What is an avenue? When and why did avenues emerge in the landscape?When and how did avenues become urban routes? Which physical featuresrelated early seventeenth century avenues to their nineteenth centurydescendants? The research involved in this book set out to answerthese questions. The existing literature regarding avenues was eithertoo general, neglecting a thorough examination of case studies, or too particular, focusing on individual traits. In this book, the focus is shifted from individual cases to urban type, nevertheless,conclusions are grounded on the detailed comparative analysis of three case studies to avoid generalist preconceptions. The three casestudies chosen were the Avenue des Champs-Élysées, Regent Street, andAvenida da Liberdade. The detailed account of why and how the threechosen case studies were commissioned, conceived and built provides an illustrated sequence of how the avenue, as an urban type, was used in the seventeenth, nineteenth and twentieth centuries. This sequencechallenges two fundamental ideas. Firstly, as may have been guessed by those who have walked through Regent Street, it challenges theunderstanding of an avenue as a tree-lined pathway, replacing it by abroader definition of the avenue as a public space conceived tophysically merge landscape and city. Secondly, instead of reducing the avenue to a type created by enlightened absolute power, as is toooften suggested, this book presents the nineteenth-century avenue as a type emerging from a society moved by economic and politicalliberalism. In the end, the avenue is depicted as one more tool in the modern path, designed to address societal challenges by mergingprogressive reasoning with memories of a past, which must beremembered but never relived.
What is an avenue? When and why did avenues emerge in the landscape?When and how did avenues become urban routes? Which physical featuresrelated early seventeenth century avenues to their nineteenth centurydescendants? The research involved in this book set out to answerthese questions. The existing literature regarding avenues was eithertoo general, neglecting a thorough examination of case studies, or too particular, focusing on individual traits. In this book, the focus is shifted from individual cases to urban type, nevertheless,conclusions are grounded on the detailed comparative analysis of three case studies to avoid generalist preconceptions. The three casestudies chosen were the Avenue des Champs-Élysées, Regent Street, andAvenida da Liberdade. The detailed account of why and how the threechosen case studies were commissioned, conceived and built provides an illustrated sequence of how the avenue, as an urban type, was used in the seventeenth, nineteenth and twentieth centuries. This sequencechallenges two fundamental ideas. Firstly, as may have been guessed by those who have walked through Regent Street, it challenges theunderstanding of an avenue as a tree-lined pathway, replacing it by abroader definition of the avenue as a public space conceived tophysically merge landscape and city. Secondly, instead of reducing the avenue to a type created by enlightened absolute power, as is toooften suggested, this book presents the nineteenth-century avenue as a type emerging from a society moved by economic and politicalliberalism. In the end, the avenue is depicted as one more tool in the modern path, designed to address societal challenges by mergingprogressive reasoning with memories of a past, which must beremembered but never relived.
