Urban buildings that combine commercial and residential uses have been found throughout history in cities all over the world. These are the shophouses of China and Japan, corner stores with apartments above in American small towns, merchants' houses in northern Europe, apartment buildings with shops at their ground floors in cities in Europe and America, English terraced houses where the front room has been converted or extended into a shop. Although these buildings make up much of the built fabric of cities, no comprehensive book on them has been written, until now. Providing a historical and cross-cultural account of these buildings, the book describes how twentieth-century cities developed to exclude such buildings, and offers a series of contemporary initiatives that are intended to bring back this archetype of the mixed-use building. An important feature of this kind of building is its flexibility to different family circumstances and economic change. The book describes how this adaptability is useful to people who are part of the "new economy" of self-employed "knowledge-worker" entrepreneurs as well as to people who are at the lower end of the economic ladder, who find economic benefit in being able to combine business and family life. Architectural history and analysis, economic understandings of the city, and contemporary architectural and urban practice are combined here to provide a comprehensive look at the architecture, function and meaning of one of the most common buildings of historic and contemporary cities. It will be of interest to practicing architects and planners, architectural scholars, and students and others with particular interests in urban vernacular architecture, sustainable urbanism, and how our buildings and cities can best support the everyday lives of the people who inhabit them.

Book jacket.