Public places urban spaces: the dimensions of urban design: By Matthew Carmona, New York, NY, Routledge, 3rd edition, 2021, 690 pp., GBP £39.99 (paperback), ISBN 9781138067783

Exploring what constitutes ‘urban design’ has been at the heart of all three editions of Public Places Urban Spaces (2003, 2011, and 2021), each of which was published at the beginning of a new decade. The act of mapping knowledge inevitably engages with the dynamic contexts of that knowledge, as well as the researcher’s approach and mindset. In the last decade, the context of urban design has dramatically changed, and its content has overwhelmingly progressed. Meanwhile, the single author of the third edition – the previous editions were co-authored – has played an instrumental role in some of the most influential research projects in the discipline, often through his role as chair of the Place Alliance (www.placealliance.org.uk). The result is a third edition that is almost an entirely new book and, indeed, a much longer one too: with 672 pages compared to 394 in the second edition! The key changes are the generous inclusion of numerous new studies and a few changes to the book’s structure. Encouragingly, this third edition has a much simpler structure. Two new dimensions (Chapter 9 on Design Governance and Chapter 10 on Place Production) are added to the famous six dimensions of urban design previously introduced in earlier editions. The added dimensions replace the third part of the second edition on Implementing Urban Design. Perhaps this insinuates that implementation is an integrated part of urban design