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In one view of the contemporary city, urban space is playful space-a realm of spontaneity where the restrictions of locale and time have been lifted to allow the free play of individual creativity. It is also an international mosaic in which diverse communities remind us of the ‘globalness’ of contemporary life.’This depiction of the urban experience is seductive and at moments even resonates with our experience, but it is also ironic. Beneath the surface, the signal qualities of the contemporary urban landscape are not playfulness but control, not spontaneity but manipulation, not interaction but separation. The need to manage urban space and particularly to separate different kinds of people in space is a pre-eminent consideration in contemporary urban design, matched only by the ever-present requirement to gratify the egos of developers. The soft images of spontaneity are used to disguise the hard reality of …