Fortunately this book is available new or used online, as it is a valuable exploration of the way human beings in different times and cultures have interpreted and used space, and of the effects of both appropriate and inappropriate spatial configurations in urban cultures. In fact, it was author Edward T. Hall's specific intention that the findings examined in this book be applied to urban design.
Mr. Hall (who coined the term "proxemics" to describe this field of study) begins with an overview of "distance regulation in animals," to quote one chapter heading, and the effects of crowding and spatial arrangements on social and non-social, territorial and non-territorial animals. After collating the findings of numerous studies, including several he managed himself, to do so, he examines the physiological bases of perception in both animals and humans before moving on to what he calls the "anthropology of space," that is, the different ways humans have devised to arrange, demarcate, and exploit space throughout our history.
As he approaches the modern era in his narrative, he deploys specific examples of spatial conventions, mostly derived from his own studies. These focus on US, Northern European, Southern European, Arabic, and Japanese cultures, as well as describing various adaptations and misadaptions of space devised by or imposed upon different subgroupings of US residents, including not only immigrants but internal immigrants, such as southern blacks who moved north.
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