Rez de Ville: The Urban Ground Floor as a Project for City Design

Although skylines and silhouettes of high-rise structures have become emblematic of global metropoles, cities are mostly experienced along their ground floors, their rez de ville. The urban ground floor is the most visible and the most obvious interface of a city. The structure of streets and public spaces, as well as the privately controlled building interiors that line streets and extend the publicly occupiable realm deep into building interiors, courtyards and alleys, form a city’s greatest collective asset – one which turns urban components into a circuit, pieces of a puzzle into a collage, inhabitants into a society, and architecture into urbanism. The blurring of public and private space imbues the rez de ville with a sense of civicness, creating dynamic places where the social compact of urban life is performed, experienced, and remembered.

The term rez de ville defies direct translation into English, as it represents more than just an ‘urban ground floor’. Unlike the term ‘ground floor’, which often evokes a strictly physical surface or level of a building, rez de ville refers to the intersection where a building meets the city, the juncture between private and public realms. This concept expands the idea of a floor beyond its traditional vertical plane, blurring boundaries between physical terrain and civic space. Scholars have grappled with how to translate rez de ville in a way that captures its dual nature: as both the literal ground and the spatial threshold (or the multiple thresholds) where urban life unfolds. The French word rez, used in terms like rez-de-chaussée (ground floor) and rez-de-jardin (garden level), suggests something that is not merely a physical level, but an essential point of contact, surface, or interface. In this sense, rez transcends its architectural roots to convey an abstract idea of spatial and social thresholds – where buildings, landscapes, and city life intersect and engage with each other. It is through this nuanced use of rez that rez de ville reflects the multilayered relationship between architecture and urbanism, standing for more than just a literal floor, but rather a dynamic meeting point within the city's structure: its social, cultural, and functional interface.

While parts of the urban ground floor have been widely studied, the holistic space of the rez de ville has not yet become a focus of urban design and planning scholarship, practice, and policy in its own right. Perhaps it should. The rez de ville is central to both people’s experience of their own daily habitat and as a physical subject matter for urban theories. It is an observable artifact with properties that form the basis of urban sociological, economic, and planning theories. In this sense, the urban ground floor constitutes what Galison has called a ‘trading zone’: an intersectional domain where different observations and theories about cities can be negotiated, and where the quotidian perceptions and scholarly interpretations of the built environment meet, conflict, and sometimes agree (Galison, 1999). The responsibility for its maintenance is correspondingly fragmented between many individuals, institutions, and communities (Ben-Joseph and Szold, 2005; Talen, 2012).

This intersectionality is evident when we consider how various scholars approach the study of urban spaces. An urban economist, for instance, who examines business location patterns, rents, or land values, gathers data by observing parcels along city streets. Similarly, an urban planner interested in socio-economic inequities bases their observational data on what we find in buildings along these networks of city streets. Even if such data are abstracted to higher-order numbers and data points in the Census, the rez de ville is where land uses, demographics, and property values connect to each other, to the city, and to urban society. Urban design scholarship that focuses on people’s experience and understanding of cities – such as the work of Kevin Lynch, Jane Jacobs, William Whyte, Jan Gehl, Venturi and Scott Brown, Christopher Alexander, Colin Rowe and Fred Koetter, Peter and Alison Smithson, and Aldo Rossi, to name a few – is largely rooted in first hand experiences of walking along the rez de ville and making sense of such experiences (Lynch, 1960; Jacobs, 1961; Whyte, 1980; Gehl, 1987; Venturi et al,, 1972; Alexander, 1987; Rowe and Koetter, 1978; Smithson and Smithson, 2005; Rossi, 1984). For example, what Lynch calls ‘nodes’ or special ‘districts’ in Image of the City (1960) typically constitute well-connected intersections, business clusters, or urban squares, which form a significant part of one’s recollection of urban form. The existence of these nodes, the reasons behind business clustering, or why some streets or corridors become what Lynch calls ‘edges’, are explored by scholars in urban economics, morphology, and transportation (Conzen and Conzen, 2004; Sevtsuk, 2020). How streets obtain the layouts they have is studied by historians (Norton, 2025). The significance of the rez de ville to both theoretical constructs and personal experiences is undeniable, as the city is primarily experienced, observed, and broadly sensed along the rez de ville. No theory of a human habitat can overlook the importance of sensory experience as a critical building block of understanding.

In this special issue, we have invited scholars and practitioners from the fields of urban design, planning, history, and policy to reflect on the rez de ville, with the aim of exploring whether the topics that emerge might constitute a cohesive area of urban design and planning scholarship. This could potentially offer practical insight to urban designers, planners, and policy makers. The papers included are based on a conference we organized in the fall of 2023 at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where an international group of urban scholars and designers examined the multiple dimensions of rez de ville and their significance in shaping and experiencing collective city life.¹ Many of the conference presenters chose to develop their ideas further into papers and arguments presented below.

To contextualize the papers in this issue, we begin by examining a few overarching themes related to rez de ville that have received insufficient attention in the literature. First, there is the theme of experience and representation. How does the rez de ville shape one’s experience and understanding of the city? Additionally, how have urban designers used mapping techniques to capture such experiences? Building on prior scholarship that views ‘occupiable’ spaces as an intermediary category between the coarser public–private space dichotomy along city streets (Anderson, 1978), it is important to consider ways in which the rez de ville can offer both functional destinations with public access, but also generate other sensory experiences through sight, sound, smell, taste and touch. These sensory experiences can communicate volumes of information about the city without necessarily granting their subjects’ physical access.

Second, our understanding of any rez de ville condition necessarily depends on its context: the social, spatial, institutional, and cultural milieu in which it is embedded. This context imbues the particularities of place and architecture with identity, meaning, and collective expectation. Evaluating rez de ville across different locations requires careful consideration of these contextual factors, which have been more implicit than explicit in scholarship of rez de ville thus far (Mangin and Boudjenane, 2023). The specific context of a building, a street, neighbourhood, district, city, climate, regulatory system, or cultural milieu, where a particular rez de ville condition is experienced, provides layers of reference that shape our understanding of the interface between the private and the public, the individual and the collective.

This naturally leads to a third, fundamentally basic question concerning the rez de ville: what constitutes a successful rez de ville? Can the condition of the rez de ville be improved in generally agreed upon directions to elevate the quality of life in a city? Moreover, is it justified to adopt a standard view of the way in which the private and the collective spaces interact along the rez de ville?

The articles in this special issue address these and other topics in an effort to deepen our understanding of the rez de ville as a subject matter for urbanism. We conclude this introduction by reflecting on areas of scholarship that have remained under-examined in this issue and where future work may find fertile ground for expanding our understanding of rez de ville and their broader implications.

From Physical Accessibility to Sensory Experience of the Rez de Ville

The relationship between the private and public, the built and the unbuilt, has been studied by numerous urbanists and led to different mapping techniques (Kayden et al., 2000; Loukaitou-Sideris, 2011). In representing urban space, there is correspondingly a deep-rooted tradition to differentiate the outdoor and indoor spaces of a city. Urban design plans typically mark buildings as solids and render space between them as void that members of the public can occupy within allowable limits. Building interiors, which form the origins and destinations of most urban movements, are usually not part of the picture. Façades mark coarse limits between public and private space, omitting an important part of the publicly accessible realm that goes beyond the street.

Giambattista Nolli’s figure-ground map of Rome (Pianta Grande di Roma) for which he began surveys in 1736 and engraved in 1748 depicted religious spaces and civic structures as extensions of the public realm (figure 1, top left). In this map, the white space of the street flowed through selected interiors, joining basilicas, cloisters, courtyards and enclosed spaces. In contrast, Sitte’s plans of Vienna and Lucca in the nineteenth century distinguish the built and the unbuilt, religious and generic structures (figure 1, top right). In these maps, walls and selected landmarks were additionally shown with thinner lines (Sitte,1889). Habraken’s maps of Dutch towns in the twentieth century moved away from emphasizing religious spaces and instead distinguish spaces into built or unbuilt, thematic or generic (Habraken, 1973).

While Nolli’s map of Rome depicts public space as a white continuum from streets to building interiors and enclosed courts, Sitte’s and Habraken’s system differentiates public spaces from thematic ones, making it possible to include a number of different categories of building interiors as part of the publicly accessible realm. Anderson’s studies of Paris and Cambridge provide an elegant synthesis of these earlier forms of representation (Anderson, 1978). In Anderson’s work, the focus on built versus unbuilt shifts from depicting solid building masses to representing structural elements, such as load-bearing walls and columns. These elements, which are quasi-permanent barriers to access, are punctuated by openings, partitions, and glazing that mediate both physical and visual interactions between the private interiors and the public realm of the street.

Anderson also expands thematic categorization from buildings to all space that lies in or outside the structures. Unlike Habraken’s functional themes, Anderson categorizes urban spaces into three groups: public, occupiable, and dwelling spaces. Each category can be further distinguished on a gradient that describes the perceived accessibility of the space (presumably to the researcher who mapped it). Public spaces, which are typically owned and managed by the public sector, are usually outdoor areas such as streets, squares, and parks. Occupiable spaces, though typically privately owned, allow public access and include indoor businesses and services, institutions and organizations that are open to the public, and other private outdoor spaces such as courtyards. Dwelling spaces depict people’s homes and residential environments, including gardens, private decks, and common circulation areas. Each of these three categories exist in a continuum from very accessible (e.g. a sidewalk) to inaccessible (e.g. a private apartment). Anderson’s work is unique in introducing ‘occupiable’ spaces as a mediating category between public and private, and implementing a gradient to illustrate public accessibility within each category.

Figure 1. Top left: Nolli’s map of Rome 1748. Top right: Sitte’s plan of central Lucca 1899, distinguishing religious structures from the rest of built fabric. Bottom left: Habraken’s plan of a Dutch town 1973, introducing thematic buildings in light grey. Anderson’s plan for a section of Paris 1978, showing public space in light grey, occupiable space in dark grey, and dwelling space in white.

Among the contributors to this issue, Chang and Marshall (2025) highlight the importance of occupiable spaces with favourable interface types in enhancing the urban ground floor experience. They suggest that arcades with shop windows and landscaped setbacks significantly enhance walking spaces and support outdoor activities, enriching the sensory and social experience of the urban ground floor. These elements are particularly vital in high-density, mixed-use areas like the Taipeis Da-An district they describe, where ground floors lined with businesses and pedestrian-friendly public spaces transform streets into vibrant arenas for social interaction. Hack further underscores the importance of urban ground floors in facilitating face-to-face interactions, noting how spaces like sidewalk cafés, outdoor markets, and shops that extend into public areas can ‘de-mythologize’ class and racial differences (Hack 2025). By creating inclusive, shared spaces, these ground floors foster a sense of encounter, belonging, and civic engagement.  Gomez Escoda’s study of Barcelona illustrates how the dynamic mixture of uses along urban ground floors – small retail shops, hospitality establishments, and other amenities – contributes to a lively, walkable environment that not only supports economic vitality but also strengthens the social fabric by encouraging residents and visitors to connect (Gomez-Escoda, 2025).

While the physical accessibility of urban ground floors, as emphasized by Anderson, Habraken, Sitte, and Nolli, is essential to the ground floor experience, it should not be the sole focus of ground floor mapping. Furthermore, the visual experience has also received ample attention in the planning and urban design literature (Lynch 1960; Jacobs 1985). Yet, as Brian Ladd, in his book Streets of Europe: The Sights, Sounds, and Smells That Shaped Its Great Cities reminds us: ‘people go to the street in search of physical contact – visual, aural, olfactory and ultimately tactile’ (Ladd, 2020).  These sensory experiences – sight, sound, smell, taste and touch – contribute richly to one’s experience of a city, regardless of whether adjacent spaces are physically accessible.

For example, Anderson’s comparison of occupiable spaces in the Opera district of Paris, France and in a residential neighbourhood in Cambridge, Massachusetts, illustrates a stark contrast: while Paris boasts a wealth of occupiable building interiors, these are notably absent in Cambridge (Anderson, 1978). Yet, this difference does not necessarily signify a less interesting or fulfilling ground floor experience in Cambridge. Walking through the streets of Cambridge can provide a passerby with sensory experiences and meaningful encounters even if most buildings lack the amenities and occupiable spaces we encounter in the much denser environment of Paris. The built openings and lines-of-sight that connect interiors and privately owned outdoor spaces with the public spaces of a street, the architectural qualities of building façades, private gardens, the fences that mediate property lines, and the activities that these spaces juxtapose, all form part of the theatre of interactions that take place between the private and the public realms of a city (figure 2). The architecture of residential structures tell stories about the historic as well as the present society that occupies them. The meticulously planted gardens, lawns and trees behind stone and picket fences reveal views, smells and tactile sensations that please the mind like chapters of a novel, inviting neighbours and visitors alike to stroll the streets as a favoured pastime.

Figure 2. View of the historic Brattle Street in Cambridge, MA.

Even in the dense city centre context of Paris, scholars have emphasized that a mere stroll through a street can provide a wealth of sensory experiences, putting one in touch with the city and society around us, even when many spaces are inaccessible, unaffordable, or unwelcoming (Buck-Morss, 1989; Jacobs, 1985). For Richard Sennett this encounter with ‘otherness’ on city streets is a powerful force that shapes our perception of a city in a visceral and tangible manner, deeply informing our understanding of community and society (Sennet, 2018).

The sensory experience of a city’s ground floor is also subjective, with different observers interpreting the same space in contrasting ways. For example, an African American person walking down Brattle Street in Cambridge (figure 2) might perceive the colonial past of American history through the buildings and landscapes of pre-revolutionary British loyalist homes, whose wealth was often built on slave-powered cotton manufacturing and maritime trade in New England. In contrast, a West coast Angeleno might see the history books of the American revolution in the timber and stone structures, while a member of a Boston Brahmin family might experience a personal connection to family history or simply a desirable street for a future home. The way individuals perceive and interpret urban ground floors is influenced not only by the built environment but also by their unique backgrounds and the broader historical and social context in which the sensory experiences of urban ground floors take place.

The diagram in figure 3 attempts to chart some of the dynamics involved in interpreting urban ground floors, incorporating both space features and individual features. The key elements of space features include building characteristics, street characteristics and the context in which they are found (right side of figure 3). The building characteristics describe whether one might perceive the building ground floor to be occupiable or merely visible, what functions the building ground floor contains, as well as the typological characteristics of the building. Street characteristics describe the land uses along the street, traffic modes and activities encountered on the street, the street’s hierarchy and dimensions. These are features that can be directly viewed or sensed. In addition to such direct sensory experiences, the broader spatial, cultural, political, climatic, and historic context in which a ground floor condition is encountered forms a key backdrop to framing how one’s sensory experiences may fit into a broader context of expectation and understanding (discussed further below).

How these space features are sensed and interpreted, depends on the multi-pronged abilities of the individual, their identity, as well as the context and purpose of their encounter with the ground floor condition (left side of figure 3). For example, a passerby might scrutinize a place in a different manner from an occupant of the building or community stakeholder who may have a more personal interest in the specific place. The interplay between person characteristics and space characteristics form two critical sides of communication – an information source and a receiver (Shannon and Weaver, 1949) – two sides of the same coin which simultaneously define how place-based information is encoded and interpreted, making the experience of urban ground floors a nuanced and dynamic interaction between the environment and the individual.

Figure 3. A chart of person features and space features involved in interpreting urban ground floors.

The Role of Context in Place Perception

Interpreting the experience of urban ground floors requires a comprehensive examination of various contextual factors in different urban settings (figure 3). To evaluate urban ground floors effectively, we must consider their social context, climate, density, historical and traditional influences, as well as the economic and regulatory frameworks that shape them. Climate dictates the need for ventilation and shade in tropical regions, while dense city centres and suburban areas present contrasting challenges and opportunities for creating vibrant, walkable environments. For instance, ground floors in hot, tropical environments differ from those in more moderate climates, just as those in dense city centres, such as Paris, necessarily differ from those in suburban settings like Cambridge, MA. Historical precedents and traditional building types continue to set expectations for new developments, while socio-spatial characteristics such as demographic and real estate dynamics influence our values in interpreting places. Furthermore, as Peter Norton discusses in this issue, the reconciliation of automobility with public spaces serves as a reminder of how corporate interests can shape regulations, politics, and cultural norms over time (Norton, 2025).

Malterre-Barthes’s article critiques the architecture of Euroméditerranée project in Marseille, France, where monofunctional blocks and insular designs result in ground floors that are visually and physically disengaged from their surroundings and fail to engage meaningfully with the community around them (Malterre-Barthes, 2025). This critique underscores what Chang and Marshall (2025) refer to as the ground floor ‘interface’, that must not only articulate and communicate the relationship between public and private realms, but also do so in a contextually appropriate manner, in line with societal values and expectations. Malterre-Barthes describes the ground floors of the Euroméditerranée as ‘mute’ compared to the historic fabric of the area, with vacant or sealed façades and limited commercial activity, reflecting a design approach that prioritizes profit over inclusivity. Even when the public–private ‘interface’ is architecturally articulate, human-scale, and diverse, it can still seem out of place, conveying messages of gentrification, exclusion, and displacement.

New developmental frameworks interact with historic legal and social contexts, influencing the construction and occupation of urban ground floors decades or centuries later. Gomez-Escoda offers a compelling case study of Barcelona’s Eixample grid, illustrating how historic agricultural property lines have influenced modern urban layouts (Gomez-Escoda, 2025). The irregular plot divisions, shaped by ancient roadways and crop fields, create a distinctive urban fabric within the otherwise regular grid of 20-metre-wide streets and chamfered blocks. The transformation of 873 agricultural lots into over 10,000 urban plots through the Ley de Ensanche of 1864 balanced landowner and developer interests, resulting in a vibrant mix of residential, commercial, industrial, and public facility uses that define the Eixample’s character today.

While void and pilotis-supported ground floors have been critiqued in the context of Modernist architecture for failing to bring active frontages and community serving amenities to streets and public spaces, Wisnik highlights the widespread celebration of and support for such open ground floors in Brasília (Wisnik, 2025). Advocated by Le Corbusier as one of the five principles of Modern architecture, void-decks on ground floors and architectural interventions like the ‘infinite span’ have fostered space for public engagement and interaction, keeping the dominance of private interests at bay in the city. In Brasília, these un-appropriated and open community spaces are seen as symbols of democracy and social justice, even if that entails an inconvenience of having to walk further for daily amenities or lack a display of public–private interactions on the ground floor. This example illustrates that the evaluation of urban ground floors can depend heavily on societal expectations, which project meaning onto physical forms.

Ceccato’s work in this issue reminds us of the crucial role that well-designed urban ground floors play in fostering a sense of safety among their users, particularly in the context of Stockholm, Sweden, where the dissonance between sites of shootings and urban form raises important questions about the relationship between private and collective experiences (Ceccato, 2025). Since the 1950s, the work of planners and scholars such as Elizabeth Wood (1961), Jane Jacobs (1961), Oscar Newman (1972), and especially C. Ray Jeffery (1971) has reinforced the link between the physical environment, guardianship, and safety. The appearance of safety – or lack thereof – often diverges from actual spatial patterns of crime, indicating that public sentiment about ground floor quality has as much to do with collective imagery and social expectations as it does with the actual architecture of the place. These diverse examples underscore the critical importance of context in shaping urban ground floors, revealing how cultural, historical, and socio-economic factors converge to define the character and functionality of urban environments worldwide.

Towards a Normative View of Urban Ground Floor Design

The normative dimension of urban ground floors fundamentally revolves around the balance between individual and collective interests. Urban ground floors serve as the interface between private buildings and public streets, individual expression and collective systems that bond citizens socially, economically and ecologically. Is the interface between the individual and collective realms more successful when it is purposefully articulated in ground floor building façades and street design in a manner that resonates on a human scale in contextually appropriate ways? For instance, an entrance to a temple, with its elaborate architectural details, can symbolize the meeting point of an individual, a community, and collectively held divine beliefs through the use of symbols such as gates, successive openings, or meaningful ornament and structure. Is an architecturally articulated temple entrance that signals or celebrates these individual, communal, and divine experiences more successful as a ground floor interface than a mere sign on the door? Likewise, is a residential home that turns a blank wall to a street less successful in its ground floor quality than one with wooden picket fence, an enjoyable front garden, and a visible pathway to the residential building behind it? Whether accessible or merely visible, our authors seem to agree that the relationship between public and private, social and natural realms on the ground floor can be articulated to be understandable, human scale.

In Good City Form, Kevin Lynch (1984) considers justice as a fundamental dimension of the design of urban spaces, emphasizing fairness and equality as normative components of a well-formed city. Justice promotes participation for all, including marginalized communities and people with disabilities. Accessibility may be felt in the accessibility of ramps and crossings, inclusivity in the welcoming nature of space, where diverse groups mingle and interact and where the struggles for expressing the wants and needs of the collective collide. Certain groups have disproportionate voice and power in shaping the environment through larger-scale financial interests but little connection to the existing community. In the face of this struggle, Lefebvre (1968) called for the ‘right to the city’ (le droit à la ville) which advocates transforming urban spaces to prioritize the needs and rights of all inhabitants, especially marginalized communities, over economic interests. It includes the right to access and use urban spaces, reclaiming public areas for communal and social purposes. Lefebvre envisions urban life as a collective work of art, reflecting diverse cultural and social expressions of human-centred urbanism, and thereby advocates a certain autonomy of ground floor space from commercial interests: their designation as a focus of urban design and planning in their own right.

In developing a normative approach to urban ground floors, it is crucial to remain open and adaptable, integrating informal practices and recognizing complex socio-spatial dynamics beyond traditional design principles. This approach aligns with what Lynch has referred to as the bottom-up ‘control’ of urban form (Lynch, 1984), emphasizing the importance of integrating informal practices – such as the appropriation of sidewalks for shops and the conversion of domestic spaces into small stores – while addressing the issues of land tenure and real estate pressures. The balance between individual personalization and control of urban ground floors and collective decommodification advocated by Lefebvre, is fraught with nuance and contradiction. Individual expression in ground floor interfaces is desirable in many contexts, but Lefebvre’s call for decommodification (also illustrated in Wisnik’s example of Brasília’s void decks) highlights the fine line between desirable individual expression and too much control (Wisnik, 2025). Perhaps this tension in achieving the right balance between individual and collective interests is precisely what imbues the urban ground floor with a sense of civicness and creates dynamic places where the social compact of urban life is actively performed, experienced, and remembered.

Several authors argue that ground floors play a critical role not only in mediating the private and collective relationships between building frontages and the public right of way but also in managing the broader ecological, hydrological, and geological underpinnings of a city. According to Malaud et al. ‘a “good” urban ground floor is one that not only fosters architectural and functional integration between buildings and street activities … but also sustains infrastructure that prevents erosion, like terraces, and embraces continuous transformation’ (Malaud et al., 2025). They highlight projects like the transformation of the terraces in La Défense that not only connect buildings with street activities through innovative designs such as tree groves and stormwater ponds but also maintain infrastructure that prevents erosion. Such examples demonstrate how urban ground floors are integral to both the social and natural systems of the city.

The prevailing view among our contributors seems to be that the quality of urban ground floors should indeed be normatively evaluated – superior solutions can, and as a matter of design practice, should be distinguished from inferior ones. A recurring feature of a ‘good’ urban ground floor is its ability to foster a positive architectural and functional interaction between buildings and street activities, between individual and collective, social, and natural systems. This interface – where public, private, technological, and social systems converge – should be articulated in a manner that resonates on a human scale as well as a contextually appropriate communal scale, making it both functional and legible. Whether accessible or merely visible, the relationship between public and private realms at the ground floor can be designed to be understandable and ‘whole’, as Christopher Alexander (1987) described, promoting engagement, interaction, understanding, and recollection. This dynamic balance transforms urban ground floors into active, rather than inert, elements of the city, where individual sensory experience and perception coincide with collective expectation and the ongoing construction of meaning. On the urban ground floor, both individual and social values are continuously encoded and re-encoded in stone, glass, asphalt, and greenery.

Directions for Future Work

There are numerous opportunities to investigate urban ground floors beyond the topics covered in this issue. One fertile area of investigation would involve combining the spatial analysis of urban ground floors with travel behaviour data in order to understand how people’s daily itineraries in a city generate encounters with urban ground floors, and how such encounters vary between socio-economic groups based on place of residence, work, or school. In recent years, many government travel surveys have been using App-based GPS records, providing scholars with a detailed picture of people’s daily travel patterns. Of particular interest are itineraries that take place on foot, where encounters within and across urban ground floors are slower, multi-sensory, and more meaningful than those experienced in a vehicle.

Another area of investigation that the works assembled here have only scratched the surface of, involves technological shifts that pressure cities to alter their streets and public rights of way. As cities strive to decarbonize transportation by shifting mobility away from twentieth-century automobility towards greener modes such as public transport, walking, and cycling, the design of urban ground floors are inevitably affected. At the same time, new mobility technologies and services, including delivery trucks, e-scooters, shared bikes, ride-hailing services, and potentially automated vehicles, compete for limited space on public rights of way and exert their own pressures for change (Norton, 2021). E-commerce is also restructuring shopfronts and commercial spaces along city streets and public spaces (Hack, 2025). Understanding how such technological influences continue to shape urban ground floors today offers ample material for future research.

We hope these and other questions will be further explored in future research on rez de villes.

NOTE

1. https://dusp.mit.edu/projects/rez-de-ville.

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