The circus

New Urban News Technical Page by Andres Duany, Michael Morrissey, and Patrick Pinnell

A circus is a regular, concavely curved urban open space;  a circular variant of the urban square. Circuses are the spatial manifestation of the popular roundabout of modern traffic engineering, as buildings are disposed in support of the vehicular geometry. Although a simple intersection, the streets entering a circus give the effect of converging in an intensely spatial urban place.

The most common circus is an intersection entered from four directions. Variations include the triple entry, which terminates the vistas, and the multiple entry etoile (star). The center of a circus may be developed as landscape or punctuated with a monument.