Urban Edges and How to Define the Spaces Beyond

In the city, we blend the familiar with the edge of the unknown. I doubt that before today, any urbanist writer has used an old, Latin term that lives on in southern Italy, to explain the particular wonder of certain city street-ends. The term, finibus terrae, meant one end of the Earth to the Romans -- the edge of the known extent of the land. In Santa Maria di Leuca, at the tip of Italy's boot-heel, there is a longstanding basilica named for this ancient boundary. When we were there, in 2008 a...