Setha Low

Setha M. Low (born 1948) is a professor of environmental psychology and the director of the Public Space Research Group at the City University of New York. Low served as president of the American Anthropological Association and was a Conservation Guest Scholar at the Getty Conservation Institute.

Low received a bachelor of arts in psychology from Pitzer College in Claremont, California, in 1969, and her master of arts and doctorate in anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley, in 1971 and 1976, respectively.

Her research includes an ethnography of residents in gated communities in San Antonio, Texas, and on Long Island in New York, and a study of urban parks including New York City's Prospect Park, Orchard Beach in Pelham Bay Park, and Jacob Riis Park in the Gateway National Recreation Area. More broadly, Low's research includes work on the anthropology of space and place, medical anthropology, urban anthropology, historic preservation, landscapes of fear, security/insecurity, and gating in Latin America, the United States, and the cities of Western Europe.^[1]

Low grew up in Los Angeles^[1] and currently resides in Brooklyn.

• 2022 Why Public Space Matters. Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780197543733.
• 2016 Spatializing Culture: The Ethnography of Space and Place. New York and London: Routledge.
• 2006 The Politics of Public Space [with co-editor Neil Smith]. New York and London: Routledge.
• 2005 Rethinking Urban Parks: Public Space and Cultural Diversity. University of Texas Press.
• 2003 Behind the Gates: The New American Dream. New York and London: Routledge.
• 2003 The Anthropology of Space and Place: Locating Culture [with co-author Denise Lawrence-Zuñiga]. Oxford: Blackwell.
• 2000 On the Plaza: The Politics of Public Space and Culture. Austin: University of Texas Press.
• 1999 Theorizing the City: The New Urban Anthropology Reader. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press.
• 1996 "Spatializing Culture: The Social Production and Social Construction of Public Space," American Ethnologist 23(4): 861–879.
• 1995 Children of the Urban Poor: The Sociocultural Environment of Growth, Development and Malnutrition in Guatemala City [with co-author F. Johnston]. Boulder: Westview.
• 1995 "Indigenous Architectural Representations: Mesoamerican and Caribbean Foundations of the Spanish American Plaza," American Anthropologist 97(4): 748–762.

• Getty Conservation Institute (2002). "Conservation Guest Scholars". GCI Newsletter. Vol. 17, no. 2. Retrieved January 16, 2009.
• Marquardt, Katy (April 25, 2008). "Recipe for a City Park's Success: The cultural diversity of its users can make or break an urban space". U.S. News & World Report. Retrieved January 16, 2009.
• Robinson, Eugene (December 4, 2007). "Eugene Robinson - We the Paranoid". The Washington Post. ISSN 0740-5421. Retrieved January 16, 2009.

• Setha M. Low, Professor of Anthropology, The Graduate Center, CUNY
• Setha Low speaks about public space at House of Speakeasy's Seriously Entertaining