon the people of a city and even a nation.

[Craig1colo · Rating 3 out of 5]

Conceptually this could have been a great book. Get a variety of writers with a variety of backgrounds to weigh in on the place and role of squares and public space like it in our history, culture and politics. Unfortunately this book is a bit too western in its focus and that makes it a bit of a disappointment. But it is still worth a read for some of the best essays. Particularly those on Mexico City (Zocolo), Palestine, Afghanistan are good enough to read on their own.

Rebuilding the commons is a great project, and this set of essays provides some interesting thoughts on what makes them work. Perhaps the biggest lesson is that those squares that are organic to the community and its culture will be most likely to become alive. Not cosmic, but not trivial either.

[Kate · Rating 4 out of 5]

Most of the essays are very good; some written by some of my fav writers: Chrystia Freeland, George Packer and Evan Osnos. A few essays were mediocre - but the rest make up for it. Glad to have the pictures, but I would have liked a map or visual overview of some of the squares. I know that isn't necessarily the point, but still .. I always like a map.

There were no Canadian squares in the book, but I did think that an analysis of Nathan Philip Square after the death of Jack Layton would have been a good addition.

Interested to read Marron's earlier book: City Parks

[Phoebe Baker · Rating 5 out of 5]

An enjoyable review of places where citizens have enjoyed or not freedoms to go about their lives. And ends w thought provoking assessment of the virtual community squares created by Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. Where kids are not free to physically roam tenor communities they gather at these sites..

[Sarah · Rating 3 out of 5]

Such a unique concept for a book. Eighteen squares around the world covered by eighteen different writers in essays that capture the spirit and significance of the city square and those that gather in them.

[Liam · Rating 4 out of 5]

"The miracle of cities is that they are both there then and here now. A public square proves itself adaptable to a new time. We are lucky to live in old cities." (Adam Gopnik, 48)

"The most popular search term in Ukraine that year was 'Molotov cocktail.'" (Chrystia Freeland, 175)

[Terry Pearson · Rating 3 out of 5]

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[L Jasmine KIM · Rating 5 out of 5]

An exquisite collection of essays, public, private, intimate, from some of the best writers and literary thinkers about where and how we live...