Streetcorner

A streetcorner or street corner is the location which lies adjacent to an intersection of two roads. Such locations are important in terms of local planning and commerce, usually being the locations of street signs and lamp posts, as well as being a prime spot to locate a business due to visibility and accessibility from traffic going along either of the adjacent streets. One source suggests that this is so for a facility combining two purposes, like an automotive showroom that provides repair services as well: "For all these types of buildings, property on a street corner is most desirable as separate entrances are most easily provided for."[1]

Due to this visibility, street-corners are the choice location for activities ranging from panhandling[2] to prostitution[3] to protests[4] to petition signature drives, hence the term "street-corner politics".[5] This makes street-corners a good location to observe human activity, for purposes of learning what environmental structures best fit that activity.[6] Sidewalks at street corners tend to be rounded, rather than coming to a point, for ease of traffic making turns at the intersection.

This is an image of an urban street-corner in Camden, New Jersey.
A street-corner in Tomaszów Mazowiecki, Poland

References

  1. ^ Eugene Clute, Russell Fenimore Whitehead, Kenneth Reid, Progressive Architecture, Volume 3, page 4, 1922.
  2. ^ David Levinson, Encyclopedia of Homelessness, Volume 2, page 436, 2004.
  3. ^ Elizabeth Pisani, The Wisdom of Whores: Bureaucrats, Brothels, and the Business of AIDS, page 52, 2008.
  4. ^ Ira Katznelson, City Trenches: Urban Politics and the Patterning of Class in the United States, page 84, 1981.
  5. ^ Peter H. Argersinger, Representation and Inequality in Late Nineteenth-Century America: The Politics of Apportionment, page 55, 2012.
  6. ^ Jon Lang, Urban Design: The American Experience, page 310, 1994.
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