Public Space: Notes on why it matters, what we should know, and how to realize its potential 9781032137032, 9781032137025, 9781003230502

Table of contents :
Cover
Half Title
Title
Copyright
Dedication
Contents
Introduction
1 Why Care?
2 What is Public Space?
3 Paradoxes
4 Possibilities
5 Propositions
Acknowledgments
Notes
Further Reading
Image Credits
Index

Citation preview

PUBLIC SPACE Public Space_VikasMehta_27May2022.indd 1

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Public Space notes on

why it matters, what we should know, and how to realize its potential

Vikas Mehta

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First published 2023 by Routledge 605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158 and by Routledge 4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2023 Vikas Mehta The right of Vikas Mehta to be identifed as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identifcation and explanation without intent to infringe. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record for this title has been requested ISBN: 9781032137032 (hbk) ISBN: 9781032137025 (pbk) ISBN: 9781003230502 (ebk) DOI: 10.4324/9781003230502

Generous support for the publication of this book was provided by the Centre for the Future of Places, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden. Typeset in Franklin Gothic URW and Avenir Design by Muhammad Rahman & Vikas Mehta Publisher’s Note This book has been prepared from camera-ready copy provided by the author.

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To Shilpa, Ayan, and Anya

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contents

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Introduction

1

Why Care?

2

What is Public Space?

3

Paradoxes

4

Possibilities

5

Propositions

2

8

38

90

130

170

Acknowledgments

223

Notes

225

Further Reading

231

Image Credits

242

Index

243

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Introduction Public Space_VikasMehta_27May2022.indd 8

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Public spaces are icons for cities. Like the Sydney Opera House, the Eiffel Tower, the Taj Mahal, the Guggenheim Museum, the Burj Khalifa, or any other iconic architecture, public spaces now feature as urban symbols. Cities complete, among other things, with their public spaces, using them as enticement, as posters to advertise and attract residents, businesses, visitors, developers, investors, and large employers. You can visit almost any city or town and inevitably fnd a collection of symbolic or “image” public spaces designed and programed to do just that. The formula is not new. Adopted since the 1980s and 90s in cities in North America, Europe, and Australia, it has now become a staple in city branding and image-building in the twenty-first century across the Global North and South. Cities with historically emblematic public spaces have refurbished them. Ones that did not have any, have created new image spaces in downtowns, city centers, on waterfronts, and more. Just as cities around the globe have hired starchitects to design their own “Sydney Opera Houses,” they have brought in urban designers, landscape architects, and architects to create their own iconic public spaces. These public spaces have been instrumental in spearheading the revitalization of many city precincts. They have been used to attract capital and labor, but also ultimately a trust in the city. Public spaces have been used to resurrect urban living. But this 3

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trust in the city is often built on the mistrust of the “other.” The return to urban life has emerged on the eviction of many from neighborhoods, where housing and cost of living have become unaffordable to many. The trust in the city and mistrust of the “other” is also evident in traditional public spaces—in the main city parks or the symbolic commercial streets of downtowns and center city neighborhoods. The typical public spaces—where families gather to watch movies, children play, the young attend concerts in the park or a pop-up event in the alley, where fund raising events, food fairs and beer festivals are a staple part of the programming, are also the spaces that have been “cleaned up” to be rejuvenated. This revitalization has come at the cost of commodifcation. All the diverse populations that inhabit the city and use public space have one thing in common. Everyone is seen as a consumer in and of public space. However, fortunately, there is more to public space. Ironically, and as is beftting, parallel to commodifcation, public spaces have also been the sites of emancipation. The past decades have erased any doubts of the relevance and resurgence of public space in its political form. Tahrir Square in Cairo, Martyrs' Square in Beirut, Plaça de Catalunya in Barcelona, Gezi Park in Istanbul, Las Mercedes Avenue in Caracas, Place de la Republique in Paris, Plaza de la República in Mexico City, Zuccotti Park in New York City, and many other iconic spaces along with streets in hundreds of cities worldwide have crystalized the image of public space as a space that has amplifed the voice of the people. Residents of countless cities and towns across the globe have used public spaces and taken to the streets to question the fundamental social and cultural structure of society, including positions of citizenship, civil rights, income, racial and gender inequities, community biases, spatial injustices, and more. The versatility of public space is visible beyond the economic and political realms. Local communities are applying bottom-up actions and interventions in public space to build and strengthen identity, and to nurture an ethos of diversity and inclusiveness. Worldwide, cities and regions are using public space to reclaim and revitalize derelict areas to create walkable humane places, adapting public spaces to create 4

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specialized places to accommodate new needs, or to employ ecological practices and embrace nature in urban settings. It is not hyperbole to say that public space is the manifestation and representation of urban life. Most recently, the colossal impact of the pandemic was best represented by the hollowed out public spaces of cities worldwide. Soon thereafter, the optimism of many communities across the globe was reflected in public space, as people found innovative ways to claim agency and use public spaces for survival, organization of mutual aid, care and support, social interactions, play, numerous types of recreation, exercise, and more. In these and many other ways public space has stayed alive. It has represented the myriad ways our cities are transforming. Public space has been a mirror. Public space has stayed relevant. What is this book about? Public Space: Notes on Why It Matters, What We Should Know, and How to Realize Its Potential is a dialogue between the social-political and the material-physical. The scope of the book is to capture a panoramic view of public space—an understanding from numerous disciplines—under one cover in an incisive and concise manner for the student, design professional, scholar, and a civic audience to be better equipped to contribute to the transformation of public space. Why another wide-ranging and eclectic book on public space, you may ask? There already are several outstanding books on the subject. A handful cover the subject comprehensively, some present a thorough investigation of a particular facet of public space, while others cross-examine a specifc typology of space to cover multiple social, political, cultural, and physical dimensions. Public Space is different. It assimilates and engages with the insights and wisdom of the numerous works on public space and presents the wide-ranging issues, arguments, ideas, and propositions in a uniquely concise and visual format. The heavily visual presentation of the book directly connects with the material spatiality of public space. The book is designed as a communication mechanism between the political scientist, the urban sociologist, geographer, anthropologist, and planner on the one hand and the urban designer, architect, and landscape architect 5

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on the other. Public Space brings together the key ideas that encompasses the social, political, and physical issues in the making and experience of public space. It journeys the vast territory of public space to compile a multidisciplinary selection of learnings that offer new and traditionally recognized principles of the conceptualization, understanding, and the making of public space. Public Space is at the same time a primer and a progressive text. It presents established tenets, new ideas, and learnings in ways that are meant to reach the audience clearly. As a concise and approachable text, this book introduces readers to wide ranging issues, ideas, and propositions on public space. Further readings direct the reader to an in-depth understanding. I see many roles of public space. One of the running threads in the book is the daylighting of these different roles. The reader will fnd the book full of lessons and learnings that are informed by the work of numerous public space scholars, diverse cultures, and settings. Although much of it is rooted in theory and empirical work, the text is meant to be conversational with the content directly applicable to the designer and manager of public space. Much of the material in this book may not be new but my interpretation and the delivery, like a curated exhibition, is. The book presents some constructs that, I hope, will challenge the reader’s preconceived notions of public space. It also bares some discomforting realities that will be provocative in a constructive way. I hope that this connects with anyone interested in urban life and the political, communicative, and performative aspects of cities in general. The structure and presentation Public Space is broadly organized in fve sections. The frst makes the case for public space and the second digs deep into understanding what public space is. The last three sections present the paradoxes inherent in public space followed by possibilities and propositions for a more constructive public space. Each section presents observations, ideas, or a specifc piece of knowledge that are meant to act as prompts to bring the reader in to engage with the subject of public space. Unique to the book is its intentional, non-sequential layout. The book is meant to be playful. It is meant to be opened on any page to fnd an intriguing idea, a reflec6

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tion, a brief commentary, or a lesson about public space. In some ways, representational of public space itself, the book is a smorgasbord with numerous ideas. Opening any page, just as visiting a good public space, it is hard to predict what one will fnd, but it will be rewarding. There is certainly a normative view in this book that outlines the many benefts of public space with a clear message for seeking public space as a commons. But the views, and the book, is not ideological. The reader will fnd several paradoxes. Some of the ideas within are even contradictory. This is intentional. It reflects the true nature of public space—full of contradictions, complexities, and nuances, some of which we can feel deep within our own experiences of public life. Public spaces have been ubiquitous in the history and development of human settlements. Although it is differently understood and embedded into everyday life in distinct cultures, the rapid urbanization makes public space a fundamental need for political emancipation, social cohesion, economic sustenance, and human rights worldwide. The text refers to and engages cultural and social issues related to public space in the places where I have lived or visited extensively. This includes cities in the United States, India, Canada, Australia, and some in Europe and other parts of Asia. I hope that this pan-cultural perspective capturing numerous planetary dimensions of public space is engaging and refreshing for the reader. Finally, this is a good time to focus our attention on public space. The climate crisis, the systemic social injustices, and the COVID-19 pandemic demand a rethinking of our largest common social and material realm. Public space has the capacity, at least in part, to address these crises by being envisioned and manifest as a space of restoration, emancipation, and healing.

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Why care? Public Space_VikasMehta_27May2022.indd 8

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1 In a rapidly urbanizing world, there are now numerous geographies that are labeled megaregions, megacities, megalopoloi, global cities, and more. All these boast large conglomerations of people. Most consume expansive space and are complex physical constructions with elaborate networks of infrastructures connecting destinations. These regions house a collection of institutions and are settings that offer great economic opportunities. Not all of these are truly urban. Not all can claim to be places of equity, innovation, excitement, vitality, and growth. Many of these agglomerations do not even offer the basic benefts, virtues, and rewards of urban life. What distinguishes those that do, are strong networks and the ability to provide vast opportunities for encounters. This becomes possible, at least in part, by a robust public realm sustained by public space, but also quasi-public and private spaces that support public life. The places that fall short—even with large populations, institutions, and economies—are those that lack a strong public realm and are inadequate in enabling rich, varied, and robust encounters—a central role of the city. Lewis Mumford explicitly writes that the primary purpose of the city is “to permit—indeed, to encourage—the greatest possible number of meetings, encounters, challenges, between varied persons and groups, providing as it were a stage upon which the drama of social life may be enacted.”1 This exchange 9

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of ideas, information, goods and services, and social interactions flourishes when the city has a veritable network of spaces of public life as a shared resource beyond our private and parochial realms. It is true that many in contemporary societies do not depend on public space for basic needs. Certainly, all public spaces are not important for all at all times. Not everyone uses the same public spaces or in the same ways. Teenagers may care to hang out in the alleys or on the rail tracks, occupy spaces for sports, or play in the less visible fringe spaces, such as spaces under highways. Seniors may value their neighborhood residential street, the local park, and the market while families with children may use parks and playgrounds the most. Not everyone wants the same from public space either. The same park may be used by people of different ages or backgrounds for active play, walking, exercise, some illicit activity, or for quiet reflection. Yet, as a system, public space and spaces for public life deliver a unique spatial, interactional, and experiential opportunity for most residents. Aside from its primal role as a place of encounter, public space also delivers other distinct benefts. As a social space, public space is a storehouse of meaningful shared memories. It provides a territory for common events and ceremonies—ordinary and exceptional—that are integral to the creation of cultural identities. In this mode, public space also encourages exchange and understanding among diverse cultural groups, and is thus a critical site for bonding and bridging in communities. The manifestation of public space as social space may be drastically different for varying groups. Yet, this social contact is crucial for our psychological well-being as a social species. As a material space, public space offers the dimensions, settings, and experiences for action that are often impossible in private. Spaces for active and passive play, for example, whether programmed by institutions or self-motivated through individual and group agency, provide a venue for expression for youth and adults, and is crucial for the development of children. As a contrast to the structured and purposeful space of home and work, public space is 10

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an imperfect, indecisive, and ineffcient realm. This ambiguity and seeming purposelessness are crucial to our mental health—it helps manage stress by providing a rest and a break in the daily patterns of life. Material public space also singularly has the ability to physically connect the disparate parts of the city and be conceived and managed as a space for addressing broad societal challenges of segregation, equity, public health, and the climate crisis. As a political space, there is no other geography that can be used to gather, express, and represent the collective voice of the public as has been repeatedly witnessed in so many different parts of the globe. In recent history, there has never been a better time to collectively witness the value of public space. The pandemic has created a palpable need for the outdoors and being in the open. During the time of the COVID-19 pandemic people across the world have experienced frsthand, the enormous rewards of public space: fresh air when most needed; active and passive recreation and social contact; care, mutual aid, and support; conducting commerce; and celebrating, mourning, and more. Urban inhabitants across the globe have a new appreciation for public space, particularly in their neighborhoods, close to home. So, why should we care for public space? In sum, public space is a connective network that gives us access to the opportunities available in our cities and regions. For individuals, public space provides developmental, psychological, and physiological health benefts, and it opens up venues for entrepreneurship and economic activities. For cohesive groups, it provides a place for sharing, creating identity, building a sense of community, and a place for collective voice. For society at large, public space provides a space for social cohesion and active citizenship. For cities, public space acts as a powerful symbol to compete in the local and global economy; it provides the space to unify the many diverse parts that make up most cities and regions. Most importantly, public space can be a powerful tool to confront and manage the current challenges of the climate crisis, food inequity, water quality, and the many more inescapable aspects of the environment that need to be addressed in order to foresee a resilient future. 11

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Public (still) Space Matters.

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Visible in ordinary and special events—rituals, festivals, and ceremonies on streets, plazas, squares, parks, and other locations—is the potentiality of public space as a repository of personal and group memories and meanings.

Public space is the material site for routine and special events and ceremonies. Repeatedly shared routines and practices in public space generate rituals. The collective movement and gathering of people in public space crystalizes cultural rhythms. This recurrence of every day and exceptional practices and customs creates attachment to place in which public space plays a crucial role.2 It acts as the physical connector in developing a sense of right to space. Over time, meanings get socially constructed by appropriation, use, and spatial relations in public space but also through the stories, anecdotes, and narratives associated with the space. The production of such meanings and memories is crucial to our psychological well-being, to the creation of cultural identities, and for bonding and bridging in communities.

Repository of Memories & Meanings

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The power of public space an arena

>

to exercise citizenship, express rights and demand justice

a network

>

for interconnectivity, mobility and flows

a place

>

a space

>

a site

>

to cultivate learning and creativity > to nurture well-being and health > to display and experience collective and shared as well as distinct cultural identities to play and cherish leisure and respite > to sustain formal and informal economies to augment environmental resilience > for intercommunication among diverse groups > for social cohesion but also to express discord

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Public space has been a lifeline during the pandemic.

The value of public space has again become visible at the time of this writing during the COVID-19 pandemic. People across the world have witnessed frsthand, the enormous link between public health and public space. In cities, large and small, public spaces have been the savior in this time of the pandemic. All types of public spaces—streets, squares, parks, trails, and many more—have provided us the place for active and passive recreation and social contact that are so critical to our physical and psychological well-being. Public open spaces have supported active and passive sociability, and provided the space for people across the globe to actively (albeit with physical distance) and passively participate in public life. Public spaces have truly been the lungs of the city—the places to go to get fresh air when most needed. Across the world, people are using public spaces to group and organize for providing mutual aid and support. Public spaces have been retroftted to become safe places for organizing, distributing, care, play, gathering, commerce, eating, drinking, exercising, celebrating, mourning, and more.

A Savior During the Pandemic

Within neighborhoods, the everyday physical activity that many are able to perform in the public spaces near home has delivered benefts that are crucial to public health, particularly in countries where obesity is a major concern. Not only does being outdoors lower the risk of coronavirus transmission, being active also translates into reduced risk of other life-threatening diseases. More importantly, the expanded use of neighborhood public space leading to increased social interactions has provided socio-psychological benefts and helped alleviate social isolation that is one of the causes for depression and early mortality.3 What has also become clear is that places that have not paid attention to public space, where publicness has been compromised, where access to public space is only for the privileged, and where common people have no agency, are the places where residents have suffered the most. 17

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The “ground” can be the egalitarian terrain for the excessively territorialized and inequitable “figure.”

A Case for Ground

Public space can be the antidote to the highly exclusionary privatizing city. Defending the physical public spaces also can give us a more robust public sphere. As the large portion of the poor and working class get priced out of the private spaces of the city, public space can be the means to their right to the city.

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Public space provides a refreshing and much-needed break from the monotony of customary patterns of daily life.

Much of everyday life, for most, revolves around the routines of home and work that represent a repetitive cycle. In this relentless replay, akin to predictable movement, public space offers a pause in the everyday motion of life. As a domain that is drastically different from the routines of home and work, public space provides a break in the daily rhythms. This space of pause allows us to rest and recenter but also break from what is given—to rethink norms, to energize, and to recreate.

Pause in the Motion of Life

Pause, rest, and recreation are crucial antidotes to the pressures of modern life. Public space provides the setting to remove us from home and work to nurture oneself, to manage stress, and create a sense of balance. This ability to be in an unroutinized space is central to physical and mental well-being. Not only can it directly reduce anxiety and depression, but it can also be uplifting. As an alternate space of pause, rest, and recreation, public space also enriches self-expression by providing a space for unique interpersonal skills, developing one’s own aesthetic sensibilities, and creative expression.

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At special and ordinary times public spaces act as a social glue by bringing different publics in a common place.

The current activation of public space for demonstrations and dissent across the globe, particularly during the protests that erupted after the George Floyd murder, has not only displayed the relevance of material public space, but it has also shown the purpose of public space in bringing many diverse publics together for common causes. People of diverse background, outlook, age, sexual orientation, class, race, and ethnicity came out together in solidarity to speak up against systemic racism and injustices.

Social Glue

But public space acts as a social glue even without these unique and desperate conditions. No doubt many public spaces have been co-opted by capital and converted to resemble the consumptive, sanitized, homogenized, and exclusionary spaces of shopping malls. Yet, cities are still home to numerous porous spaces resulting in urban practices that enable social cohesion —belonging, inclusion, participation, recognition and legitimacy 4 — between the diverse publics, through co-presence and/or co-dependency. For example, loose and open-ended spaces, such as unprogrammed waterfronts, allow for multiple diverse groups to interpret use and meaning that connects with their experiences and norms. Some groups may come to the waterfront to fsh for food, others to be in a quiet place to meet, drink, smoke, and socialize, yet others may come to take in the view, or to sit by the water and read. Such spaces may help connect very diverse publics by offering opportunities for co-presence, visibility, and the encountering of difference. Similarly, unlike the gated spaces in the city, on vibrant commercial streets, people of many backgrounds and class coexist.5 Even those of a lower socio-economic status and the underprivileged are participants in the production of public space. They depend on the middle-class for economic survival but are essential because their labor enables the middle-class practices of consumption. In increasingly diverse and heterogeneous cities, the interaction of multiple publics is critical for societies. Public space offers the spatial conditions for active or passive co-presence and mixing. 20

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The pleasures and delight in public space are unmatched.

Whether through a ramble in the park, a stroll in the neighborhood, a hike in the woods, skateboarding in the alley, a walk to the main street or the corner store, a chat at the street corner, or other, most people seek public space for enjoyment—for physical and psychological pleasure. Much pleasure and joy derive from being in a space that is different from the private realm, especially from the sensorial aesthetic qualities of space—the sights, sounds, smells, and the feel of the space. The experience of such expansive and varied scales of space is only possible in public space. Different from a party or a gathering at home, public space offers vast opportunities for passive and active interaction with the known and unknown—the prospect to see and be seen.

The Joys of Public Space

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The achievements and struggles, the joys and sufferings of urban life, all its virtues and perversions, the cohesion and conflicts, the vitality and tranquility, the exhilaration and drudgery, and the opulence and squalor, are revealed in public space.

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The constant cycle of exchange in public space creates new possibilities to assess, make, and remake our artifacts, behaviors, customs, and values, and to advance culture.

The variety and intensity of activities and the co-presence of a diversity of individuals, social groups, and classes that generate myriad social experiences is what makes living in cities unique. City life and urbanity are distinctive to human civilization because the agglomeration of a large number of heterogeneous people permits limitless permutations for exchanges and interactions. In the city, public space and places for public life generate abundant conditions for numerous social and spatial juxtapositions and for innumerable interactions between people of similar and different backgrounds and beliefs. Experiencing new behaviors, ways of doing things, and novel perspectives toward life, is a proven way for learning in species. As diverse people with different perspectives interact and make exchanges in public space, they bring new needs and meanings, and thus possibilities, to reshape social space and social life creating even more diversity. Cities with robust public spaces offer an urban experience that is exceptional.

The City Reflected

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A Platform

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To be seen is to be recognized. Visibility creates an affirmation of identity, and the relational link of an individual or group to society.

Most public spaces afford an uneven opportunity of occupancy and agency to individuals and groups. Yet, one of the prime advantages of public space, even unexceptional and unequal public space, is that it makes different individuals and groups visible.

A Place for Visibility

Aside from making the self or a group visible, public space also acts as a place of visibility through artifacts and traces.6 Buildings, landscapes, fences, signage, decorations, and other artifacts that can be seen in or from public space, make identities perceptible. Commerce, for example, although private, uses public space to project and communicate messages, and acts as a means of visibility. Signage and other visible artifacts, the sounds and smells, and other sensory elements project distinct identities and images onto public space. Restaurants and street food vendors serving different cultural cuisines, shops catering to different lifestyles and outlooks, stores for different age groups, vendors selling goods, and more, represent people from many walks of life, and make these differences visible to the public.

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An infrastructure itself, public space also is a supportive layer to other urban infrastructures.

Infrastructure is the backbone of cities. Whether it is in pipes or transit on, below, or above streets, most of the infrastructure flows in public space. It depends on public space. There are two dimensions to public space as infrastructure. First, it is itself the network of material space that affords us social, economic, political, and recreational benefts while also connecting the many components of urban space. Second, public space acts as a supportive layer to other infrastructure. When we think of infrastructure, for example, transit, what comes to mind is buses, subway trains, the technology, engineering, and logistics— the main infrastructure. But transit has another big component—an ancillary infrastructure—that is equally important. That ancillary infrastructure begins right outside our private properties—it is the public space, the sidewalks and streets, that gets us to the transit.

An Essential Infrastructure

It is the quality of this ancillary infrastructure, the design of the network of public space—the sidewalks, the crosswalks, the street trees, the streetlights—that adds up to create desirable or undesirable conditions. Can a mother with a stroller and another child in tow get to the transit comfortably after dark? What about an elderly person with impaired vision? The quality of public space makes a difference in people’s ability to access the main infrastructure, in this case, in opting to take transit or not. In this way, public space is an essential infrastructure in and of itself, but also a complementary network of spaces for other infrastructures upon which cities are built, that affect our experience of urban life. 29

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Public space is a crucial alternate realm for youth.

The shrinkage of spatial territories for youth is apparent in many Western countries, and increasingly so in the Global South. More young people are kept away from public space due to fear of crime and traffc, and diverted to the ever-expanding virtual realm and electronic media. This is depriving youth of fundamental needs and rights that are closely linked to their social, physical, cognitive, and emotional development.7

Fundamental Needs & Rights of Youth

The openness and freedom of public space simultaneously provides youth the space for inner reflection and outer exposure. As opposed to private spaces and the highly managed and monitored environments of school and other predetermined spaces, public space provides a different and unique “open” and “loose” terrain. Public space presents social and spatial conditions that are different from the private realm. Natural, undeveloped, left-over, and unprogrammed public spaces provide young people with an escape from challenging situations and are an essential blank canvas that offer opportunities for self-reflection. The more traditional and developed public spaces expose youth to social and political situations helping them expand their horizons and make sense of the world around them. Public space inherently offers different types of affordances for social, psychological, and physical development. For example, just hanging out—alone or with peers—serves an important developmental need. Public space and spaces of public life, such as parks, streets, sports areas, other open spaces, shopping areas, coffeeshops, restaurants, libraries, and more, provide the perfect settings for hanging out, seeing, and being seen. Experiencing these situations helps young people understand, accept, or question societal rules and specifc cultural norms. The open-endedness and unforeseen situations provide youth with a setting to learn how to independently make decisions, deal with conflict, and to develop a sense of social responsibility. The need for such space—physically and temporally—is fundamental for young people to build self-esteem and develop self-identity. 30

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Public space has an important ludic dimension. Among other things, public space is a place where people come to play, to celebrate, and to let go.8 Play, in public, particularly for youth and adults, is a means for self- or group-expression. It is a way to be social and to enjoy public space, but play is also used as an expression of power and rights to space. For the young or those with modest resources or other restrictions, that limit their access to the city, play in public space is a way to actively engage with space and claim it for fun and display. But play is also empowering because it grants the right to occupy a part of the city. Public space as a place for play can be aptly understood in opposition to the repetitive bounds of home and work and other routine aspects of urban life. Many forms of urban play have a spirit of openness and acceptance. As urban space becomes more structured, play in public space offers an antidote by offering a condition of flux and fluidity. In contrast to much routine life, play is wasteful, ineffcient, seemingly purposeless, and often free of strict rules. Play in public expands the possibilities of public space and subtly restructures the spatial and social order, even if temporarily. By supporting play, public space offers freedom of choice from existing urban orders.

A Space for Play

Public spaces that are most conducive to play are ambiguous and open-ended but are also the ones that are in the eye of some public. Play in public creates a reason for, and thrives on, encounter—for fnding other players and new companions as well as an audience. It is an ideal catalyst for communication among strangers. Play often facilitates fleeting social behaviors among the ones playing. It also acts as a means for triangulation, where the play acts as the external stimulus that creates a common link for strangers to communicate verbally or non-verbally. These encounters may often foster conditions to experience difference. The act of playing offers a non-essential and informal situation that makes it easier to negotiate difference. It provides exposure to others and acts as a catalyst for social and civic solidarity. Play provides a window to new imagintions, new socio-spatial structures, and opens up new possibilities and meanings. 31

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One of the biggest advantages of urban life is the possibility of contact and interaction with the unfamiliar.

In cities, we share a physical geography with family, friends, acquaintances, but mostly with people that are unknown to us. This prospect to be in a “world of strangers” may generate angst for the new and uninitiated, but for most urbanites it makes way for endless opportunities. It opens up all sorts of possibilities to make new friends, collaborate, share, play, socialize, learn, and grow.

Contact with the Unfamiliar

One of the fundamental purposes of public spaces and spaces of public life is to provide the places of visibility, contact, and interactions with the unacquainted. Within the city, public space provides a less burdensome and somewhat detached feld to see and meet with strangers. Unlike a private setting, public space also is an open and exposed realm, where other publics act as the “eyes on the street” to provide a natural surveillance for all interacting parties.9 Chance encounters with unfamiliar others can happen in the everyday act of moving through the city, shopping, recreation, celebration, protest, or numerous other activities. Through the appropriate location, the right mix of use and physical elements, and management strategies, public spaces and spaces of public life can be designed to encourage serendipitous encounters with others.

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The expanse of public space is an asset in the response to the climate crisis.

An Insurance Policy

The looming climate crisis needs an expeditious, wide-ranging, diverse, and creative response. Public space has much to contribute to this multipronged approach. The rising sea levels affecting places near any water bodies (some that are hundreds of miles away from the coast), unpredictable weather patterns, and increasing extreme weather-related events cause catastrophic damage, but some of this can be mitigated by public space. The vast network of public space, if envisioned as an ecological system, can provide the frst line of defense toward storms and rising waters to buffer and mitigate, as many cities have begun to do. The large scale of publicly owned land, whether streets, parks, woods, spaces along highways, etc. or the highly engineered infrastructures, provide the opportunity to substantially reverse the destructive environmental practices and to retool spaces as climate responsive landscapes. Best of all, designing public spaces as responsive landscapes is an opportunity for connecting urbanites to a diverse set of unique and innovative natural landscapes that provide more options and venues for the community. The same scale and reach of public space can also be reimagined to alter travel behavior that substantially contributes to global warming through greenhouse gas emissions (discussed in Chapter 5). In the time of natural disasters, public spaces can be used as places to organize mutual aid and care, and even as spaces for shelter.

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The ubiquity of public space enables it with a capacity of affiliation across different landscapes and cultures.

We live in a highly mobile world, where people are regularly uprooted from their home locales. Some do so by choice, but for others the political or economic conditions force them to relocate to drastically different physical and cultural places. In these circumstances, aside from their private realms, public space plays a role in creating a sense of belonging to a new place.10 The sensory qualities of public space—the flight of pigeons, the smell of the sea, a familiar tree, the design of a fence, the quality of light, a soccer feld, the hustle-bustle of a market—have an utmost capacity to create a connection to “home” for the new arrivals. These seemingly ephemeral qualities of public space can bring deep psychological comfort by triggering a familiar memory, creating an interconnectedness, or forming a continuum between the past and the present. These experiences in and of public space can also establish a common or shared experience between the locals and the newcomers.

Connecting Power

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In profound or mundane ways, the nature of public space affects us all.

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We may never fully know the unseen and hidden physical, psychological, and developmental virtues of public space. For most of us, from the moment we step into public space, benefts accrue. Given that most public space exists in the exterior, the largest offering of public space is the outdoors. For the majority of the global population, private space does not provide adequate outdoor space. In addition, with an estimated one in seven persons living in slums, the dependency on public space for many is not a choice. For them, exterior public space is where essential living, working, socializing, learning, playing, and more has to happen. But public space provides other wide-ranging benefts that may be less visible compared to these essential functions. Aside from the fresh air that public space delivers (although in some places the public air is more polluted than in private), public space provides socio-psychological benefts that researchers have started to measure and pay attention to. Even passive interactions in public space reinforce the sense of community and reduce the feeling of loneliness that medical professionals now consider a serious pathology. As a space that offers opportunities for passive and active interaction, it helps reduce levels of anxiety and depression. Although not all passive or active interactions and opportunities for co-presence are intimate or intense or exceptional, most of these are meaningful associations for us as social beings. Even being on one’s own in the presence of others is a social behavior with signifcant sociopsychological rewards.

Subtle But Profound Benefits

The presence of public space also provides opportunities for a more active lifestyle, whether built-in as a part of the daily routines, such as walking or biking, or as special activities, such as sports and other forms of recreation. The scientifc community has concluded that interactions with natural settings can help improve cardiac health, sensory and immune functioning, mental health, and social connectedness and specifcally reduce stress, depression, aggression, crime, and ADHD symptoms.11 Additionally, youth's and children’s exposure to and experiences in open natural spaces aid physical, psychosocial, and cognitive development and help with building confdence, improving problem-solving abilities, and boost classroom learning.12 37

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What is public space? Public Space_VikasMehta_27May2022.indd 38

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2 Public space is cotemporally the locus of stimulation, exchange, oppression, and emancipation.

A loose and elastic notion that is variously deployed to defend (or attack) architecture, to decry (or celebrate) civic squares, to promote (or denounce) graffti artists, skateboarders, jay-walkers, parkour afcionados, pie-in-the-face guerrillas, underground capture the flag enthusiasts, flash-mob surveillance-busters, and other grid-resistant everyday anarchists. It is the unit of choice when it comes to understanding pollution, predicting political futures, thinking about citizenship, lauding creativity, and worrying about food, water, or the environment. It is either rife with corporate creep and visual pollution, or made bleak by intrusive surveillance technology, or both. Mark Kingwell

Meanings, uses, and scales of public space abound. Both “public” and “space” are concepts with broad territories. “Public” is rooted in, and often a surrogate for, the public sphere, the public realm, and the public domain: it also implies the shared, the collective, the accessible, the common people, and humanity itself. “Space” (non-private 39

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space) has a wide scalar range too—space outside my house, in my neighborhood, my city, state, or country, and my planet, as well as digital space, all make sense when imagining public space. Aligned with several urban scholars, in this book, I consider public space an important component—a physical manifestation—of the public realm with a great potential to be a meaningful setting for representation, participation, and the formation of a public sphere. Public space is also a mirror of the city. The overall sense of the city or genius loci—its spirit, its vitality, its splendor and successes, and the joys of urban life are visible in public space, as are its struggles, squalor, sufferings, and conflicts. Consequently, I am also keenly interested in the social and material dimensions of public space. In this book I will repeatedly emphasize the idea of publics. This implies underscoring and valuing the differences among individuals and groups and their expectations and desires in and from public space. This is not new. Nancy Fraser, Susan Ruddick, Iris Young, and several other urban scholars have emphasized the downside of thinking of public as uniform and indistinguishable. By stressing the plurality of the public, I also highlight the different symbolism and embodiments of public space—the way it presents itself in distinct ways as civic, social, restorative, kinetic, exchange, and symbolic space. The plural publics has also shifted the focus from the conceptualization of the idea to its outcomes. More recently, as the boundaries of public and private space have blurred, the concept of public life has become increasingly important as an outcome of public space.1 Hinged to public space is the predicament of publicness. It is seductive to construct the assessment of publicness centered only on the political role of public space. Yes, the act of making space public is political and all public space is political. But what if a public space is openly accessible, inclusive and many publics occupy the space, many interpretations of public are visible, and there is clear evidence of exchange among dissimilar publics without a sign of overt political action? Public space has other axiomatic roles regarding, for example, visibility, sociability, solidarity, and social cohesion, adeptly articulated by Margaret Kohn as the need for and sign of intersubjectivity.2 It is also worth 40

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considering that publicness is a continuum that must respond to the temporal and geographic context of space. Different from an unencumbered open realm, several neighborhoods and locales (not gated communities) in most cities depend upon immediate public space to bond and bridge and to build social solidarity, community, and collective identity—principles and values critical to civil society and civic engagement. We know that public space is conceptualized differently in different societies, cultures, and countries. In large parts of the non-Western world (particularly Asia and the Middle East) "public" and "public space" are not rooted in the idea of the Greek agora for assembly and defned by democratic values of openness, freedom, and equality. In many Eastern languages, there are no exact parallel words for public space. Quite different from the Western conception, public represents society and the outside, in contrast to the private that denotes family and inside. The markedly different cultures, religions, gender roles, economies, and political structures produce a very different concept of public. Although colonial and Western replicas of formal spaces exist in Eastern societies, most of the urban public space is that of the street, markets, local parks, space associated with communal and religious buildings, transportation, waterfronts, and so on. Much public space is user produced and managed through negotiations within the community with socio-economic needs being the prime driver. The life of the neighborhood is visible in public space through everyday activities of selling, buying, cooking, eating, making, mending, caring, grooming, praying, and regular events and ceremonies. Although I cannot discuss each of these cases (that would make a fascinating text), I showcase this difference between the Western and Eastern public space by including several ideas in the theorizing and practice of public space in India.

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All Public Space is Symbolic.

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The tension between the political order, market agendas, social and cultural norms, and individual and group needs and desires are visible in public space.

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Numerous aspects of public space collectively signal a welcome to some and rejection to others. Ownership and access are two pillars of public space. Yet, in a time when public space is delivered by multiple actors and agencies beyond the state, these must be examined in ways beyond legal ownership and access. Ownership is now mired in legal, economic, and management regimes. Consider this all too common example with a complex legal, economic, and operational ownership. A park is owned by the city, but renovated by funding from non-proft agencies including a neighborhood development corporation, and is operated and managed by the business improvement district (BID) that has an agreement to collect revenue by selling food and drinks and paid parking. Access to public space may seem more straightforward but is equally nuanced. There may be no apparent barriers—no gates or fences, and no charge to enter. Yet, access for some may be automatically diminished by externalities such as the lack of transit, cost of parking, or even basic services like toilets and drinking water. The rules about what is allowed within the space may discourage or exclude certain publics. Even more subtle is the design of the public space. The organization of spatial elements, the layout of spaces, the confguration and placement of seating (or the lack of it), the type of equipment, and even the fnishes of materials, attract and deter certain behaviors and activities.

Frames of Reference

Legal who owns it?

Economic who pays for it?

Management who operates it?

Physical/spatial what does it look and feel like? how does it contribute to activities?

Social who uses it? how does it contribute to sociability?

Political how does it contribute to democracy? 45

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The “public” is rooted in the concepts of public sphere, public domain, public realm, and public space. The interrelation of these conceptions is presented by Hannah Arendt in her call for a human presence in public space to enact politics.3 Public space can become deeply connected with public domain and public sphere, as is repeatedly made visible in the protests against diminishing democracy. Spatializing the public sphere and re-politicizing public space ultimately creates capabilities for remaking and retaking public space and the public sphere.4 The physical actions in space make politics a public activity, and participation creates the conditions of civility and solidarity among citizens. Yet, for participation to be meaningful it must be nonexclusive. Nancy Fraser critically examines Habermas’ idea of the public sphere and argues that a strict separation between the state and civil society is the precondition for the bourgeois conception of public sphere that creates “weak publics,” a public invited to take part in the opinion-formation but not in decision-making. 5 Such a conception of public sphere, built upon socio-economic inequalities, might appear to generate equity in political participation, while creating exclusions of multiple counterpublics—women, the working class, and other subaltern publics—searching for spaces of discursive contestation, identity formation, and political action. The formation of public spheres in which “strong publics” take part in both opinion-formation and decision-making, suggests Fraser, can happen with new, more critical, post-bourgeois defnitions of the public realm.

Public Sphere PublicDomain Public Realm Public Space

• Public Sphere: the overarching state of political and cultural life visible in a society’s institutions, practices, media, and spaces. The public sphere is where public opinion is formed. • Public Domain: the regulatory arena where the legal aspects of public places and public gatherings, such as the right to free speech and assembly, are determined. • Public Realm: somewhat interchangeable with public sphere, commonly associated with symbolic communication and spatial practices. Fits at the intersection of public sphere and public space, and is where real political action takes place. • Public Space: meanings, uses, and scales of public space abound but, most commonly, it is considered an important component—a physical manifestation—of the public realm. In its fullest potential, public space can provide a meaningful setting for participation and the formation of a public sphere.

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Intentionally or not, many denizens care for public space.

You Have Company

Many urban residents may not think of public space as an important element of their everyday life. Yet, most of them inadvertently expect to have places in the city where they can be in non-private spaces—often in the outdoors—to break the monotony of their schedules, to passively or actively recreate, to take a walk, to enjoy fresh air, to take their children to play, to shop, to watch an event or a parade or even actively participate. These seemingly simple needs and desires involve a wide audience and a host of guardians and engage numerous agencies, authorities, and the citizenry to confront the issues related to public space. The common person is not alone in partaking in public space. Directly or indirectly, diverse felds and disciplines engage with public space. Not surprisingly, each of these situates public differently. Public may refer to the state, polity, the community, a gathering of people, things that are not private, or the physical public spaces. Political theorists are most interested in the “public” in public space and are concerned with public space in the context of civil society and its relation to democracy and the rights of individuals and groups. Legal scholars examine the rights to access and control in public space. Philosophers may be interested in a range of aspects of public space from its phenomenological dimension to polity. Geographers pay attention to the political or socio-spatial attributes of public space and also focus on aspects such as sense of place. Urban sociologists and anthropologists discuss public space in the context of social dynamics and are concerned with social relationships in public space. In the practice-oriented disciplines the design and making of public space is the central focus of urban design (city design), landscape architecture, and sometimes architecture but also signifcant to the larger realm of city planning. Urban designers, architects, landscape architects, and urban planners primarily think of it as physical space and are often concerned with the relationship between people and space for creating a legible image and supporting conviviality. Public space is also an intriguing space for writers, painters, musicians, flmmakers, and other artists to imagine and reimagine space and society. 48

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Public space presents itself in many distinct ways, although not in a mutually exclusive manner.

Civic Spaces for political representation and action, display of unity, voicing opinions, and demanding change.

Social Spaces for active and passive, everyday social interaction and encounter, seeing and meeting the familiar and the unfamiliar.

Restorative Space for environmental healing and resilience. Spaces for well-being and health through active or passive activity. Spaces for sensorial and aesthetic experience. Spaces of retreat, and also subversive actions.

Symbolic

Modalities

Spaces to display individual or collective identities. Spaces for the state or private sector to create an image to display and showcase an area, neighborhood, or city.

Exchange Spaces for selling, buying, and other formal and informal economic exchange.

Kinetic Spaces primarily dedicated to flows, infrastructure, and movement of people and vehicles.

These modalities and uses of public space are transformable and transformative, and space is relational. A ceremonial civic space designed primarily for political purpose (i.e. the state using the space for display of power, or the populace using it to display unity and demand change) may be used for everyday casual sociability. A main street used for shopping and socializing may be used as a restorative space to be outdoors and relax. A modest everyday parochial space designed for neighborhood sociability may be used as a satellite political space to show solidarity with a political protest or to raise awareness of a socially signifcant issue. 49

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Like the air, public space is everywhere. We cannot exist without it. Everyone benefits from it. When it gets polluted, its value diminishes, and it hurts everyone. Sometimes, we feel it as the wind. It makes us feel alive. That same air, that wonderful life-renewing wind, sometimes blows fiercely. It becomes formidable and alters the shape of things in its path.

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Public space should be understood as a common good or commons and not a public good. Although this distinction may seem minor, the outcomes can be consequential. The problem with thinking about public space as a public good is that the private sector/ market has a remarkable ability to provide public goods— corporations can very well manage and deliver parks, plazas, playgrounds, trails, and other public spaces. Why, you may ask, is that a problem? Because the market also has a remarkable ability to make these public goods exclusive. This is, unfortunately, how much public space is produced and managed today. In the neoliberal model, the state or the public sector is now the middleman: governmental institutions contract out the provision of public goods to the private sector. Public space (not unlike water) is identifed as a common resource and public good that is handed over to the private sector for production, management, and distribution. Ultimately, through public-private partnerships, public spaces that were managed as commons are now privatized, and what were supposed to be non-excludable goods now become excludable. By appropriating public space as a public good, the market calculates its value primarily as an economic exchange value, whereas minimizing its value as a place for intersubjectivity, social exchange, encounter, and civic dialogue.

Public Good vs. Common Good

Public space should be a commons, most importantly, because it contributes to the public sphere and civility, and all the members of society beneft from that collectively. Keeping public space as commons is also important because commons are the property of everyone—no one is excluded, even if not everyone benefts from it equally at all times. Society can also make efforts toward equalizing benefts by aggregating more public space as commons by, for example, establishing land trusts. Ultimately, we must rethink the measures for public space beyond aesthetic and economic benefts, by evaluating the environmental benefts (air and water quality), public health benefts (mental and physical well-being), social benefts (social cohesion and social capital), and more. As we appreciate these common and collective societal benefts, we may be more inclined to value public space as a common good. 51

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The tacit agreement of norms and behaviors in public space, based on prevailing values, must remain somewhat open-ended, not dogmatic.

The established perception of public space is that of space open and accessible to all, and likely owned and managed by the state representing the public. The use and appropriation of public spaces is based on shared cultural ideologies and values that guide the laws, unwritten expectations, and behaviors. This general and unanimous agreement benefts the public by providing a foundational basis to participate in public space. Yet, this unwritten contract also constricts and binds the possibility of public space into an uninclusive, particular, and preferential public.

Who is the Public?

Increasingly, the management of public spaces is shared through public-private partnerships or solely provided by private agencies. This skews the balance of authority regarding what is acceptable in public space. The shift in control often translates to more uniform ideologies that tighten and limit the expected behaviors and use of public space. Such unitary expectation repudiates differentiation and tends to exclude the peculiar, the anomalous, the exceptional, and the experimental.

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There is no one public. publics space

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A public space as a universal, all-inclusive, balanced arena is (almost) unattainable.

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Public space is meaningful when it is more than different small private territories in a larger common territory.

More Than Proximity

Different private territories distant in a common space provide visibility, passive interaction, recognition of difference, … Different private territories in proximity in a common space provide visibility, interaction, sense of community, discussion, debate, disagreement, recognition of difference, … Different private territories conjoining in a common space provide visibility, interaction, sense of community, discussion, debate, disagreement, recognition of difference, sense of purpose, empowerment, public space as a geography of public sphere, …

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What Does ”Public” Imply?

open available accessible common shared collective inclusive visible belongs to everyone ”Not my problem!” ”Someone else’s problem” Outside Exposed Unknown Risky

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The wide-ranging definitions of public space articulated by the people show its reach, material and symbolic value, and meaning in people's lives.

Staeheli and Mitchell6 gathered the defnitions of public space from a range of publics including lay people, activists, architects, planners, business leaders, police, and others.

People’s Definitions

DEFINITIONS BY COMMUNITY6 • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

Physical defnition (e.g. streets, parks, etc.) Meeting place, place of interaction Site of negotiation, contest or protest Public sphere, no physical form Opposite of private space Site of display Public ownership, public property Place of contact with strangers Sites of danger, threat, violence Places of exchange relations (e.g. shopping) Space of community Space of surveillance Place of open access—no or few limitations Places lacking control by individuals Places governed by open forum doctrine Idealized space—no physical form Places for people/public by use Places made by the public/public sweat equity

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The abstraction of space comes to life as public space through public use and appropriation.

Conceptual vs. Representational

Physical space is only abstract space. It is an artifact, but an esoteric and conceptual one. This conceptual space becomes representational space when individuals or groups appropriate and use the space for public, parochial, or private needs in public.7 It becomes public space. The visible appropriation, negotiations, encounters, and lived experiences within the context of individual and group dynamics, socio-cultural mores, political rules, market forces, and the publics’ needs determine the publicness of the space.

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Although not mutually exclusive, public space means different things to different people.

Middle-class For most middle-class residents, public spaces are primarily places for leisure, recreation and sports, particularly for families with children. Urban Middle-class For many middle-class urban residents, public spaces within the neighborhood form the everyday link to the city. These spaces are essential to meeting their day-today shopping, leisure, and social needs, and to be in the presence of others and experience urbanity. Young For the young, public spaces, within the neighborhood or beyond in the city, are spaces to be seen in, to express themselves and defne their place in society. Wealthy For the wealthy, public spaces may cater to their shopping, leisure, and social needs but people with means also use symbolic public spaces to display their status. Poor and Homeless For the less fortunate, those with modest accommodations, meager jobs, the unemployed, homeless and the marginal, public space is as good a place as any other to spend most of their day. Many of them regularly occupy public space to look for opportunities, a place where they have social capital, and where they can get support from institutions, acquaintances, and friends. Vendors For vendors, public space delivers a constant stream of buyers, as it does for some others who use the street to panhandle. Visitors For many visitors, it is the way to experience new places. Public spaces are destinations, or at the minimum, points of orientation to customarily stop for eating, drinking, shopping, and experiencing urban life. All At certain times, public space, for all, is a place to come out and celebrate, mourn, or to gather and protest and let your voice be heard.

Different Things to Different People

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Public space is gendered space. There is no public space for women; the whole world is a prison where you have to be constantly aware at all times that you're a potential victim. Jessica Valenti

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Women’s experience of public space is different from men's.

Feminist scholars contend that gender as a construct operates differently in the contexts of age, class, education, culture, race, and social norms.8 This means, not only is women’s experience of public space different from men's, women of different classes, education, races, etc. experience public space differently. Experiences of college-going young women or middle-class women do not explain the experiences of all women in public space. Additionally, access to and agency in public space is directly related to women’s role in society. Much of the disadvantage in access for women is related to safety. Two dimensions of safety in public space are at play—the experienced sense of safety (by women) and externally imposed notion of safety (by society). Experienced sense of safety The visible spatial and temporal use of public space and countless interviews and surveys establish that women have a different sense of safety in public space. There is good reason for that. Women and girls regularly experience sexual harassment in public space that include ogling, lewd comments, insulting slurs, stalking, touching, groping, and more. Very little attention is paid to planning, designing, and managing public space from the perspective of making it safe for women. Most public spaces are designed for the ft and able-bodied male or a family.

Women & Public Space

Imposed safety In most countries the majority of violence that women encounter is domestic and is usually perpetrated by current or former husbands or partners. Nevertheless, in many cultures, social norms prevent women from the gaze of society and strangers, and safety is used as a guise to contain women within the domestic realm. Public space is projected as dangerous and a threat to the woman. This imposed fear is used to severely restrict women’s rights to public space and the city. If at all permitted in public, women must cover up, travel in company, and limit their behavior in public. This imposed notion of safety fundamentally alters women’s place in 63

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the city and excludes women’s use of public space as a platform for struggle against oppression. Even in Western societies, where women have more equitable rights to the city, there are severe limitations: a woman alone in public space is often viewed suspiciously as one with questionable morals and loose character.

Women have been increasingly seeking justice for both these dimensions of safety. Regarding experienced safety, women are demanding better lighting, potable water, bathrooms, and more in public spaces. To address the imposed safety, women are challenging their place in society and demanding resources, such as daycare services in several countries in the Global South, that free them from the domestic realm when they choose to. They are using art and other creative practices to bring attention to sexual harassment and violence against women. More importantly, by actively organizing and campaigning to intentionally increase women’s presence in public spaces by loitering on streets, using public spaces considered unsafe, or staying in public spaces at times deemed unsafe, women are practicing active and passive resistance to assert their equal right to the city.

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[W]e now propose that what women need in order to maximize their access to public space as citizens is not greater surveillance or protectionism (however well meaning), but the right to take risks. Shilpa Phadke

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trail

cemetery

sports fields felds gardens small park

main street plaza sports felds

woods

cemetery

commercial street park left-over space

pocket park

public market public pool common greens

conservatory

children's park

ponds

city park lakes overlooks square commercial street

waterfront trail

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waterfront park

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Good cities are home to a rich diversity of scales and types of public spaces. In the city, we encounter several types and scales of material public spaces. These types vary, from the classical taxonomies to the newly recognized and often “loose” public spaces of the postindustrial city. The most ubiquitous types include streets and alleys, parks and playgrounds, plazas and squares, open grounds, waterfronts, greenways and trails, arcades, markets, and memorials, but there are many more types that emerge as different publics lay their claims on the city. Several are predominantly corporatized and commoditized public spaces of city centers and downtowns, but we also experience the residual spaces between buildings, the vestigial spaces associated with active or obsolete infrastructure—often claimed by marginalized groups and made public. Examining public space through the lens of a typological classifcation shows the immense range of the role of public space in the life of the city. At no time is this classifcation fxed. As cities evolve and transform, needs in and roles of public space change. Equally importantly, as the design, use, and management of public space evolves, new typologies emerge. For example, when an everyday neighborhood park is renovated with new amenities to become a city-wide destination, some residents retract to keep their activities close to home on the street, alley, or a vacant lot. As public spaces become obsolete or are transformed, past classifcations need to be reconsidered.

Scales, Types & Typologies

The purpose of examining scales and types is also to provide a “bird’s eye view” and a bigger picture to be able to see if different forms of public space are serving different publics, fulflling different purposes, and retaining distinct and different meanings. Scales and types of public spaces should not be flattened, equalized, or watered down. Meaning, different types of neighborhoods will require different spaces and just because a space works in one neighborhood or part of the city does not warrant its replication for other locations. Different public spaces, based on their location, size, shape, adjacencies must serve different purposes. A resilient, appealing and just city will have robust and varied scales and types of public spaces and spaces of public life. 67

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Some of the numerous

definitions and ways to evaluate publicness and public space …

responsive, democratic & meaningful stephen carr, mark francis, leanne rivlin & andrew stone

accessibility, inclusion & tolerance of difference iris marion young

ownership, access & intersubjectivity margaret kohn

definitions diversity, management & accessibility dorota mantey

ownership, management, accessibility & inclusiveness florian langstraat & rianne van melik

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accessibility, inclusion & ownership, control, civility, physical configuration & animation george varna & steve tiesdell

distributive justice, interactional justice, procedural justice, recognition of difference & ethics of care setha low

inclusiveness, meaningfulness, safety, comfort & pleasurability vikas mehta

measures access, agency & interest

stanley benn & gerald gaus

ownership, management & use/users jeremy nemeth & stephan schmidt

urban life, physical design, management & human connection miguel lopes, sara santos cruz & paulo pinho

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Material public space sidewalks, streets, squares, plazas, parks, playgrounds, trails, woods, …

The Many Avatars

Political public space gather, interact, discuss, demand, protest, debate issues of public sphere, …

Social public space use, see, be seen, meet, interact, socialize, …

•Intersubjective see, meet, interact, socialize with familiars and strangers •Performative every day and special events > use of space – behaviors and activities > individual and group expression, enacting identity, anonymity •Communicative active and passive > relatability to others, similar and different

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The Global North and Global South face unique challenges regarding public space. There is usually adequate public space within urban areas in the cities of the Global North. However, research has shown disparities in distribution of public space related to income, class, and race in many cities. There are also injustices related to quality, care, and amenities in public space for minority populations and those of lower socio-economic status. There are other complexities. Even though access may be open, public spaces with better amenities are in parts of cities where access is diffcult for the poor either due to lack of transit or cost of parking and other services. In other cases, the public spaces that see investment and care, reflected in their programming and facilities, often cater to visitors, the white-collar offce workers, and the bourgeois, at the expense of local residents. The fast-growing cities in the Global South face some of these same issues. But the overarching problem for these cities is, on the other hand, typically about a gross shortage of public space. The World Health Organization recommends a minimum of about 100 ft2 (9 m2) of green space per person with an ideal of about 540 ft2 (50 m2) per capita. According to some recent estimates, US cities have a range of just under 150 ft2 (New York) to over 1,000 ft2 (Atlanta) of green space per resident. In comparison, many cities in Asia, the Middle East, South America, and Mexico such as Mumbai, Chennai, Bangalore, Tokyo, Shanghai, Taipei, Istanbul, Dubai, Bogotá, Buenos Aires, and Mexico City struggle to achieve even 100 ft2 of public green space per person, with many as low as 10 to 20 ft2 per person.

Different Dilemmas

The solutions have to fundamentally differ in both contexts. In the Global North, there is much need for transforming more public space to be meaningful to the many publics that are overlooked. This means containing sprawl and investing in public spaces in the center—not the city center (where investment has already taken place) but in urban neighborhoods. In the Global South, the biggest efforts have to focus on conservation of urban green and open space, and with tactically providing meaningful public space in informal settlements that house large urban populations. 71

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Classification

Everyday places, places of meaning, social environments, places of retreat, negative spaces Nick Dines and Vicky Cattell Erected, displayed, exalted, exposed, colored, marginalized Jack Burgers Ceremonial, community, liberal, multi-public space Kurt Iveson Public property, semiotic, public sphere John Gulick Social, symbolic, political George Varna and Steve Tiesdell Civic, social, restorative, kinetic, exchange, symbolic Vikas Mehta

Many classifcations of public space have been extensively reviewed and presented by Carmona.9 72

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The technological developments since the mid-nineteenth century have drastically reduced the dependence on public space.

Urban societies were once dependent on public space for domestic, social, and political needs, such as collecting water, buying and selling goods and services, disposing garbage, gathering news, and witnessing political events such as public punishments. The lack of plumbing required most people to use streets and other public open spaces to fetch water and dispose of waste. Household water supply eliminated the need to regularly visit public space whether it was the market square or the neighborhood water source. The automobile provided a private territory to move through public space. This private bubble delivered a highly personalized space, with controlled sensory stimuli customized through temperature control, music, screens, aromas, and more. Moving through public space could now be done with little interaction with the public.

Re-shapers & Transformers

The invention of refrigeration reduced the trips to the market for groceries and perishable goods from daily to weekly or less. Air conditioning transformed the indoors into a comfortable interior space as an alternative to being outdoors in public spaces in hot weather. This resulted in a drastic reduction of use of porches, stoops, balconies, and other transitional spaces that were the perfect locations for the private to interact with the public. Televisions, computers, and other media further reduced the need for public space as a source of news, information, and entertainment. E-commerce and easy online delivery continue to further diminish the need to go out in public, by reducing trips for groceries and other daily, weekly, and long-term household goods. 73

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Public spaces, even in weak forms, deliver a tangible dimension for shared symbolic meanings, as places of common use, collective action, public life, and shared association.10 The basic human needs of bonding, belonging, and recognition get materialized in public space. The attachment to place in association with group and community (beyond the attachment to place and self) delivers a sense of security, satisfaction, solidarity, responsibility, and collective identity.

Symbolic Value

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The publicness of public space is a continuum.

Publicness: a Continuum

Public space is not absolute. It can be manifest as “looseness” and “tightness,” where loose space is diverse, easily adaptable, and often spontaneous whereas tight space is characterized by control and restrictions, overly prescriptive, and limiting in design.11 Publicness also can be understood as a continuum of open to closed12 or measured in terms of its ability to accept diversity and difference.13 While controls, rules, and restrictions may be communicated via signs and/or personnel monitoring of the space, all such communication is not explicit. Many constraints may, in fact, be expressed by the design of space that may provide affordances for some actions and barriers to others. In other words, we can determine the publicness of public space by examining the social and behavioral diversity, variation, difference, and even contradictions and conflicts that the public space can sustain. The quality of publicness is best assessed in comparison to other public spaces in a similar cultural context. For example, by comparing how different individuals and groups have or do not have the equal rights to use different public spaces in a city or region, can inform us of the degree of elasticity of the space in question. For a true assessment, a space must also be viewed over time. Many spaces have inherent limits and can support little diversity but are elastic when viewed over time. That is, they can sustain diverse groups and behaviors at different times of the day or week. 76

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Culture is elastic and dynamic.

Culture, it is believed, is a major determinant of human behavior and use of space.14 Culture, however, is not a fxed reality. It is evolving and ever changing, albeit slowly. Space has its own standing in determining behavior. Social experience is constituted through and in space. Without implying environmental determinism or overemphasizing the role of space as a determinant of behavior, Dear and Wolch suggest that social relations may be “constituted through space,” “constrained by space,” or “mediated by space.”15 Changes made to space—to its fxed, fleeting, and floating components and its management, rules, and regulations can hinder or provide affordances for new behaviors. With his work, particularly in Copenhagen, but also in several other cities across the world, Jan Gehl has shown that sometimes changing the settings can modify cultural practices. In other words, if people are inclined toward certain behavior, perhaps even to try out something new which they may have seen or heard about, the settings can act as a catalyst for the behavior to occur.

Culture & Public Space

Cultural change is as prevalent as the stability of traditions and is visible all around us, particularly in a hyper-connected world. Café culture has become prominent in the US, but only in the last 25 years, and Starbucks now promotes itself as a “third place.” In the last decade, craft breweries have followed a similar trend, as have food carts—now a ubiquitous fxture of most urban places. Once considered the means for survival for new immigrants, food carts have been embraced by entrepreneurs, with many finding creative expression and gainful self-employment through food. North Indian cities, where tea drinking has always been the norm across classes, are seeing a sea change in public culture. In the twenty-frst century, coffee drinking in outdoor and indoor cafes now represents an urban experience, and has become the thing to do in public. 77

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A public space can be a third place. Most often a third place is not a public space but a private space open to public use, even though it may be a space of robust public life.

Urban sociologist Ray Oldenburg defned a third place as a place of refuge other than the home or workplace where people can regularly visit and commune with friends, neighbors, coworkers, and even strangers.16 A third place is welcoming, comfortable, and convivial, is visited by regulars, and is a place to meet old friends and make new ones. Often third places are small businesses, cafes, coffeeshops, bars, pubs, restaurants, community centers, general stores, and so on. Third places are often within easy access from home or work for many, and are likely to be privately owned spaces that survive on public access. Although most of these places have the right to control access, they seldom do in the interest of their business. Most commonly, third places serve the many roles of public space such as sociability, camaraderie, and encounter with strangers. These places of public life and public discussion are crucial to formulating and developing the public sphere.17 Historically, in the West and East, third places and other private and quasi-public spaces have been safe havens for discussing, debating, and planning events and movements, and central to contesting and dissenting against the status quo, whether it be the state, colonial rule, or the monarchy.

Public Space vs.

Third Place

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Three, not two, realms complete the taxonomy of space.

Three Realms

We often hear of space classifed into two dichotomous realms as private and public. This is almost consistent across the design and planning disciplines. But this is an incomplete taxonomy. There is little confusion about what is private. But classifying all the spaces that are outside of the private realm as public, although not incorrect, is not very useful. We have a very different relationship—in terms of sense of familiarity, care, and perhaps even a sense of protective ownership—with the non-private spaces just outside our private homes, whether a house or an apartment or a shanty in a slum. A little further away from our private domains, within our neighborhoods, we relate to space differently than to public spaces in the rest of the city or region. Perhaps not perfect or exhaustive, urban sociologists have a more complete taxonomy: they categorize space as private, parochial, and public. Parochial is the space that is shared by similar interest groups, such as a park within a neighborhood or a workplace. Much clarity can be achieved in design, planning, and policy if the distinction between public and parochial is recognized and daylighted by the built environment professionals. We need only to look outside our private homes to distinguish and understand the difference. Private realm—intimate space of self and immediate family. Tight, close-knit, and characterized by intimacy and privacy. Parochial realm—the space shared by those with much in common. Characterized by communality, sociability, friendly interactions, and collective identity. It is a place to commune with friends, neighbors, and co-workers. Here one can expect planned or serendipitous meetings with friends, acquaintances, and like-minded people. Examples include neighborhoods, workplace, third place, and other shared spaces of common interest groups. Public realm—the space shared by strangers. Characterized by anonymity, difference, unfamiliarity, and high diversity of people and viewpoints. It is a space for seeing or meeting diverse others, to experience new practices, behaviors and outlooks, and even to encounter the unexpected. 80

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Public spaces can be places for bonding, bridging, or both. Public space may be understood to have two distinct roles, in ways that sociologists classify social capital—as bonding and bridging. Depending on their location, purpose, design and more, public spaces can provide places for bonding or bridging, or both at the same time. Public spaces for bonding may be those that are in easy reach, often within neighborhoods. Or these may be places, unassociated with a neighborhood, where like-minded people meet to interact, exchange, and to affrm their identities. It is these public spaces that are likely to aid familiar individuals and groups to meet, connect, interact, and reinforce their ties and networks, and build and strengthen social capital. Bonding public spaces have an ambience of intimacy, they reinforce the sense of community, and feel authentic. A community park or garden, a neighborhood main street, a neighborhood square or plaza or a local farmers’ market, are examples of bonding public spaces.

Bonding & Bridging

The public spaces for bridging typically do not belong to a neighborhood, even if these may be located within one. These spaces may be identifed as belonging to the city or region and thus not limited to the people who live nearby. Bridging public spaces are the ones where individuals and groups of diverse backgrounds, walks of life, and viewpoints coexist. These public spaces simultaneously favor diversity and difference, and evoke a sense of civic solidarity. Numerous parochial groups may populate these spaces. Confronting strangers and maintaining anonymity is expected, while the boundaries of norms may be stretched. A city plaza or park, a regional trail, a beloved street, a skateboarding park, a found space under a highway, a city market, may all act as bridging public spaces. Yet, bonding and bridging spaces may not be mutually exclusive. In bonding public spaces close to home, people of the same neighborhood with widely different outlooks may interact. Similarly, in bridging public spaces unfamiliar individuals and groups from different locations may share common backgrounds, ethnicity, norms, age, sexual orientation or interests, thus use the public space to bond. 81

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The street is the most common form of open public space across the urbanized world.

The joy and pain of urban existence, the comfort and hardship of it, its effciency or failure are influenced by the wisdom or the thoughtlessness with which streets are platted. Charles Mulford Robinson

An ancient, ubiquitous, and pan-cultural spatial typology of public space is the street. With a simple structure that can accommodate myriad functions, streets continue to form an easy and effcient basis of dividing land, providing access and connectivity, light, air, view, utilities and services. Quite simply, the street provides linkages between properties, buildings, and uses. But the morphology of the street has as immense relational ability to be an immediate and intimate public space for the dwelling, as well as a network of public space throughout the settlement that can connect activities and people in space and time. Collectively, the street network is the flows of communication and exchange—for domestic, social, economic, cultural, and civic practice in the city and beyond.18

An Exceptional Typology

The street is the river of life of the city, the place where we come together, the pathway to the center. William H. Whyte

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The meager sidewalk is perhaps the most public of public spaces.

The sidewalk is the quintessential infrastructure on which much of urban life depends.19 Sidewalks wind through the city, touching myriad urban conditions. Although not equal or easily negotiable by all, particularly the less able, the sidewalk, for pedestrians, forms the most common but connected movement network in most urban places. For most, the sidewalk is the frst step into public space. Although with the immense power to connect, sidewalks are usually spaces of low or little expectation, often just a few feet of concrete, stone, or brick. Their location at the intersection of the public space of the street and public or private property makes sidewalks a unique urban condition. In many jurisdictions, the property owners are responsible for the upkeep (and sometimes repair) of sidewalks. This often translates into the property owners (especially businesses) having a big stake in this public space. As a dedicated pedestrian space at the edge of private properties, it is also the public space that many property owners covet to expand their territories. As a result, adjacent property owners, particularly businesses, desire a piece of the sidewalk as a billboard for their business, whether to display their wares to the constant flow of potential customers or claim space to expand their territories for dining. By doing so, these property owners create an interesting tension between regulation and negotiation and the public and private—on one hand they add sensory stimulation, social life, and vitality to the street, but on the other they claim valuable pedestrian space for private activities.

Sidewalk

Aside from a place of movement, sidewalks are also a space of pause. On disproportionately little space, the sidewalk accommodates the many shades of publicness. Many of the virtues and struggles of the street as public space are performed and visible on the sidewalk, whether it is encounter, exchange, dialogue, contestation, conviviality, leisure, rest, performance, display, economic survival, refuge, or a place for nature. This seemingly simple and modest space harbors a great deal of complexity. 85

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Public space, often by default, connotes the outdoors. But substantial public space also exists in interior environments —on grade, below, and above.

Public markets, transit stations, libraries, public museums, winter gardens, public arcades, and grand train stations are all examples of interior public space. These spaces play an important role in the overall taxonomy of public space, both individually and collectively. By connecting exterior spaces through spaces in buildings, interior public spaces provide valuable linkages to stitch together a network of public spaces. Interior public spaces are the link between “fgure” and “ground” and transform myriad public buildings from isolated objects to an integral part of the public realm. Interior public spaces expand the spatial typologies of public space and widen the range of spaces for exchange. Geographers have well established that a sense of enclosure in public space is one of the important characteristics that provides a perception of “insideness,” which is closely linked to place attachment and identity. The sense of enclosure inherent in most interiors helps expand the reach of public space as interior public spaces add to the meaningfulness of public space for many more people. For some urbanites, the interior public spaces defne much of their experience outside of the private realm. The intimacy afforded by the interior supports certain private behaviors and activities that not only make public space more meaningful and comfortable to those conducting the activities but are also more acceptable to the other publics than in the outdoors.

Uniqueness of Interior Public Space

In several cultures urban space is highly gendered and women’s social space is strictly demarcated. In patriarchal societies women are a representation of the domestic and their territory is often limited to the private realm. Here, social norms limit women’s behaviors in public, or completely keep them away from the gaze of society and strangers, severely restricting women’s rights to public space. Interior public spaces or interior private spaces support public life in some of these cases, where women have demanded their rights. With their containment, partial visibility and “openness,” they provide the mediating settings for women to participate in public life, albeit only with other women. 87

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Spatially, the intersection of exterior and interior public spaces also generates a range of thresholds that help negotiate personal and public territories, and support unique behaviors and exchanges in public space. Interior public spaces also expand the temporal range of public space. Climate-controlled spaces offer comfort and convenience, and support public life and exchange. This becomes even more relevant during current times with the increasing unpredictability of weather. Interior public spaces are critical for some urbanites. For those who lack shelter, interior public spaces provide the refuge and services, particularly during inclement weather. In fact, in a time when open public spaces are increasingly being co-opted by private interests and blatantly or subtly denying access to the less fortunate, many interior public spaces are the only remaining spaces for multiple publics. In several Western countries, libraries, more than parks and streets, for example, are performing as the most “open” public spaces with minimum regulations to keep out the “undesirable” publics. Overall, interior public space expands the territory of public space and public life, not only spatially but also socially and psychologically. Interior public spaces also have limitations. The same sense of enclosure that offers the benefts of intimacy and “insideness” also limits the expanse of the psychological territory of interior space. The sense of security that is a result of the shelter also is a sense of containment not only physically but behaviorally as well. With current concerns of the panoptic tendencies of the state, interior space often seems to be under the view of authorities. As interior space renders an ambience that supports more privacy than outdoors, it also retracts some openness and constrains certain behaviors, particularly those that involve active action-oriented use of space, such as some forms of play. Regarding the political role of public space, visual, aural, and tactile communication can be used very effectively in the contained interiors. Yet, much political action, such as demonstrations and marches are almost impossible, negating an important role of public space. The enclosure of interior public space is also a big disadvantage, as it limits the openness of the network that is critical for demonstrators for dodging or escaping the law enforcing authorities. 88

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Paradoxes Public Space_VikasMehta_27May2022.indd 90

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3 An expansive and fluid concept, public space fnds itself at ease with paradox. As the domain of the state, market, community, and the individual, public space in its political, social, and material form is under constant flux—a push and pull that simultaneously results in its continuing contraction and expansion. On the one hand, the twenty-frst century can be characterized by the assault on civil liberties, the rise of the panoptic state, and severe constrictions on public life in several societies across the globe. Beginning with the reactions and overreactions to the potential threats of terrorist attacks, followed by aggressive means to contain protests, occupations, and other forms of public dissent, the state apparatus has repeatedly been employed, often with the help of the private sector, to contain the commons. There is no better place to view this confnement than public space—on streets, parks, squares, waterfronts, children's playgrounds, and more. With the reduction of public investment, the transfer of rights to private agencies, drastic modifcations in design to contain gathering, heightened use of surveillance technologies, and law enforcement techniques—public space has been the focus and material form of the constriction of the public sphere.

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Paradoxically, this tightening of traditional public space and the resultant disenfranchisement of several groups has compelled them to fnd fssures in the system and enabled them to claim their right to the city by making space—often leftover and marginal space—public. In cities around the world, a growing number of contemporary public spaces are being produced through a much more dynamic, open, and grassroots process that goes beyond the dogmatic paradigms for the production of space. This new landscape of urban public space engages the social, political, and economic forces where the diversity of use, lifestyle, and aesthetic preference are celebrated in the making and appropriation of space. Visible in the ordinary day-to-day settings, this new public space of the everyday city is not trivial. It reveals the multiple expressions of the public. In the contemporary city, observing these spatially marginal public spaces—alive with new uses and meanings—expand our conceptions of “public” as well as of “space.” These public spaces act as a medium for emergent micro-politics of the numerous publics and counterpublics and begin to outline new possibilities for democratic practice. Dynamic and spirited, these spaces are treasure troves of vibrant urban life. They are generators of joy, of interactions and intersubjectivity, of creativity, of play—much of what we hope from public space. But as with most things complex, there are paradoxes within paradoxes. Even though space gets produced by the numerous counterpublics, not all marginal groups are part of this transformative change. Those that are able to lay claims on space are educated, well-connected, and skilled. Also noticeable is the use and interpretation of public space by these counterpublics. Many, especially the young, have grown up in an era where public space has been commonly delivered by the market. This has altered and limited the expectations from public space for the majority of these new urbanites, many that were former suburbanites. Although there is no dearth of innovation in claiming and making space public, unfortunately, the numerous novel actions, interpretations, and uses of public space remain contained within a set of bourgeois values and norms.

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Relative to their past experiences, many of the new residents in the revitalized city also fnd urban living and its public spaces too intense and frenetic. Many want to be part of this public space, but demand for it to be tamed. Those who have been vulnerable in public space have demanded more oversight from the state as a matter of equal rights. Paradoxically, in some cases, the state has responded with more technological and human surveillance that has enabled a sense of safety, but also created a fortress-like environment that is unwelcoming to groups with unconventional identities and outlooks. The discussion on public space in the twenty-frst century cannot be complete without understanding the relationship of communication technologies with public space. Technology and communications have created new enigmas but also opportunities. On the one hand, being glued to our visual and sonic environments and individual social circles via personalized mobile technology and social media keeps us in contained personal and parochial bubbles. This self-contained space disincentivizes much intersubjectivity and social behavior with strangers in the public spaces we inhabit. On the other hand, the same technology connects us to a digital realm that can be used for collective social and political action that is indispensable to the formation of the public sphere. These and several other paradoxes characterize public space that is used as a medium for negotiations between the state, the market, and the community but also between the various communities and groups themselves. Although this may result in disagreements and tensions, it reflects the needs and desires of residents and the transforming city itself.

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Everyone Knows What it is

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Concurrently a space of democratic discourse, polity, and exclusion, the agora displayed the highest and lowest possibilities of public space.

The Myth of the Agora

The historic Greek agora is a paradox. It has been crowned as the exemplar public space in Western democracies, particularly by those is the design disciplines. Yet, history informs us that the agora was a space strictly for only free citizens—an incomplete public space where many publics, such as women, children, and slaves, were not allowed to participate. Nevertheless, we continue to refer to the agora as an epitome of public space because, despite its exclusionary participation, it functioned as the physical avatar of the state. The elite publics, that occupied the agora, debated, negotiated, and created the rules for the state— a direct, albeit select democracy.

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The efforts of the state and capital to contain public space are countered by residents through the expansion of nontraditional public space. The neoliberal policies of the last quarter of the twentieth century cemented the role of private capital in city building. Well-designed and plush urban public space became central to the development of center city neighborhoods to bring back trust in urban living and attract more investment. This attention and care for urban public space came at a cost. The design and management narrowly catered to the white collar workers, suburbanites, and tourists while contracting the territory for the minorities and marginal groups. A further contraction of public space became evident with a profound loss of trust after 9/11 that resulted in severe restrictions and containment of public life in several societies across the globe. At the same time, past decades have restored our belief in public life and erased any doubts of the relevance and resurgence of public space. Worldwide, cities and regions are using public space to reclaim and revitalize derelict areas to create walkable humane places, adapting public spaces for creating specialized places to accommodate new needs, or to employ ecological practices and foster nature in urban settings. In the increasing heterogeneous urban century, many more groups are voicing their views in the public sphere and claiming their right to public space. Local communities are applying bottom-up actions and interventions to build and strengthen identity, challenging monuments and symbols of contested pasts, or using public spaces to nurture an ethos of diversity and inclusiveness. Public spaces can be witnessed as territories—fxed and flowing—where citizens are taking to the streets to question the fundamental social and cultural structure of society, including positions of citizenship, civil rights, racial inequities, spatial injustices, and more. These transformations call for a new interpretation of public space as a place of diversity, but they should equally inspire us to critically defend the role of public space as a place for assembly. As many more groups claim the city, the need for a space for expression, discussion, and display has become even greater for the survival of an engaged civil society.

Contraction & Expansion

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The prime expectation from public space for most citizens is a non-political (or apolitical) space.

My generation is so used to having our public spaces look like the Starbucks, with the beautiful lighting and the little bit of Nina Simone and my coffee that's blended a certain way from Costa Rica. Sandra Tsing Loh

Decades of privatized management has altered the expectations for the majority of urbanites and suburbanites.1 What most people expect from public space today is a space that fts the middle-class values and norms.

Changing Expectations

Yes, people still seek opportunities for social interaction with similar unknowns, as well as mostly passive opportunities of seeing the unfamiliar “others,” albeit in a controlled setting. Yet, most are seeking a high-quality attractive space that is novel and innovative, with state-of-the-art amenities to serve the needs for mass consumption and recreation. These expectations eventually translate into a voice that demands more of the same through community participation and votes. As public spaces in cities morph to privately-operated public spaces or privately-owned public spaces that are non-inclusive social spaces, they eliminate their roles as political places. Over time, as more and more such spaces proliferate in the city, they create a model for many more spaces, new and old, that then compete for audience and customers. Main streets, neighborhood business districts, and even parks and trails follow this model resulting in overarching restrictions on civic and political activities.

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BRZs, BIAs, SSAs, BIDs, TBIDs, CIDs, SIDs, NIDs, ...

Capital’s mechanisms for revitalization, improvement, identity, revenue, … but also privatization, homogenization, “cleaning up,” monitoring, and exclusion.

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Capital discovered public space as the state gave up control.

Public space is now inextricably linked to capital. Look at the typical parks, plazas, squares, and commercial streets of most urban cores of cities, and the influence of capital becomes apparent. These common spaces are often privately–managed and treated as commodities for generating profit. This assemblage of public spaces is used as a catalyst to bolster a competitive global image for the city— to attract visitors, residents, jobs, and more capital. Local capital uses public space as bait to lure global capital for new development in a competitive global economy. Public space is used as an intrinsic part of the package of real estate development. It is one of the biggest advertisements for development—access to public space, a view to it, and the ability to be in it as a safe space determines the market potential for real estate as commodity.

A Cash Cow for Capital

This vicious circle of commoditization has resulted in a landscape of institutionalized public space that gets more and more homogenized and flattened—one that represents limited ideologies. The high level of control—through design, rules, and regulations—has strangled possibilities for many forms of free speech and for use by numerous groups including the poor, youth, many ethnic minorities, even the elderly, and many others with different and unconventional outlook. 101

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No, public space is not neutral.

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Seemingly minor hurdles and restrictions to public space directly translate to limiting the right to the city. Restricting access to public space is not new. Women, children, and slaves were not allowed to occupy the Greek agora; members of the lower caste did not have equal access to temple compounds in India; in the United States, until late nineteenth century, Jim Crow laws prohibited people of color to access public gathering places used and occupied by Caucasians. Today, however, in countries where societies pride themselves on equal rights, overt restrictions to many public spaces are absent but other obstacles to access are disguised. Gone are the signs blatantly denying access to people of color, or a certain race, ethnicity, or other identity. Instead, rules and regulations—with and without signs— prohibit or discourage activities and behaviors that are usually associated with people who are in the minority, not only economically, racially, or ethnically but also in other characteristics based on nationality, religion, sexuality, age, and other outlooks and viewpoints.

Tracking Restrictions

In the globally competitive market, drastically redesigned glitzy public spaces symbolize the reinvented city to attract tourism and investment. Restricting access has become a strategy for re-appropriating such public spaces in order to attract a desired genre of public, typically the wealthy investors, tourists, and an affluent middle-class. There is another type of restriction that is unintentional but a reality of urban life. Public spaces at the seams of the neighborhood that are primarily used by the residents of that neighborhood may seem uninviting to other publics, especially very different publics. In Cincinnati, a park in a predominantly poor African American neighborhood that borders a very public street is a favorite place for the neighborhood's young, old and families. But for most White folks this “colored space” seems very unknown and unsafe. Similarly, a park used by the residents in an upper–middle class neighborhood in New Delhi on the border of a very public thoroughfare, very visible and seemingly accessible to all is daunting to low–income residents. 103

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Representing all communities, particularly the underrepresented and underserved, is a challenge even for most bottom-up processes.

Cities are made and remade constantly. New means, methods, and actors emerge. The existing processes of city building are transformed and new ones are introduced: new urbanisms manifest. This is the time of communitarian bottom-up urbanisms. Many of these focus on community— on the ability and rights of the ordinary residents to be an active part of the process of city building. These current trends of community oriented bottom-up urbanisms bring a great deal of promise but also the challenges of truly representing all communities, particularly those that are underrepresented in top-down processes of city building. Many of the DIY, tactical, temporary, pop-up, and several other forms of bottom-up urbanism use public space for interventions to provide an alternative narrative for city building. Bottom-up urbanism practices in public space challenge norms, fill the gaps left by local governmental agencies, use space to benefit citizens by providing creative and innovative alternatives. However, the majority of bottom-up initiatives are championed and produced by those who are skillful and connected—the young, the savvy, and the ones often linked to the creative sectors. Although bottom-up urbanism projects in public space do cater to a range of groups including the young, families, and children, the movement is not characterized by providing for those lacking opportunity, such as the economically needy, less able, elderly, socially disadvantaged, incoming immigrants, and newcomers. Very few DIYers represent the full range of demographics of places. As a result, the populations that have access to public spaces and public life get the advantage of more choices, while the communities that are generally ignored by the state and the market remain underrepresented and underserved. In those cases where bottom-up urbanisms bring opportunities in underserved communities, there is often a colonial outlook—good intentions, but designed from the outside in. This is an opportunity for DIYers to make their work more meaningful— where bottom-up is asking “by whom?” as well as “for whom?”

Whose Bottom-up?

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The safety mechanisms are a double-edged sword. For some groups, such as the elderly and women, the presence of external control mechanisms aids the ability to occupy and use public space. Yet, the “made to feel secure” public space, with its visible securescape, sends messages of the possible occurrence of criminality and can contribute directly to generating a sense of fear. In this vicious cycle, fear is frst created, paranoia generated and then managed using mechanisms that create a fortress environment to limit activities, identities, and meanings.

The Safety Paradox & Unintended Consequences

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The landscape of public space is constantly shifting. When some spaces become limiting, others are explored, given a life, and made public.

As traditional public space gets usurped and produced by neoliberal processes and proft-oriented actors, other spaces have been claimed and new types of public spaces have emerged. Unable to claim the institutional public space—to make it their own, to use it for individual and group expression, and to help form their own unique identities—some ignored or marginalized groups, such as the poor, youth, the elderly, many ethnic minorities, women, and others with different outlooks and lifestyles have found and occupied new geographies in the urban landscape. They have also questioned the existing rules and regulations, found gaps and ambiguities within the rules, and employed creative ways to interpret rules and regulations to appropriate and make the institutionalized space more malleable.

Challenges Bring Opportunities

The boundaries of public space in the twenty-frst–century city have been blurred in more than one way. On the one hand, public life now commonly exists in public as well as quasi-public and even privatized space. On the other, nontraditional ambiguous space within the city is being appropriated for public use. In cities around the world, many more groups are voicing their views in the public sphere and claiming their right to such ambiguous space and making it public. Thus, in the increasing heterogeneous city, a growing number of contemporary public spaces are being produced by a much more dynamic process that goes beyond the dogmatic and often institutionalized paradigms for the production of space. This new landscape of a widened range of urban public space engages the social, political, and economic forces where the diversity of use, lifestyle, and aesthetic preference are simultaneously contested and celebrated in the making and appropriation of space. 107

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The occupancy of public space is a two-way street. When we are in public space, we forgo much of our privacy and make ourselves visible and even vulnerable. Yet, at the same time by occupying public space, we temporarily privatize it, at least in ways that the occupied space is not available to others at that time.

Privacy in Public

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Good public space belongs to everyone and no one.

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The occupancy of public space must be transient.

A well-functioning democracy needs robust and enduring public spaces—a sort of permanent promise of the continued presence of public space for exchange, stimulation, empowerment, and emancipation. And public space must be a commons and a universal right. The public—individuals and groups—as actors, are the catalysts of publicness. When they interact with and occupy space, they establish its publicness. But it is not feasible for everyone to claim this right at the same time. Paradoxically, for public space to be open and accessible to all, occupancy and appropriation must be temporary. Similarly, it is unreasonable to imagine that different individuals and diverse groups will have the same expectations and desires and use the space in the same ways.

Permanence & Transience

This is one of the biggest challenges for urban designers, architects, planners, and managers of the public space who must acknowledge that varied groups have different needs and preferences. Public space can have a true value only if diverse individuals and groups can use it in their own ways and identify with it. They must design and manage public spaces to be open for various groups to claim, use, and create their own identities.

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When rules and regulations enclose public space, a small private space enables publicness and becomes the voice of the people.

Zuccotti Park Zuccotti Park became the symbol of the Occupy Wall Street movement and a representation of public space for political change. Paradoxically, Zuccotti Park is not a public space but a privately owned space accessible to the public.

NOT A PARK Zuccotti Park (previously called Liberty Park), is a plaza in New York City.

Privateness Aided Publicness

NOT A LARGE SPACE Zuccotti Park is a 33,000 ft2 (3,100 m2), small plaza. NOT A PUBLIC SPACE Zuccotti Park is a Privately Owned Public Space (POPS) — a trope for the invasion of private interests on the commons! NOT UNDER PUBLIC SPACE RULES As a POPS that is publicly accessible space, the City requires Zuccotti Park to be open to the public 24 hours a day, 7 days a week (unlike public spaces that have several restrictions).

should we examine the controls over public space? should the rules and regulations that apply to most POPS be the ones for our public spaces? 113

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Many resurrected or new public spaces, particularly those that are supported by private capital or public-private partnerships, display an eerie consistency. These spaces are often:

A B C D E F G H I

bsolute

ugged

onsumptive

Capital Spaces

ivided

xploited

abricated

ated

omogeneous

nhibiting

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Beware! Transformation of space results in the creation of new and often different publics.

Any public space design affords and advances certain behaviors, actions, and activities, but also hinders and deters others. The repeated occurrence of the supported behaviors, actions, and activities in public spaces propagates doctrines in societies, alters existing power structures, and solidifes new ones. The design produces disparities, and public space makes the difference visible.

The Power of Design

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public

private

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We use our public spaces very inefficiently.

A large portion of public space in cities is dedicated to streets. In most cities in North America, many other cities in the Global North and increasingly across urbanizing areas in the Global South, much of the space on streets is consumed by the carriageway or roadway—the space used by vehicles. Based on the status of ownership, this roadway space on public streets is public. However, most roadway space at most times is only accessible to public in vehicles and not to pedestrians. In effect, this is a conditional public space leaving disproportionately limited space of the sidewalk accessible to most. In addition, there is a large amount of roadway space dedicated to parking that is also conditional to use with additional costs to park. We may not know precisely, and the numbers vary drastically across cities, but it is estimated that in the United States there are anywhere between 3.5 to 30 parking spaces per vehicle consuming valuable urban, suburban, and rural space. Although the numbers are unknown, much of this parking is also on public land, particularly on streets. Given that each parking space is about 180 ft2, in the best-case scenario there is the equivalent of a small apartment sitting vacant for each vehicle and in the worst case, there is the equivalent of a mansion of over 5,000 ft2 for every vehicle in America! With increasing vehicle ownership across the globe, these trends are being replicated in the Global South and the space consumed by parking is creeping up, often stealing public space from other vital urban activities.

Gross Inefficiencies

Some of this parking space is being re-purposed through various bottom-up (and some top-down) processes to convert it to human scaled public space, such as through street redesign and parklets, etc. In this remaking, there is an opportunity to rethink how to be more effcient with public space. Careful consideration is needed to make sure that the wasteful public space of parking is not converted only to ticketed space for dining or other pay-to-play activities.

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Public space is the age’s master signifier. […] a site of suspicion, stimulation, and transaction all at once. […] Simultaneously everywhere and nowhere, it is political air. Mark Kingwell

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Individual and group identity affects power that affects agency in public space.

Cities, in this urban century have been built (or re-built), at least in part, on the consumption and perks of public space. Yet, the promise of public space has not been materialized for many. Different and non-mainstream identities can severely restrict an individual's or group’s rights in public space, whether explicitly or subtly. Many minorities are perceived negatively as undesirables—from being an annoyance, to outright being the source of fear in public space: a big black man may make some others uncomfortable for fear of crime; a young bearded Muslim man in traditional clothes may be automatically assumed to be a threat; teenagers may be banned from public spaces because they may make some older people feel unsafe. Being a person of difference—of class, race, ethnicity, gender, culture, or outlook—can be isolating and limiting in public: businesses create a controlled zone to regulate public space and limit access to non-spenders in entire downtowns or business districts; women and children cannot freely use public space at all times as men; the wealthy residents pay for services to create exclusive spaces diminishing territories for all, and more. This divisive landscape of unequal access to public space represents the unequal rights to the city.

Whose Public Space?

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Universal postures and behaviors by some are not so acceptable in public spaces.

Public space comes to life when people are seen expressing themselves in it. Gathering, socializing, talking, laughing, crying, eating, drinking, celebrating, dancing, and other activities and behaviors make space public. Many of these are private behaviors that become visible when people feel comfortable in public space. Similarly, lying down or sleeping is a private act, although a non-intrusive one. It may be one of the best tests for public space. It showcases an individual’s or group’s ease, and agency in space and also a sense of belonging. Some public spaces, especially ones that are large enough to afford some physical distance for privacy, are conducive to lying down or napping. For example, sun bathing or napping on the beach is not unusual, particularly in the West. The same postures and behaviors become awkward or are deemed inappropriate in other public spaces. Moreover, some postures and behaviors, such as lying down to get some sun in a park, are acceptable for some and unacceptable when performed by the destitute and the marginal. Increasingly, several cities have ordinances prohibiting lying down in public space. But seeing a visibly less fortunate person occupying public space for resting, lying down, or sleeping conveys something about the empathy of a community.

Is it Sleepable?

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We are all in our own bubbles in a world of strangers.

It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity. Albert Einstein

Digital Realm in Public Space

We occupy our small private bubbles for comfort and security. Sometimes we are in parochial bubbles for familiarity, bonding, comfort, and security. The technology at hand is a paradox: it impedes behavior outward from the bubble in real space but also links us to an infnite digital realm for private, parochial, or public action.2

The great myth of our time is that technology is communication. Libby Larsen

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Acts of defiance, that are disruptive to public space, best exemplify the purpose and endurance of public space.

Demand for change, dissent, and protest means getting the attention of those in power, whether private interests or the state. To do so, people usually resort to actions that break the rules—actions that are uncommon, infrequent, and often deemed illegal. These may range from peaceful walks or vigils, acts of disorderly behavior of picketing, rallies and demonstrations on streets disrupting traffc, sit-ins and camp-ins, to the extremes of hunger strikes, rioting and damaging property, bombing, and self-immolation in public space. Paradoxically, these actions and acts of defance best exemplify the purpose and endurance of public space.

Test of Tenacity

In most cases, public space becomes the arena for the interaction between the protesters and those in power. Whether the issue gets resolved, or little change takes place, public space serves an important role of communication in making dissent visible and amplifying its voice. However, there are societies where even the possibility of such public expression is suppressed, and apparent dissent is unimaginable. In erasing a crucial political function of public space, such societies also diminish its social role by denying people of similar and different backgrounds and outlooks a shared purpose for solidarity.

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Cyberspace is expanding public space, and redefining the public realm.

Social Media & Public Space

Once thought of as the nemesis of physical public space, cyberspace, through its ability of instant and perpetual connectivity and information-sharing, is expanding the public sphere and is, in numerous ways, aiding the activation, use, and appropriation of public space. Social media have enabled and strengthened cyberspace as the virtual public space for effortless and instant contacts and exchange that transcends the dichotomy of local-global space. As an example, the Occupy Wall Street movement grew out of the power of social media, when the Canadian anti-consumerist magazine Adbusters frst floated the original concept of Occupy Wall Street on their website and circulated it to their email list. Wi-Fi internet use in public spaces contributes to social engagement with existing acquaintances and broader participation in the public sphere. Online activities in public spaces, that may seem distracting and disconnected, do contribute to broader participation in the public sphere and result in higher overall levels of democratic and social engagement than in spaces without internet connectivity. In these new ways, the Internet, social media, technology, and cyberspace are helping public space gain legitimacy, relevance, and resurgence not only as space, but also as an act and event. In fact, we now experience ways in which physical space and cyberspace seamlessly connect to create a new typology of the public sphere that delivers a unique experience of connectedness, community, and publicness. 124

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Public space can simultaneously be a space for anonymity, visibility, and recognition, but also a space for contempt and threats.

Anonymity affords freedom. It is in public space that many in society fnd and cherish the anonymity they desire—to be in the midst of a “world of strangers.” At the same time, several groups—youth, minorities, the different, and those new to a place—resort to public space to be recognized. This is where they may gain acceptance and a sense of belonging. But it is also in public space where they become visible and are exposed to threats, rejected, and even ostracized.

Anonymity, Recognition & Contempt

Public space and spaces for public life play a big role here. Although the different subaltern publics can continue to exist and thrive in their parochial domains—for example, contained within their neighborhoods or their safe spaces or third places—it is their repeated presence and visibility in public, that nevertheless, over time is bound to gain them recognition, as has happened in several cultures with many immigrant and LGBTQIA+ communities.

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Public space decays without care, but it can also be loved to death.

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Over-management can be as detrimental to public space as under-management.

The governance and management of public space—the coordination, regulation, and maintenance—is a vital aspect in its sustenance.3 Public space may be managed by the state, a private entity, the community, or via a partnership among any of these. The degree of programming, regulation, and maintenance of a public space communicates messages that impact the way in which different people feel welcome (or not) in public space. This communication determines the relevance of the space for diverse individuals and groups. Although all public spaces need care, all spaces do not need the same degree of maintenance and upkeep. Many active forms of behaviors and activities, such as biking, skating, skateboarding, and other forms of active play, do not flourish in spaces that are regularly maintained to remain pristine. Excessive maintenance may erode the value of public space for many, effectively diminishing its publicness.

More is not More. Less is not More, Either.

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Animation can be a powerful tool to make public space meaningful to people, when it is not overdone.

Public space becomes public only with public use. Instead of creating them as blank canvases, waiting to be made public, designers and managers are proactively innovating to connect with people’s interests and values to make public spaces meaningful to them. In order to attract and retain people, public spaces are constantly being redesigned and reprogrammed (also improved) using nature (community gardens), food (often food carts), sports/play (traditional but also new types – playborhood, parkour events and also putting out equipment for play and sports) , events (preplanned festivals and impromptu events), performance (street performance, busking), art (murals, graffti, interactive art pieces), street furniture (permanent and temporary seating to socialize), and games (physical and virtual). Glover4 classifes these as eight animation strategies to activate public spaces: (1) naturalizing; (2) activating; (3) culinizing; (4) spectaclizing; (5) festivalizing and eventifying; (6) aestheticizing; (7) convivializing; and (8) gamifying and whimsicalizing. On some occasions and special events these strategies are distinct, but often several are deployed simultaneously.

(Over) Stimulating Public Space

This hyper animation and curation are a type of flavoring of public space through permanent and temporary means of design and programming. In many signature public spaces every part of space is programmed to engage and entertain, as prescribed. On the one hand, this is an excellent strategy to bring similar and different publics to co-opt public space, educate the public about pressing issues, and expose them to new ways of recreating, celebrating, and socializing. On the other hand, the excessive pre-programming limits imagination and indoctrinates the public to a certain set of uses and meanings of public space. Of larger concern is the role that animation seems to play (particularly the animation and programming coming from top-down) in supporting big capital and neoliberal processes of city building. But the animation of public space can also be used as a part of the co-production process, such as a block party, a neighborhood cookout, or a locally built community garden. 129

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Possibilities Public Space_VikasMehta_27May2022.indd 130

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4 Public space touches many facets of urban life. That makes it a domain with a great potential to impact living in cities and our overall urban experience. These possibilities may be manifest in numerous ways: as a space for leisure, recreation, conviviality, performance and display; as a site for exchange of information and ideas; as a place for economic survival and refuge; an arena for individual and group expression; or a forum for dialogue, debate, and contestation; but also as a setting for environmental sustainability and for nature to exist in the city. Beyond our private realms, public space expands our territories by offering spaces for individual or collective action, sharing, and creating meaningful experiences and memories. Repeated use of exceptional or ordinary spaces, by individuals or groups, generates a familiarity and sense of place. These experiences of attachment to place, that deeply connect people to space at a phenomenological level, are essential to our experience of the world we live in and to our well-being. A vast potential of public space also exists in the spaces that are less visible in the routine and mainstream paths of our cities. Here, in the infrastructural, residual, and liminal spaces, new explorations of etiquette, norms, behaviors, interactions, and use determine new 131

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possibilities for individual and group expression and the creation of new cultures, sub-cultures, and identities. Immense possibilities of public space become apparent when a cause requires a strong collective public voice. Demonstrations and protests against social injustices or an unjust war take place in the most visible public spaces. At these times, the political potential of public space is obvious. What is worth noting are the other possibilities that surface: during these times, public space takes on a multi-layered dynamic role of becoming a space for nourishment and nurturing, for caring and mutual aid, for building new community ties, for physical and psychological well-being, and more. A unique quality of public space lies in its form as a physical network. This network offers linkages and connectivity to diverse and disparate components of the city, opening up unlimited possibilities. The same web of connectivity also helps experience and imagine a psychological and social relational network. Another possibility of public space lies in its ability to be a unifer and equalizer of status. At the same time, public space plays an important role in showcasing difference by making the disparities of individuals and groups visible to all. Public space is a canvas for informality. Whether they be in the form of economic transactions, labor, survival and sustenance, political awareness, information and protest, cultural expression, recreation and play, or other, public space makes possible the numerous informal practices, generated by multiple publics in the city. The innumerable possibilities of public space may be understood as civic (concerning solidarity and society overall) versus those that are social (concerning the more intimate scale of the community). Both are important. When public life plays out on neighborhood streets, local markets, and other places of everyday life, there is good likelihood of it scaling up to civic protests and demonstrations, when needed.

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The possibilities of public space depend on many externalities. The things that get us out of our private realms, whether by necessity or desire, set the stage for possibilities within public space. The act of buying and selling, eating and drinking may seem banal but these and other everyday patterns of daily life are catalysts of publicness. Many of these possibilities depend on the quality and governance of public space and specifc political and cultural norms of places. Nevertheless, the potential of public space can be enhanced by the form of places—the layout of neighborhoods, location, access, and scale of spaces and the architecture— as well as the use of form and space as a canvas—the art and expression—in cities. At the social level, small practices of urbanites, such as walking, being and lingering in space, short-term conversations, informal civility—that also depend on the form and management of spaces—have big value in opening up larger possibilities in public space. Be it personal or collective, social or political, the possibilities of public space are only limited by our imagination. The potential of public space is a bit like the risk-reward scenario, where an increased open-endedness brings with it higher possibilities. Open-ended space welcomes the difference of backgrounds, cultures, and outlooks that may sometimes result in social tension, but it also makes way for learning through new experiences, and new ways of thinking and knowing the world around us.

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The City is Visible in Public Space.

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By way of frequent use, some public spaces, exceptional and ordinary ones, become meaningful places. When repeatedly used socially, the place quality and attachment of these spaces is even deeper and more significant.

Place is a central ontological structure of the human experience.1 For most people private space, such as home, is at the core of the idea of place. But other familiar settings at various scales in the neighborhood and the city, where the person feels comfortable outside the home, make the urban experience complete.2 A location where space is overlaid with meaning by humans transforms to place.3 The repeated use of such spaces of meaning in the landscape provides us with a sense of place that is essential to our experience of the world we live in.4

Space to Place

Place is subjective and emotional. It may manifest as a street corner, a cared garden, or a location with a captivating view; physically ordinary or special or iconic. The repeated use establishes an attachment to space and makes it a place. Place experience becomes even stronger when it is social. In this more complex and richer context, place is the space that embodies social relationships in addition to the spatial. The meanings that emerge from social relationships in space crystallize as individual and shared memories—of the everyday and the special—create deep attachment to that space, resulting in a strong place experience. Public spaces and other spaces of public life are central in bringing different individuals and groups to share place experience. Although place, place experience, sense of place, place attachment, and place memories are all personal and unique, public spaces provide the overlapping terrain for shared routines and events that lead to collective memories. Any type of public space—main streets, parks, waterfronts, cemeteries, infrastructure and marginal spaces, and many more—that sustains regular use may evolve from space to place. Thus, public spaces not only provide the place for the present to share and cherish, they also deliver a schema as a carrier of memories for the future. 136

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Public space of the everyday (social) is as important as the exceptional one for matters of polity (civic).

The civic role of public space must be at the forefront, and public space should be critically examined for any exclusionary tendencies and encroachment of the commons. The visibility of demonstrations—a powerful, energized, and in some ways higher order use of public space—is commendable. It shows the balance of control and agency in favor of the public, where it fttingly belongs. This politics of the exceptional is usually episodic. Yet, public space is also faced with the Gesellschaft-Gemeinschaft dichotomy: the tension between the civic and the social; society and community; and solidarity and intimacy. To consider this spectrum, the narrative must expand and emphasize the practical possibilities of public space by examining how public space plays a role in and interacts with the routines of everyday life. That is, it must also be examined for its everyday regular and rhythmic use as a space of representation. Considering public life—as the ultimate desired product of public space—we can and should appreciate the collective syntax of various types of social actions and interactions at the scale of society and community—the public spaces and the parochial public spaces. Viewing public life play out on neighborhood streets, local markets, and other places of everyday urbanism is as important as protests, marches, and demonstrations.

Gesellschaft or Gemeinschaft

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... gather / play / re-play / walk / occupy / encounter flirt / lie-down / survive / fl irt / commune / socialize / run / exchange / protest / display / care / resist / meet / enjoy / sit / learn / watch / celebrate A Place of Much / express / restore / Action /  interact / be buy /  / consume / debate / be seen / linger / deliberate / grow / connect / stay / be alone / sell / argue / sleep / re-create / listen / loi ter / organize / dance ...

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Residual space has innumerable possibilities and much promise as public space.

The contemporary city encompasses a vast assemblage of public spaces. Obscure and peculiar spaces rival the customary and expected types of public spaces for use in cities worldwide, new and old. In a time when cities have focused on investment in traditional and very visible public spaces, anomalous spaces have been discovered by youth, fringe groups, immigrants, and other marginalized groups. Left-over, ambiguous, and transitional spaces hold a great potential because such spaces permit many groups—traditional and nontraditional—and encourage new interpretations of use and activities. These spaces are not the focus of commonplace development and the overall lack of attention is welcome. Yet, such marginal and incidental spaces need basic care and attention without over-management to retain their essence.

Liminal Spaces

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The hidden possibilities of public space become visible in times of distress.

In times of urgent need and distress, public spaces demonstrate their potential as sites of true democracy. In the twenty-frst century we have witnessed this frsthand: political observers have noted that compared to any time in history, more people in more countries have taken to the streets to dissent and demand change. Visible in the Occupy movement, the Arab Spring, the Umbrella Movement, Me Too and Black Lives Matter movements, and tens of other examples around the world, public space in these times gets charged and infused with its latent roles and possibilities. Most recently, in summer 2020, the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone (CHAZ) in Seattle was transformed and renamed the Capitol Hill Organized Protest (CHOP). This six-block area became a site for communicating a powerful narrative of citizens’ voice via “Black Lives Matter,” to underscore the current challenges of social injustices against people of color.

Visible Potentialities

During such desperate times, public spaces can be seen and experienced as sites for gathering, organizing, public speaking, and protesting but also for temporarily living and sleeping, urban gardening, collective cooking and eating, recycling and cleaning, communal healthcare, meditation and yoga sessions, hands-on classes and workshops, teach-ins, and more. This smorgasbord represents the rich possibilities and many facets of public space including democracy and civic solidarity, community and conviviality, restorativeness, exchange, and, above all, the voice and symbolic representation of the people. 141

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Everyday urban practices can yield invaluable returns. Walking Experiencing the city on foot is one of the most active and human-scaled ways to own the city. By walking and choosing their own paths through the public spaces of the city, pedestrians can generate their own narratives and imaginations, giving new meanings to streets and places. Instead of the limited narratives of the planned and regulated city, Michel de Certeau5 suggests that by walking, the pedestrian can, much like an author, write their own text of the city. Through this everyday practice, accessible to most, the ordinary citizen has the power to create their own meanings of the spaces they traverse.

Small Social Practices with Big Value

Being and Lingering Just occupying and hanging out in public space is an important social practice with psychological, social, and political benefts. Repeated presence in space is tied to place attachment and caring for places. Occupancy also plays an important role by creating the condition for a diversity of publics to be co-present. This sets the stage for encounter among people of different groups, backgrounds, beliefs, and perspectives that may result in weak ties, empathy, and informal civility. Simply being in public space, even without any civic motive, is a political act: it is a way for an individual or group to claim their right to the city and to society. Weak Ties From strong friendships to weak ties, a wide range of active and passive relationships are an important building block of urban social order and cohesion. Social cohesion does not necessarily depend only on strong friendships, and even complex differentiated social groups with weak interpersonal ties may be cohesive.6 A simple wave to a neighbor, a nod to an acquaintance on the street, a brief exchange with the barista at the local coffeeshop, or the weekly interaction with the vendor selling fruit are all examples of weak ties. These weak ties are an indispensable bridging mechanism between individuals and groups in undifferentiated and 142

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differentiated groups.7 Weak ties are essential to an individual’s interaction with another unknown or lesser known individual or group, and to the integration to a community. Although the private and parochial realms may provide a suitable setting for strong networks, public space is the defnitive arena for weak ties because it is open to all. Instead of many strong ties within a single network, a large network of weak ties also provides more opportunities for individuals to succeed in the current urban space of the global economy. People Watching People watching is a dominant human activity and good public spaces make it easy to do so. It is entertaining and a fun pastime. Watching people exposes individuals and groups of divergent socio-economic, cultural, or racial backgrounds to each other. This offers an opportunity to learn about and appreciate the habits and customs of others and to learn new ways to see the world. Short-term Contacts Short-term transactions in public space, such as listening to a musician or purchasing a newspaper from a vendor, give urbanites the opportunity for contact with strangers or the less familiar. These momentary interactions are especially signifcant as they add to the few remaining instances of social interactions and intersubjectivity among the people of varying outlooks and classes. Informal Civility By physically being in public with people of opposing views, the diverse publics can directly experience the others and better understand their views, beliefs, and perspectives. This is a valuable form of civility, albeit an informal one. It can help with maintaining respect for one another even in the face of disagreement, and ultimately reduce the likelihood of misunderstanding and conflict. As opposed to anonymous interactions in digital space and over social media, face-to-face interactions in public space are known to help promote civility as most people are inclined to act respectfully when they are in the presence of those with differing views. 143

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Public space is a unifier, a leveler, and an equalizer of status. Public space is also where people can see and feel the difference and inequities in wealth, class, and power.

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Good public space is dialogic. It is a place that celebrates commonalities and unites. More importantly, by making the disparities of individuals and groups visible, it accepts and welcomes difference.

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A network conveys a web of connections and innumerable linkages that can produce the ultimate for public space— interaction and exchange.

Networks & Systems

Public space as a system—a network of spaces—delivers exponential benefts. In a network approach, landscape and infrastructure become an inextricable part of public space. A robust network system can be created by linking the collection of spaces, landscapes, and infrastructure systems. Such a public space network system reaches broader publics and expands the possibilities for flows of interactions and communication. A network gives visibility and access to the numerous alternative public domains. With their unique social practices and communication these domains can challenge the current dominant and hegemonic consumerist messages of capital’s public spaces. These new and emerging modes and modalities of communication create possibilities for wider and more inclusive acts of publicness, appropriation, social interaction, and dialogue, and thus for the creation of emergent public spheres. 147

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A city good for children is good for all.

Children are the most suitable “clients” and community of users of public space. An easy role for public space is to be a place for children. As part of their growth, toddlers to teenagers need spaces to play, explore, learn, and develop an understanding and ownership of their environment. When given the opportunity, children and youth make the most of public space. Children’s needs drastically change as they grow. These changing needs also demand an expansive program for public space and a range of spaces from the most openended (urban, natural, or left-over spaces of exploration, discovery, and interpretation) to the fxed (spaces of sports). This does not always require isolated play spaces or special play equipment. Richly furnished or natural public spaces around the city and close to home can provide children with enough material and opportunities to engage, play, explore, and discover. Cities that provide for these programmatic needs via design and management deliver a wide range of public spaces for their residents.

Child’s Play

When the city’s public spaces are designed to be suitable for children, they generate a pull that brings not only families with children but others to public space too. Watching children play and explore is a great source of joy. Adults with children spend more time in public spaces when their children are engaged and occupied. With their play, children naturally and authentically animate public space. With their inquisitiveness, creativity, and instinctiveness, and their ability to negotiate and share space, children often model the real use and purpose of public space for adults. Public space needs children as much as children need public space. 149

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Like a fluid, good public space is self-leveling. Public Space_VikasMehta_27May2022.indd 150

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In robust democratic societies, public space finds equilibrium not through homogeneity but through the resolution of conflict and in existing with difference.

In places with true public space, different groups coexist in the same space at the same time. When that is not possible, overlaps of occupancy and control are sorted out by using different parts of the space or using the same public space at different times. No doubt, in places that are open to all and where public authorities exert minimum control, disagreements and disputes may arise, for example, if some groups dominate or engage in unconventional activities that may limit access to others. In such cases, there is often the urge to resolve conflict by discouraging and curtailing the seemingly uncomfortable activities and uses by removing uncertainties, by driving out certain groups, and ultimately by resorting to accepting a public space with homogenized uses and behaviors. But such uncertainties and ambiguities must be seen as opportunities for civic dialogue, as this is inherently the nature of public space. This is when civic authorities and other agencies must carefully assess and balance the regulations and control in a way that the space continues to retain its openness and publicness. The role of civic agencies is crucial in balancing the interests of the various publics in ways that the less powerful groups get an equitable share of space and time in public space.

A Balancing Act

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Commerce is a catalyst for the occupancy of public space— it is one way that space becomes public.

In the act of shopping for needs and wants people leave their private space to come to quasi-public or public space. Commerce has been historically intertwined with social behaviors and interaction. By attracting customers, commercial environments, particularly in open public spaces also attract and support many other social, political, and economic activities including lingering, socializing, performance, panhandling, vending, soliciting, and more. When designed and managed well, commerce in open public spaces, such as unencumbered streets, serves the commercial, leisure, communication, and social needs of the people of the neighborhood and the city.

Commerce Plays a Part

The act of selling, buying, browsing, eating, drinking, sometimes creating and making, or just passing by and looking renders a shared purpose for the public space. The constant flow of people to public spaces of commerce also attracts other uses and users. Legally or otherwise, street musicians, buskers, vendors, panhandlers, solicitors, and others occupy the public space. For some, the flow of people provides a constant stream of clients, patrons, or an audience. For ones with limited mobility, being in public space provides the daily source of outdoor recreation. All of these diverse users and actors provide public space the many dimensions of publicness that go beyond the consumption of goods. These commercial public spaces create a unique micro zone of space—a type of public space akin to a neighborhood version of what Anderson calls a “cosmopolitan canopy.”8 153

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Diversity and difference are the rewards of urbanity.

A Place for Trust

Dissimilarities in background, culture, and outlook may produce tension and friction, but also intrigue and interest, that lead to new experiences, and new ways of thinking and knowing the world around us. The interaction of differences—whether cultural, social, or political—creates new opportunities to question and break away from existing mores, to rethink certain aspects or to reinvent the dogmatic, but sometimes also to respect and strengthen the established norms. Public spaces and spaces for public life become the medium for the inclusion of diversity and difference in the city by offering a platform and place for these interactions of difference to occur. This direct exchange is critical to building trust between diverse communities and to enable new publics to be formed. Different types of public spaces provide opportunities for different types and levels of trust. For example, markets and commercial streets can facilitate co-presence, visibility, and casual exchange between different cultural groups. Neighborhood parks can be the places where people with different outlooks may establish the frst contact with their neighbors. Local sports felds and other play areas may bring diverse people in one space, often as a result of children’s sports activities. Events programmed in parks or street festivals can provide unique opportunities for people from diverse walks of life to cohabit, co-produce, and co-relish the small joys of urban life. Even libraries, museums, and other cultural public spaces can be programmed and curated around shared interests of numerous publics. 154

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Public art—the art in public space—must be equally freed and burdened by the expansiveness of “art” and “public.”

Just as public space, public art must be a representation of the aesthetic, the communal, and the realm of politics. Yes, it can be a vehicle of beautifcation, education, history, and culture, it can be a representation of community solidarity, or it can be a source of sharing and celebrating. But public art should also facilitate discussion, debate, and contestation in the quest to daylight the conflicting viewpoints of numerous publics. It also should give voice to those that have been subverted by existing social structures, regimes, and hegemonies. Public art should expand the space of the public sphere.

The Role of Art

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Public-facing architecture must have a dialogue with the space outside, and thus with the public that occupies that space.

The creation of space and crafting of light in buildings—the making of architecture—has been one of the greatest human endeavors. Architecture must inspire; it must be moving. Architecture must also be nourishing and supportive of daily life, of life’s ordinary actions.

The Role of Architecture

The public face of buildings built on public land as well as private architecture visible and experienced from the public realm is what contains, defnes, and makes most urban public space perceptible. Whether it is buildings that line a street, ones that terminate an axis, or those that occupy a park, memorable and enduring architecture—without always being monumental—activates and enlivens the adjacent public space, and is energized in return.

Architecture is about public space held by buildings. Richard Rogers

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Technology has the promise to make public space more utile, delightful, and consequential.

The Tech Edge

People seek public space to get away from daily routine—to relax and unwind. They expect an atmosphere of openness, different from work or home, without the conspicuous presence of everyday technology. And, of course, with technology allowing the state or private entities to monitor public behavior, the looming questions of privacy and data ownership remain. Nevertheless, if regulated, advancements in technology have the promise of non-invasively integrating into public space and technological solutions—power outlets to free Wi-Fi and sensors—can increase the performance and usefulness of the space. For example, technological advances make it easier and affordable for municipalities to provide better lighting making public spaces safer, reducing overt surveillance. Lighting also can increase the duration of use of spaces, and, with other technological solutions, can be used to change the ambience of public space with little investment or physical change. Integrated lighting can be used as interactive art, for communication, and storytelling for recreation and education, as has been done in numerous cities. Sensors, responsive surfaces, and other micro technology can help track the performance of public spaces by capturing information about use, preferences, and needs to inform future decision-making choices and interventions, but also to make real-time changes to better serve the public and also reduce waste. As the largest common material realm, public space provides the scale for testing, experimenting, and employing technological solutions for climate change adaptation. These can include capturing solar energy and rainwater, energy-generating pavement, and landscapes to deal with rising water. The real-time data gathering and communication ability of technology is a real boon to informing, educating, and thus including the public in the decision-making processes. Public space can be used to communicate important information, particularly on issues of common good, such as air quality, water consumption, waste, etc., by sharing with the public through real-time display. Technology also can facilitate active public involvement through interactive means that seek better scenarios and solutions. 158

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Cyberspace augments public space, negotiating the tension between power, freedom, oppression, and emancipation.

The worldwide computer network—the electronic agora—subverts, displaces, and radically redefnes our notions of gathering place, community, and urban life. The Net has a fundamentally different physical structure, and it operates under quite different rules from those that organize the action in the public places of traditional cities. It will play as crucial a role in 21st-century urbanity as the centrally located, spatially bounded, architecturally celebrated agora did (according to Aristotle’s ‘Politics’) in the life of the Greek polis ...

Cyber Agora

William J. Mitchell

Cyberspace, digital networks, and social media enable the participation and empowerment of the many publics. In totalitarian societies, the “cyber agora” has given voice to the populace and empowered the public. In societies with long-standing strict hierarchical class structures, the “cyber agora” has empowered the many marginal publics and counterpublics. In both cases, cyberspace also provides a place for questioning social and cultural mores and norms and to test, form, and display new identities. But digital public space also is being used to monitor and even control public behavior through the tracking of personal digital devices that may work even better than surveillance cameras in physical public space. At the same time, technology and its possibilities continuously evolve to counter the panoptic tendencies of the state or market, by providing alternative cyberspaces for public, especially marginalized publics, to participate and defne the public sphere. For example, instant messaging (IM), short message service (SMS), web logs, microblogs, wireless mesh networks, and other online forums and apps create alternate modes of communication that possess the technology and speed to evade control and deliver a freer communication in public space. 159

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Food is a catalyst to socialization but it can also diminish publicness. If you want to seed a place with activity, put out food. Food attracts people who attract more people. William H. Whyte

Places to eat offer a space to be in public, to see and also be seen. Eating places in public also provide spaces for pause—a break from the everyday routine of life for many. Food is also a means of visibility. Eating and drinking places serving different cultural cuisines, catering to different lifestyles and outlooks, and attracting different groups, represent people from many walks of life and make these differences visible in the public. But serving and consuming food in public requires space, public space. This demand creates a tension. Consider this. In most public spaces we expect to occupy and claim space at no cost. Yet, when most food and drink establishments barricade and claim public space, using furniture and furnishings to serve their customers, they convert public space into ticketed and conditional public space—a space where all public is permitted on the condition that they make a purchase.

The Food Incentive

During the pandemic, this demand on public space is exceedingly evident. Although it is wonderful to see life reemerge on streets, there is a potential for the loss of publicness and real public space. Sidewalk space—the predominant public space for most—is in many cities, subdivided to accommodate streateries and barricaded seating for those who can pay for food or drinks. On streets, parklets do the same by taking away parking space that may be crucial for some. Rentable private dining pods and igloos during cold weather blatantly convert public space to fortifed private space that is unaffordable to the majority. This claiming of territory for food certainly adds vibrancy and social life to public space but also leads to a deduction of accessible public space for all—a trend that can result in an overall inequity in public space. 161

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[…] 112. The main plaza is to be the starting point for the town; if the town is situated on the sea coast, it should be placed at the landing place of the port, but inland it should be at the center of the town. The plaza should be square or rectangular, in which case it should have at least one and a half its width for length inasmuch as this shape is best for festas in which horses are used and for any other festas that should be held.

The Laws of the Indies

113. The size of the plaza shall be proportioned to the number of inhabitants, taking into consideration the fact that in Indian towns, inasmuch as they are new, the intention is that they will increase, and thus the plaza should be decided upon taking into consideration the growth the town may experience. [The Plaza] shall be not less than two hundred feet wide and three hundred feet long, nor larger than eight hundred feet long and fve hundred and thirty feet wide. A good proportion is six hundred feet long and four hundred wide. 114. From the plaza shall begin four principal streets: One [shall be] from the middle of each side, and two streets from each corner of the plaza; the four corners of the plaza shall face the four principal winds, because in this manner, the streets running from the plaza will not be exposed to the four principal winds, which would cause much inconvenience. 115. Around the plaza as well as along the four principal streets which begin there, there shall be portals, for these are of considerable convenience to the merchants who generally gather there; the eight streets running from the plaza at the four corners shall open on the plaza without encountering these porticoes, which shall be kept back in order that there may be sidewalks even with the streets and plaza.

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[…] 118. Here and there in the town, smaller plazas of good proportion shall be laid out, where the temples associated with the principal church, the parish churches, and the monasteries can be built, [in] such [manner] that everything may be distributed in a good proportion for the instruction of religion. […] 126. In the plaza, no lots shall be assigned to private individuals; instead, they shall be used for the buildings of the church and royal houses and for city use, but shops and houses for the merchants should be built frst, to which all the settlers of the town shall contribute, and a moderate tax shall be imposed on goods so that these buildings may be built. […] 129. Within the town, a commons shall be delimited, large enough that although the population may experience a rapid expansion, there will always be suffcient space where the people may go to for recreation and take their cattle to pasture without them making any damage. […]

Credits: http://codesproject.asu.edu/node/10 Mundigo, Axel I. & Crouch, Dora P. (1977). The City Planning Ordinances of the Laws of the Indies Revisited: Part I: Their Philosophy and Implications, Town Planning Review, 48(3), pp. 247–268.

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Informality public space a hybrid space of access, agency & exchange. Public Space_VikasMehta_27May2022.indd 164

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Public space provides a place for informality of need as well as informality of desire.

Informality is the quintessential reality of urban life around much of the globe. Apparent in every facet of the city—living, working, recreation, and exchange—informality is omnipresent in all physical and social structures—in the growth of the city, its infrastructures, services, and most importantly in social, political, and economic processes and interactions.9 This is apparent in the Global South, but a closer look reveals the many forms of permitted, unsanctioned, and insurgent informal practices in the Global North as well.10 Many of these interactions are visible in public life.

Informality: a Global Norm

Public space maintains a symbiotic relationship with informality by acting as the vessel for informal practices that are generated by numerous publics in the city. As it manifests in public space through economic transactions, labor, survival and sustenance, political awareness, information, protest, cultural expression, and recreation and play, informality itself becomes a mode of production of space and a key generator of publicness—the core value of public space. Informality allows for experimentation that reinvents processes, generates new products, and helps legitimize new publics. It provides legitimacy to the underclass. Whether by production, selling, buying, entertaining, transportation, cleaning, servicing, and countless other processes, informality generates the conditions for people of difference to share space and interact. Informal processes demonstrate how the use of public space, accompanied by the temporal patterns create access, agency, intersubjectivity, and inclusion for diverse individuals and groups in the city. 165

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The heterogenizing city requires a constant examination of the performance of its public spaces where public life plays out.

Evaluating Publicness & Public Space

Public space is a rich and visible outcome of urban processes where social, economic, and political forces negotiate to create a perceptible physical aesthetic. Examining the results of these processes is illuminating and insightful. Aside from its physical and sensory qualities, the experience of public space depends on myriad socio-cultural factors, as well as the biases each individual or group brings to a setting. For decades, the creation of the experience of space and its qualities were considered esoteric and qualitative—assigned exclusively to the domain of art. With growing interest in public space, increasing collaboration between scholars and researchers of public space across planning, design and social sciences, as well as the augmented abilities and access to technology, the experiential aspects of space are more fathomable. Urban designers, architects, landscape architects, planners, anthropologists, and others have scrutinized the urban condition and developed abilities to evaluate the experience of space as well as its intrinsic and extrinsic qualities in an attempt to measure the immeasurable. Research in urban public space now recognizes the vast number of physical, use, and management components that can be assessed, even as the composition of those remains the open-ended domain of design. So, how do we measure and evaluate public space? Since public space itself is multidimensional, it must be examined in ways that address issues of politics and democracy, sociability, leisure and recreation, economic exchange, symbolic value, and beyond. Publicness can be measured through observations and metrics, but the perceptions of the individuals and groups who are (or not) able to make space public are equally valuable to gauging public space. Scholars of public space have tacitly suggested criteria to defne the quality of public space using measures such as accessibility, inclusion, and tolerance of difference (Young)11 or access, agency, and interest (Benn and Gaus),12 or ownership, accessibility, and intersubjectivity (Kohn).13 Yet, much of the very valuable theoretical discourse on public space 166

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has shied away from providing tools and methods to practically evaluate its multiple dimensions. More recently, with the burgeoning interest in the urban, and an increasing attention to public space, urban designers, planners, and managing agencies that have to plan, design, deliver, and manage public space are confronted with this important pragmatic question: how to measure and evaluate the performance of public space? Scholars have been trying to address this explicitly, and several very good measures of public space have recently emerged. Among these, Van Melik et al.14 propose two measures of public space, secured (surveillance, restraint on loitering, and regulation) and themed (events, funshopping, and sidewalk cafes); Varna and Tiesdell15 suggest a star model of publicness that includes ownership, control, civility, physical configuration, and animation; Nemeth and Schmidt16 propose three measurable dimensions, ownership, management, and use/users; Mehta17 has developed the public space index (PSI) as an evaluative tool to gauge the inclusiveness, meaningful activities, safety, comfort, and pleasurability of public space; and Wang18 proposes three broad measurable dimensions— design and plan (function, urban-, and architectural-scale design), manipulation (ownership, agency, interest, management, and control and rules) and use (perceptions, accessibility, uses/users). These measures may be used to evaluate existing public spaces to gauge the important aspects of public space and publicness. These measures also may be kept in mind when existing public spaces are modifed or new ones designed, operated, or managed. In a time when public resources are limited, evaluation is critical not only to inform the design and management of future public spaces but also to help with updating and renewing existing ones such that they remain current and relevant in serving multiple publics in the city. Empirical evaluation is a sound method that provides design learning and improving management mechanisms. Assimilating the results from empirical work is one of the best ways to develop, evolve, and test existing theoretical frameworks. Finally, the changing nature of production of public space—in the context of tens of emerging urbanisms—demands a constant critical appraisal of public space—how is it produced? who produces it? who claims it? and, who is left out? 167

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Many Eastern cultures associate public with society and state—an outside in contrast to the private inside of home and family.

west

Eastern Conceptions

east

The recent social and political uprisings and demonstrations in cities across Europe, Asia, North and South America, and Africa have all displayed the civic and political signifcance of public space as an important component of the public sphere. Nevertheless, on an everyday basis, not all cultures and societies around the world conceptualize public space as space primarily for democratic representation and action. The notion that public space is a reflection of society becomes apparent when viewing drastically distinctive cultures. The social structures in Eastern societies deliver a public space quite unlike the West. Differently from the West where public represents the state and private is the individual and also the market economy, in Eastern societies public connotes society and state in contrast to the private, that is home and family. The relationship between private and public is akin more to an inside-outside and here-there. In everyday life, the starker dichotomy of private (family) and public (society) and strong social structures and hierarchies guide social relations and the use of and behavior in public space, particularly in South-east Asia. Yet, within the same societies, the public space adjacent to home or work is used to carry out numerous activities including those that are private, such as cooking, eating, smoking, washing and cleaning, drying, making, mending, grooming, preaching, praying, playing, playing music, lingering, resting, even sleeping, and more. Here the workings of daily life are visible in public space even though a clear line is drawn between the private life of family and public—the outside society. Public space in the East is also more malleable and kinetic. Usually, with little state control or interference, local communities and cultural practices freely transform public space, often during the course of a day, week, or month, but defnitely during celebrations and festivals. 168

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An open territory for social and political expression, public space brings many rewards but also comes with risks. In contrast to the usually safe private space, good public space, with its exposure and unpredictability, comes with many unknowns. The nature of risk inherent in public space includes not just unsightly situations and perhaps uncomfortable encounters with strangers, but also the real threat of terror and violence. These risks vary. For some, the risks of public space are palpable right at their thresholds—stepping out of private space means getting exposed to a host of unbearable encounters. For women in many societies this translates to sexual harassment and sexual violence. For others, the foray into public space may expose them to violence, threats, and a type of localized terror instilled by local gang lords, drug dealers, and sometimes even the policing authorities that are supposed to provide protection. For most, such recurring risks are minimal but there is always the possibility of terror or violence especially in the best known and iconic public spaces of the city or region, including public transportation.

Risk & Reward

Similar to other risk-reward scenarios, a high level of uncertainty brings with it the possibility of a higher potential return. In the case of public space, the spaces that provide an environment of openness facilitating exposure, unpredictability, and risks, also bring the rewards of limitless possibilities. The openness welcomes different individuals and groups who bring numerous types and genres of behaviors and activities. The ultimate reward is the ability to experience this panoply of actions, perspectives, and opinions, and to be exposed to the beliefs and values of people from different socio-economic, cultural, or racial backgrounds. The presence of diverse publics in a space also provides opportunities for visibility and informal civility where difference can be expressed and negotiated over face-to-face interactions—an aspect of public space that has become paramount in polarizing societies globally. The blanket securitization of public space cannot address many of these risks, such as sexual harassment and localized terror that stem from societal failings and corruption. Public space, in fact, can be used as a place for the community to come together to counter these risks. 169

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Propositions Public Space_VikasMehta_27May2022.indd 170

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5 We are in the midst of three global crises: climate change; social injustices based on historic racism, classism, and gender biases; and public health. These crises have magnifed the structural faults and injustices in societies including extreme income and wealth inequality, housing shortage, the disparities in access to education, healthy food and healthcare, and several other basic human needs and resources. What is also in plain sight is the profound and undeniable connection between public space and all these crises. Public space has the unique power to address these challenges and, at least in part, ameliorate some of these injustices by being conceived as a space of restoration, emancipation, and healing. In the previous chapters, I have explored and argued for the value of appreciating public space as material, social, and political space. In the face of the current crises, the future of public space—manifest as material, social, and political—must be guided by two overarching values or wisdoms—open-endedness and systems thinking. Within these two, public space must be operationalized to address the themes and arguments presented below. The propositions to follow in this chapter are hinged upon these values, wisdoms, and themes.

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OPEN-ENDEDNESS The large disruptions in the status quo, such as the global recession of the late 2000s and the ongoing pandemic, have upended the established homogeneous market structures and allowed for more tactical urban strategies. This is also visible in much creative but also transgressive repurposing and use of public space. We should channel this disruption to promote the distribution of control and agency, more difference, a heightened degree of friction, an increasing number of touchpoints, and acceptance of risk. Grounded in open-endedness, public space can operate in the realm of possibilities informed by recent interpretations. It should be open to experimentation and future change and thus always be comfortable in being what is implicit and assumed but also the imaginaries that can be invented. As an overarching value, open-endedness must be applied to creative use, play, care, economic sustenance, and more. SYSTEMS THINKING Public space as a system can deliver exponentially high benefts, be they environmental, social, economic, or political. A systems approach delivers much more than the aggregate sum of public space: as a system, public space has more reach; it makes common ground of parochial spatial territories in neighborhoods or districts; it is more accountable and equitable; and it is more communicative such that learning can happen across the city and region whether it is regarding political, environmental, social, or economic aspects. Environmental Resilience Public space must be more directly linked to climate change mitigation. As a network, it amounts to a substantial geography with the capacity to address the scale of challenges. As an ecology, public space can collectively address air- and water-quality, reduce heat island effect, capture and store carbon, and act as a defense mechanism to protect against recurring and episodic events. Equally importantly, public space can be used as an active territory to alter the policies and practices that are contributing adversely to climate change. For example, by designing a network of public spaces close to 172

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water as "sponge" spaces, with landscapes and habitats that thrive in wet conditions and can absorb excess water would, at least in part, contribute to mitigating the effects of rising waters and increasing storms. Similarly, by designing public spaces to envision a walkable city, and by making public space productive for local and healthy food, we can structurally transform urban practices for a less carbon-dependent and more sustainable praxis. Civic Practice The recent worldwide protests against historic racism, gender inequities, and social injustice sparked by numerous blatant brutalities, particularly the murder of George Floyd, have been instrumental in reinvigorating the political role of public space. Public spaces have also been the visible platform for civic solidarity, and actions that are addressing the fundamental positions of citizenship, civil rights, racial inequities, community biases, spatial injustices, and more. Public Health and Well-being The pandemic has been particularly effective in sending a global message regarding the role of public space for public health and well-being. In cities, large and small, all types of public spaces have been the savior in this time of the pandemic. Streets, squares, parks, trails, community gardens, and more, have provided us the space for active and passive recreation, community care and mutual aid, and social contact that is so critical to our well-being. New Cultural Identities and Social Cohesion The political, environmental, and economic turmoil in several countries has forced out millions into unfamiliar territories for survival. Public space offers newcomers a place to share and create new community identities. It also provides a site for weak ties and low-intensity contacts, that are critical for social cohesion in heterogeneous societies. Informal Economy In several countries in the Global South, informal processes dominate overall urbanization and the informal econ173

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omy sustains the majority of the retail sector. In the Global North, the recent structural societal changes have opened up new possibilities for new forms of transactional economies. Unlike the formal, informal economies depend on public space as the marketing space and real estate for operations. Urbanites have much to gain from co-opting the informal economy. The vibrancy, the increase in the range and mix of uses, goods and services, the uniqueness and the sociability that the informal economy brings makes public space safe and attractive, but also central to communities. Imagination and Play The twenty-frst century has uniquely produced a plethora of bottom-up urbanisms. DIY, tactical, temporary, pop-up, and several other forms of bottom-up processes use public space for interventions to provide an alternative narrative for city building. This is in stark contrast to the top-down hyper-programmed and planned eventization of public spaces in the fnal decades of the last century. Besides their many procedural differences with top-down processes, bottom-up urbanisms have revived a playfulness and creativity in public space where much of these are manifest. This ability to loosen up, experiment, and be playful and creative must continue to be the way forward for public space. It has the potential to bring people of all ages, backgrounds, and groups together around activities that offer non-essential and informal situations that makes it easier to negotiate difference.

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The Ideal Public Space is Utopic.

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Ambiguity, looseness, adaptability, and open-endedness are not imperfections, but crucial qualities of public space.

Keep it Open-Ended

The expectation from public space changes over the course of the day, week, and seasons. A space that can accommodate change—one that may be transformed from an empty space to a family gathering or to a place for a flash mob or one for celebration on an instant or to become a place to organize and protest—makes the cut. Aside from the significant role of management, rules and regulations, the physical confguration plays a part in making space more or less adaptable and flexible. Urban designers, architects, and landscape architects can be proactive agents. The layout of space is a good point of departure. A layout that acknowledges the relationship to the surrounding context, for example, by considering the movement patterns in and around the space or to a prominent destination, rather than a predetermined geometry, is likely to be more responsive to user needs. Setting aside at least some parts of the space to be appropriated by users as needed is another way to communicate the openness of public space. Similarly, the ability of people to have choices in their desired action or activity is a good indicator of flexibility. The choice of surface, furniture to sit on, as well as the ability to move and reconfgure it, goes a long way. Finally, the location of prominent elements in space makes a difference. Public spaces, especially parks, plazas and squares, are great settings for focal points created by introducing monuments, public art, or a water feature. Focal points have a remarkable ability to impact the overall configuration, perception, movement, and use of space. For example, locating the focal points off-center divides the space unequally, creates a hierarchy of subspaces and allows for multiple confgurations depending on the desired use of space. This makes the space more adaptable and flexible. The physical layout cannot predetermine every use but when its designers and managers anticipate variations, deviations, and transgressions, only then can public space support a rich public life. 178

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A city- or region-wide public space system approach delivers a whole that is more than the sum of its parts.

Envisioning public space as an interrelated and interdependent system translates into rethinking the political, social, economic, and environmental issues facing our cities and regions. A systems thinking approach conceptualizes the public spaces of a city or region as a framework upon which the different parts of a metropolis are built. 1 Such an approach can provide a network of connected spaces to free up the often bounded terrain of districts, areas, and neighborhoods. This can constitute a common ground for diverse groups from different parts of a city or region to come face to face to encounter the “others” and to get acquainted. A city-wide system can make public spaces deliver environmental benefts by linking similar and diverse micro-ecologies. Such a connected network of spaces can support natural biodiversity that is critical for survival of species and healthy ecosystems. A city-wide system with macro-, meso-, and micro-scaled spaces is also critical to achieving a programmatic diversity for public space use.

Systems Thinking

A comprehensive systems approach is more accountable: the distribution, processes of making, care, and upkeep of public spaces across different parts of the city or region can be compared to assess equity and justice. It is also more effcient, as resources may be transferred in response to needs and demand. Finally, a public space systems thinking supports a proactive approach where public spaces can respond to demographic and other shifts in the city or region, but can also be used as an active instrument in driving desired change. 179

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A (near) ideal public space: a space that is open and accessible to all publics but not necessarily at the same time or in the same locations.

An important role of public space is the ability to simultaneously be a space for multiple diverse individuals and groups. Public space cannot be considered public unless everyone can access, appropriate, participate, and consume space, including the disadvantaged groups in society—the destitute, poor, homeless, minorities, elderly, and even children. The designer, planner, and manager of public space can create spatial and temporal conditions in ways that access for all may be achieved by different groups accessing the public space in different spaces or at different times.

An Ideal

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What if: An Alternate View

public space was a place to care for the destitute and the disadvantaged? public space was foremost a place to experience and participate in novel, unusual and unexpected behaviors? public space offered excitement and thrill through risk and novelty? public space was a place for experimentation? public space was a place for actively sharing? public space was a place of civil disagreement and debate?

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Difference Range Friction Change Proof of Proof Visibility Public Space Public Adjacencies COMPLEXITY Overlaps Disorder Uncertainty OPEN-ENDEDNESS Unpredictability Variability … 183

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Public space is a representation.

Let it be a Mirror

Good public space makes the achievements and failures of society visible. It is a place for actions and behaviors that are common, familiar, and customary, as well as those that are peculiar and idiosyncratic, even uncomfortable. To witness the wide-ranging behaviors and uses of public space—from solidarity to discord, ordinary to exceptional, or celebratory to gloomy—is to see the true integration of public space in the city.

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Remarkable and impressionable public space can be a result of a simple idea. Or it can be a simple idea executed with complexity.

Simple or Complex

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Access produces collective and diverse representations of society. If access is limited, representation is incomplete.

Design for Humane Flows

Good access is fundamental for people to reap the benefts of the numerous social and economic opportunities that cities offer. The space and quality of flows is essential to the quality of networks—a distinctive characteristic of cities. Access may be delivered in many ways, but pedestrian access is the most humane. To design for pedestrian humane flows means more than connectivity. Besides being fundamentally feasible and safe, it needs good linkages to other transportation modes and human-scaled urban form with high-density meaningful and useful fne-grained uses aspects that are outcomes of larger city design and planning principles. It also means designing a desirable experience where walking is done out of choice. This is where the design of public space comes in. Creating walkable places means not just constructing sidewalks on every street and other public spaces, although that is certainly a rudimentary need. Rather, it requires fully using the ability of public space to be designed as a prioritized network for walking and moving people with varying abilities. This means designing the whole public space network with environmental qualities that make for places that are comfortable and enjoyable to walk and be in. Conceiving public space as the territory for humane flows in our cities can be a game changer. The personal and societal benefts associated with this are manifold. Walkable places create the setting for serendipitous encounters with the familiar and unfamiliar. Walking is a healthy choice as a physical activity for most of us, but also because in most circumstances it gets us outdoors. Moving and experiencing the world around us, and seeing other people and activities is physically and psychologically benefcial. Walking is environmentally more sustainable, as it replaces other polluting and/or energy consuming modes of transportation. Quite literally, a city that is walkable for all provides effciency and equity, while also bringing diverse groups together in a shared space of flows. Places that consider such equitable mobility as a common good are more equitable, more productive, able to deliver a better urban experience to residents, and are more attractive as places of choice for newcomers. 186

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ARTICLE IX. RIGHT TO ASSOCIATE, GATHER, MANIFEST, AND TO DEMOCRATIC USE OF URBAN PUBLIC SPACE.

All persons have the right to associate, meet, and manifest themselves. Cities should provide and guarantee public spaces for this effect.

World Charter for the Right to the City H A B I TAT I N T E R N AT I O N A L C O A L I T I O N

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Studying people in public spaces is a rewarding experience.

[…] please look closely at real cities. While you are looking, you might as well also listen, linger and think about what you see. Jane Jacobs

At frst, most of the goings-on and activities in public space may seem usual and matter of fact, but close and sustained observations can reveal many nuances. As a species, we have been quite illiterate about the understanding of our behavior in public, likely because we take it for granted. We might be very interested and observant when visiting places far from home, where customs and mannerisms that are different from our own make us curious. Yet, observing public spaces and public life patiently and methodically in our own locales can uncover the range of human behaviors and activities, and show how many different and even unusual ways people behave in public. This is not hard to do. We have created effective but simple tools and methods and mastered studying numerous animal species with not much more than patient and diligent observations.2

1

6

More sociable

7

14

18

attractiveness interesting appearance pedestrian friendliness goods/services uniqueness goods/services variety occurrence of events change in signs/displays

nighttime safety daytime safety sidewalk condition building condition

sociability index

occurrence of events change in signs/displays

BLOCK 14

Study Public Life

2

13

Block numbers

4

8

There is no alternative to frst-hand observations. A good observation of public space engages all the senses. This means seeing, listening, smelling, and feeling the space and the activities that are going on. In mechanistic terms, what we want to know is what all is going on in public space, who is involved in the actions and activities (active and passive), with whom, where, when, and for how long, and why? Patiently and methodically done observations can 5 10 12 answer all these questions, except why. For that we need to talk to people. Less sociable

Whether streets or street corners, parks or plazas, public libraries or train stations, claimed spaces under highways or waterfronts, understanding the history of a public space and knowing the associated stories is important to provide a context for the space. From there on, the empirical work of getting to know the space and the public life in it requires three main tasks. 188

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1

Familiarity and understanding of the space. How does one get there? Where can one get in? Is it secluded or visible? What can you see, hear, and smell? What are the facilities in the space? Are there choices in ways to participate in the space? Are there places to sit, play, be by oneself or in small and large groups? Does it cater to people of different age, gender, race, and ability? Are there planned events, small and large, regular or special? What is the level of maintenance—over-maintained, uncared, or just right? Much of this is easy to know by being in public space and paying attention to these questions.

sense

see

2

Methodical observations and systematic recording of activities and behaviors. This is the backbone to studying public space. First-hand observations effectively answer most of the questions mentioned above—what, who, with whom, where, for how long? It may be done by structured observations done from good vantage points, walk-by observations (slowly walking through space and observing and recording the observations), pedestrian counts, unstructured observations, extensive feld notes, sketches, drawings, photography, videography, and more. Observations must be done throughout the day on weekdays and weekends and preferably over different seasons to fully capture the life of the space over time.

listen

3

smell

Interviews and surveys. Talking with people who are using the space is essential to knowing why they use the space, the aspects of the public space they value and ones they miss. Collecting the users’ views and opinions is crucial to understanding their perceptions and the value and meaning of the public space to them. It also can tell us if the public space is equally valuable and meaningful to different groups. These may be local residents, workers, or visitors. But it is also important to get the opinion of people who live and work nearby but don’t use the space. Face-to-face interviews and/or surveys are most insightful, but online surveys and questionnaires can provide valuable information while reaching a wider audience.

feel

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Space Between Buildings

Whether ceremonious or banal, formal or informal, vast or intimate, the design, layout, and orientation of public space must not be an afterthought, a result of “leftover” space. A more complete and better-connected system of public spaces emerges when urban designers and architects envision and design the spaces between buildings as the foremost means of structuring blocks, neighborhoods, districts, and cities. Urban designers, planners, architects, and landscape architects must design the space between buildings NOT building in space.

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Within the dense press of the built fabric, the greatest luxury of all is, empty space. Spiro Kostof

The exceptional architecture in our cities is captivating and inspiring. But there is a more ordinary production in urban space that, perhaps not breathtaking, is as intriguing and enticing—the human activities, interactions, and life between buildings. As social beings, we retain a constant curiosity toward the action of fellow beings and activities that do not have to be exceptional. These can be heartening, funny, or pathetic. Celebrations, romance, protests, accidents, and even banal acts of delivery or construction capture our interest. We can only engage in this life between buildings if the space between buildings is designed at a scale where the human body is comfortable, activities can be seen and sensed, and where paths can cross.

Life Between Buildings*

* Title of Jan Gehl’s seminal book

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We come to public space for being with others, but we seek different things from public space at different times.

We desire very different types of interactions that range from being left alone to being in the close company of others, sometimes for recreation and leisure, at other times for solidarity or collective political action. All these social actions and behaviors in public space fall into one of the tripartite taxonomy—passive sociability, fleeting sociability, and enduring sociability.3

Nurture a Varied Social Life

Passive Sociability Being alone in public is a social behavior. People seek out places to be alone in public where others are present, with no intention to interact or participate in any social activity. Passive sociability is visible in the form of several non-verbal activities and behaviors—public solitude, spectating and display, relaxation, and even play. Perhaps we fnd it reassuring to be in the presence of humanity, to be able to hear the sounds of conversation, or see visible human activity for sensory interest, and to feel a part of a larger community. Fleeting Sociability Brief, fleeting contacts constitute easy interactions with other people in a relatively undemanding way. Such fleeting sociability has its transitory benefts of humanizing the moment for the people engaged in the interaction. Waving to a known neighbor, an acquaintance or a familiar face, a momentary stop for a chat, a simple reciprocation through a nod or a smile or a brief exchange with a stranger are all signs of fleeting sociability. These short-term, low-intensity contacts or weak ties are possible beginnings of deeper and more enduring social interactions and engagements between people4 through which people grow to trust their fellow city dwellers including those who are strangers.5 Enduring Sociability People may not come to public space for the sole purpose of seeking long-term relationships, but for many these 192

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are places to actively connect with companions, friends, and the community. Enduring sociability may develop from fleeting or even passive sociability and is sometimes a continuum over time. Examples include a gathering of a group of friends or acquaintances on the street corner, a planned walk or exercise in a park by a group of seniors, or a meeting of a groups of friends to get a beverage or a meal. The benefts of enduring sociability are many— both personal and to the community and society. To the individual, enduring sociability provides interest and stimulation, and sometimes excitement through conversation and contact with fellow human beings: it offers an antidote to boredom and isolation. Enduring sociability reinforces a sense of community, especially when people engaged in it share a similar group, such as in a neighborhood. Through the sharing of ideas and even banal information, enduring sociability helps build social capital. Urban observers agree that the range of social relationships are of signifcance to people engaged in such relationships, and an important building block of urban social order. Passive, fleeting, and enduring sociability generates possibilities for numerous scales of connections between people in public space, thus creating a platform to negotiate difference, to celebrate, to take delight in sharing commonalities and collective achievements, and to seek solace for a communal loss. Much social and civic beneft results from this: whether it is the empathy toward unlike others developed by passive sociability of seeing them; or the awareness of different and sometimes opposing viewpoints through discussions and even arguments; or the learning of new etiquettes, behaviors, and sometimes the courage to deal with unfamiliar circumstances by watching people handle unusual situations. Designers and public space managers can do much to nurture this range of social life. The network of public spaces must provide physical conditions and ambience where it is suitable to be alone with others or to actively socialize. Public spaces must welcome easy interactions, both casual and serious, without the imposition of rules and regulations beyond the local customs. 193

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A public space for all is likely one for none.

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Cities are places of difference and public space is the urban territory to express and experience that difference. How we manage, care, and use public space is deeply determined by the way we represent public space and who we represent.6 When public space is constructed to represent diverse groups, it can support the social practices of many, which in turn helps to construct a system of public spaces for different publics. If public space is to represent contemporary society, it must be constructed not as a singular idea to accommodate and represent all but one that acknowledges the multiple publics that make up contemporary societies. This means, frst, a recognition of social difference, and second, the making of space based on differentiation.7 For material public space, this leads to not only design and programmatic differences but also variations in control and care. There are two distinct challenges. One, creating public spaces that support the many differences in the public city (the downtowns, center city, and most diverse neighborhoods). This does not imply satisfying a set of general needs determined from lowest common denominators to satisfy all. It means making common open-ended spaces for sharing the pleasures and pains of urban life—celebrations, demonstrations, and the break from everyday routines. It also means creating distinct but visible spaces and subspaces with overlaps and easy thresholds to experience and negotiate difference. The second challenge is to create distinct public spaces that are responsive to the specifc needs of people in different parochial or private neighborhoods.

Celebrate Difference

Providing for these differences may seem challenging, but these are also the types of opportunities that urban designers, architects, and artists crave to advance their work, showcase their skills, and express new ideas. Public space, built for different needs, values, and desires also becomes a flourishing medium for the construction of identities and the recognition of identities through visibility. A web of public spaces built on difference is sympathetic and congruous with the needs and desires of distinctive groups. It also creates a city that is richer with more choices to make, places to discover, and opportunities to learn. 195

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A space that delivers the materials for our most primordial need becomes exceptionally meaningful. There are impressive economic, health, and environmental benefts of local food production and distribution. In cities, this translates to urban agriculture (horticulture, animal husbandry, aquaculture, etc.) that delivers healthy food and nutrition, food security, employment, self-suffciency and resilience, and a reduction in the carbon footprint. Local food production is a burgeoning private business. But there are some uniquely social, political, and health benefts at the intersection of public space and growing food. Public space may not be essential for food production, but food can do much for public space. Being in public is optional for many. Using public space for growing food creates a necessity to be in public. There is immense reciprocity in this process. Making public space productive, delivers the many desired outcomes: it promotes an inclusive access; it creates the conditions for intersubjectivity, builds social contacts and social capital; it generates a sense of ownership and provides agency; it creates political effcacy; and it empowers the marginal. With food as an outcome, public space gets a reason to be cared for.

Make Space Edible

Urban agriculture is an inclusive and productive use of public space. Food can be produced without encroaching on usable public space. Most cities have considerable vacant publicly owned lands, particularly post-industrial sites, transportation-related, and left-over or unused unforested natural land. This can be productively used for food production at several scales. Public space can be used to provide temporary ownership of small plots to produce food especially for those that live in meager accommodations. Public agencies can acquire vacant private land to provide food producing public space that also contributes to the livability of neighborhoods. Municipalities may use public lands across the city or region to create civic programs for centralized food production. For the current generations growing up in an e-society, on the e-economy, with e-entertainment, and e-et al., a purposeful reason—such as food production—to be in space and in public is welcome. With the current challenges of climate change, the self-suffciency and resilience that urban agriculture promises are worthy goals for public space to pursue. 197

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Euclidean zoning—the strict separation of distinct land uses—is a mindset that is not limited to land use.

The separation or distancing of distinct functions is visible in modern city developments worldwide. This is also visible in the design public space. Even after years of creating mixed use places, there is much work to be done in achieving multi-use public spaces. No doubt, all activities in public space cannot simultaneously coexist. Yet, there is much beneft in certain activities and groups to be clustered and public spaces to be adaptable. There are several ways to achieve this. First, and the easiest, is to intentionally bring together activities of cohesive users and groups to deliver mutual benefts, such as clustering activities for older adults with those for young children that can be rewarding for both groups. Second, the simultaneous “layering and separation”8 can allow diverse groups to coexist in different activity zones within the same public space. Part of this is also a strategy of creating multiple reasons to be in a public space. Third, doing away with tightly designed, mostly determined, forms that only address fxed users and activities and eliminate the opportunity of new or unexpected uses of public space. Finally, public spaces with loose parts—whether it is movable chairs and tables or objects and artifacts for children to confgure and reconfgure—give some agency to users and makes them more responsive and meaningful. Customizing space and providing an opportunity for action opens up venues for interaction with the familiar and the stranger. Making public spaces less deterministic and more openended—by way of their design, layout, furnishing, and degrees of management—can accommodate more uses and users and respond to change.

Beat Euclidean Zoning

The quintessential image of public space does not have to be of a child playing in a children’s playground with a disengaged and bored-stiff parent standing by the side, staring at a phone screen. Creating public spaces that respond to diverse motivations and desires will generate multiple reasons for many diverse groups to inhabit and cohabit public space. 199

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Vendors punctuate public space with social and commercial touchpoints that generate vibrancy and directly contribute to the economy of cities.

Vendors or hawkers (as referred to in many cultures) bring sensory and social vitality to public space. On streets, sidewalks, parks, plazas, and left-over public spaces, vendors act as commercial and social nodes. Vendors are floating land uses—an easy and inexpensive way to increase the mix and range of goods and services that is especially valuable to monocultural places, where they add to the utility. Vending uses public space to provide a dignifed means of survival and sustenance that reduces the burden on the state to provide social services.9 By operating in public spaces, vendors provide a source of revenue generated in public space by almost always requiring only temporary right to public space to operate. With little overhead, vendors are able to provide many goods and services at lower costs than brick-and-mortar stores, increasing the access to many more residents. Due to their small scale, many vendors have a limited geographical range that makes them champions of localism. Because of their agility, vendors can provide goods and services on short notice at special times with a greater reach—when needed, a park in a residential neighborhood can accommodate vendors to serve food, games, and other amenities for a local event.

Welcome the Vendors

Whether they sell traditional or unconventional goods and services, vending broadens ideologies, outlooks, and points of view. Vendors provide an easy opportunity to engage in and get to know other cultures. Vendors also create places for momentarily coming in contact with strangers while also adding the “eyes on the street” to make public spaces safer. Vendors are the poster-child—an age-old example of myriad benefts and successes of bottom-up urban processes. 201

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Good cities are cities with good public spaces. Great cities are cities with good public spaces with lots of places to sit.

Is it Sittable?

Seating in the city—benches, chairs, other artifacts, and surfaces built into the building design or streetscape—is one of the most important characteristics of a good public space. The presence of places to sit coveys a basic respect for the pedestrian. Seating provides incentives for people to stay longer in public space. This creates affordances for social behavior and makes the city safer by providing “eyes on the street.” Seating for the public not only provides a place for anyone to sit without purchasing goods or services, but also acts as a physical artifact that supports other postures and activities. Benches become objects for children to play on and for adults to stand next to, lean on, use as a surface, and more. Seating becomes most useful when various options are available or confgurations possible such that dyads, triads but also larger number of people can sit together in groups.

People like to sit where there are places for them to sit. William H. Whyte

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Shelter in public space provides physical and psychological comfort making spaces more hospitable and inviting.

Urban designers, architects, and planners often recommend that public spaces should be oriented to receive maximum sunlight. It is equally important to provide shade and shelter with arcades, colonnades, canopies, awnings, overhangs, and trees, as our needs and preferences for spaces in the sun or under shade change with changing seasons, location, and weather. Unfortunately, this basic need for shelter from the elements is grossly underestimated by many architects. People, even in the coldest places that do not require shade from the sun, do need shelter from the rain and snow.

Shelter the Pedestrian

Sheltered spaces allow people to linger in the outdoors. Arcades, colonnades, canopies, awnings, trees, and more also provide colors, patterns, and textures that animate the city. Alongside providing shade and shelter, trees also create a partial transparent overhead defnition and enclosure with rich patterns formed by shadows and light fltered through the canopy. Sheltered spaces, especially ones created under trees, create spaces with a sense of enclosure reminiscent of the human-scaled spaces of medieval cities. Sheltered spaces created by individual elements, such as trees, umbrellas, canopies, and other overhangs, also defne subspaces that allow individuals and groups to create their own micro territories of occupancy.

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Our psychological need for refuge is enacted in our physical relationship with space. Expansive public spaces, such as beaches, deserts, mountains, and open felds can be very exhilarating, awe-inspiring, and liberating. Yet, to feel secure, particularly when stationary in urban public spaces, humans have a psychological need for a degree of refuge. We achieve this by protecting our back to counter any threats. Leaning on a wall or a bollard, sitting on a building ledge, steps, or a bench in a park are all examples of elements that provide refuge in urban spaces. In the ideal situation we occupy a position in public space where an object or a building edge provides refuge while we have an open view (prospect) of the space.10 This is why the edges of spaces get occupied frst.11

Prospect, Refuge & Edge

Architects and urban designers must consider the edge condition as an opportunity for people to comfortably occupy public spaces. This may be done by articulating the building facades and/or the ground plane, or by providing other occupiable elements, such as benches and seating. When appropriate, urban elements in the open can punctuate the space to provide the needed refuge. As a corollary, articulated and activated edges further help humanize public spaces by increasing visual (and other sensory) stimuli that slow down motorized traffc.

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Small Change

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The seemingly chaotic public space in India has an inherent order built on localized agency and relentless negotiations. In Indian cities, the state lacks the wherewithal to manage everyday public space. Order and operation get determined more by the limits of adaptability of the space and the negotiations between individuals and local institutions than by predetermined regulations.12 Although there are rules, corrupt practices by those in power—politicians, police, landlords, gang members—often break and make rules to their advantage. The most important rules, however, emerge from negotiations among the various publics. The coexistence of formalized and unsanctioned practices in public space is a result of complex negotiations among its myriad actors—landlords, tenants, shop-keepers, vendors, municipal authorities, police, residents, customers, cleaners, and more. Numerous such symbiotic relationships exist in public space. Adaptability requires interactions among those that occupy public spaces by following institutionalized regulations and ones that do so by self-made rules based on social and economic needs. These interactions lead to more social compacts demonstrating how various seemingly incongruent groups have the ability to cohabit public space.

Negotiated Publicness: Learning from India

Spatial practices constantly morph to ft the changing needs, making public space an environment of complexity and contradictions. Ambiguity and tolerance characterize public space, enhancing occupancy and transactions that allow for more interpretation and freedom of what is possible in public space, who can claim it, and for which activities. Bottom-up practices—unsanctioned actions, activities, and processes—that are inextricably linked to the economy of cities are supported by public space. Although conflicts frequently occur and most actors have to fght their way to a right to public space, this bottom-up urbanism is not primarily characterized by insurgency. Rather, it operates on complex modes of negotiation delivering agency to many, to accommodate multiple uses across the day and week, inspired by the latent needs of the neighborhood and city. Indian public space teaches us how the city can thrive on the coexistence of diverse groups, activities, forms and objects, and modes of control and negotiation, as it operates as a social, cultural, economic, and political space. 207

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In several Southeast Asian countries, a cooperative relation between the public and private is culturally engrained.

Blurred Boundaries

In non-Western contexts, the influence of global capital is becoming ever more visible, as the free market and neoliberal policies encroach and influence city building. At the same time, the public sector has lacked the capacity to manage and deliver all the benefts of public space. Even in the pre-neoliberal economy era, there were numerous overlaps in the public and private domains. On the one hand, the public-private boundaries of the social realm are fxed and strict—private connotes family, whereas public implies society. On the other hand, the public-private boundaries of physical public space are blurred and to operate in full, the private realm depends on public space. This is visible, for example, on commercial streets, where shops seamlessly extend on sidewalks for display and transaction. On the larger scale, the private sector has been able to deliver much usable public space with amenities that the state could not, including parks, playgrounds, and spaces for sports and entertainment. These spaces are available to a large public, but typically exclude those at the very bottom of the economic ladder. Although these may be characterized as pseudo-public spaces, they still play an important role in providing for public life. With very high populations, cities depend on these impure public spaces to cater to a large segment of society to offset the burden on the public sector. Instead of critiquing the loss of ownership and private takeover of public space, it may be more productive to establish an overall public space strategy, as many are doing. Cities should closely examine the limits and uses of existing public (and pseudo-public) spaces, and incorporate policies and actions to create diverse models of public space delivery and management. For example, diametrically opposing the private market model, infrastructure upgrade programs, often funded by international organizations and other non-profts can include the provision of public space that could be managed by the community. In numerous locations in the Global South, the range of state-, market-, and community-managed and the many hybrid options for public space delivery are providing access to the diverse publics. 208

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The purpose of public space is to support public life —many types of public life. In a contemporary society, it is futile to limit looking for public life in traditional publicly-owned public spaces. Ownership, once a clear measure and starting point of publicness and public space, is now much more complicated and interwoven with multiple public, non-proft, and private actors forming alliances to own and operate public spaces. Even the most traditional, symbolic, and historic public spaces are likely to be co-owned and co-managed across public-private agencies. Yet, these transformed public spaces and the myriad pseudo-public spaces of today do support many forms of public life. Perhaps not equitably for all, these spaces do serve the needs of play, leisure, entertainment, discovery, relaxation, and social contact for many, and there are genuine signs of public life and intersubjectivity. In modernizing urban places in several traditional societies public life now commonly exists in public, quasi-public, and private realms that provide rich opportunities for interaction and exchange.13 In heterogeneous societies, it is impossible and futile to create a singular common public space as different groups seek out different experiences and uses for public life available in different types of spaces. In the same way, it is pointless to expect different groups to seek public life in a uniform mold of state-owned civic public space or a market-operated social space. For some, their residential streets and the local market are the most meaningful public spaces. For others, the leftover spaces on the margins, pseudo-public spaces such as malls, as well as downtown streets and civic squares are all similarly meaningful to express their individual and social identities and political views, even though not all in one space.

Public Space for Public Life

The future public space will be multifarious. Public space scholars and researchers can contribute to positive change by helping citizens, civic leaders, and public space managers assess how the landscape of public spaces is serving the citizenry. They can highlight the practices that limit, and ones that expand public life in the changing city and its ever-evolving publics.

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People expanded their social space and contracted public distances to create a more sociable experience. During the height of the pandemic, people spent more time in their neighborhoods, and the use of space, the proxemics14 changed. Two trends emerged. First, many more people walking in the public distance to each other intentionally converged to a friendlier social distance within fve to eight feet—a kind of pull into a shared space. Second, people expanded their social distance, the realm of social space, to 20–25 feet. Comfortable and prolonged social interactions with acquaintances and neighbors were visible beyond 12 feet—from entrance or porch to sidewalk, front yard to street, balcony to sidewalk or street, sidewalk to sidewalk across the street, and more. This changed how people acknowledged and engaged with others, producing a new urban etiquette. What was clearly on display during the restrictions, in many neighborhoods, was social distancing generating a new sociable space—a new proxemics.15 While we missed the freedom of unfettered interactions, there are numerous benefts of this new sociable space. We saw many more social interactions of varying durations with neighbors, acquaintances, familiar strangers, and complete strangers. Although the six feet distancing was a wall for preventing interactions with friends and family, the same distance established a comfortable datum for interactions with the unknown. The pandemic daylighted our desire for publicness of the everyday, and that we have the ingenuity to use ordinary spaces for public life. A vast amount of public space in cities constitutes residential streets, neighborhood parks, play areas, community gardens, community centers, and numerous non-private spaces in neighborhoods. These spaces may not be the foremost to enact political action but can be designed as valuable spaces that form the social glue in our societies. The expanded use of neighborhood public space can provide everyday physical activity and social interactions that deliver socio-psychological benefts to help alleviate social isolation.16 Perhaps we can champion a fundamental shift and an urban etiquette to retain the expanded sociable space. In Georg Simmel’s words, “All sociability is but a symbol of life, as it shows itself in the flow of a lightly amusing play.” Will we keep the play going?

The New Proxemics

larger and more active social space

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Public space has much to offer to the mission of institutions in exchange for stewardship and care.

In a time when, in many countries, the state and local municipalities have limited resources to provide and care for public space, we see increasing privatization that compromises publicness and the right to public space for many. Yet, there are some other creative options to sustaining public space by partnering with public, quasi-public, and private institutions that have overlapping interests in public space. For the best outcomes, this partnership must be envisioned as an intersection of systems. A city-wide system geared toward improving community public health (via access to green space, growing healthy food, increased walking, biking and exercising, and more) may be conceptualized as a synergistic relationship between public spaces and expansive educational and health institutions, but also cultural institutions. No doubt, such territorial claims must be guided by clear policy that does not replicate the well-known privatization tendencies of the market economy. For example, connecting hospitals and medical campuses with adjacent public parks accessed via green pedestrian pathways can be mutually benefcial. In this case, the public park is adopted by the hospital, and a section of the park is designed as healing gardens, walking paths, medicinal gardens, and other types of restorative green spaces that offer short- and long-term patients and their families and the public an environment that helps with health and healing. Not only does such a partnership beneft the hospital patrons and employees, it also provides investment and care to the commons and makes it responsive to current public needs.

Engage the Institutions

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The New Urban Agenda was adopted at the United Nations Conference on Housing and Sustainable Urban Development (Habitat III) in Quito, Ecuador, on 20 October 2016. It was endorsed by the United Nations General Assembly at its sixty-eighth plenary meeting of the seventy-first session on 23 December 2016.

Promise & Hope

QUITO DECLARATION ON SUSTAINABLE CITIES AND HUMAN SETTLEMENTS FOR ALL […] Our shared vision […] 13. We envisage cities and human settlements that: […] (b) Are participatory, promote civic engagement, engender a sense of belonging and ownership among all their inhabitants, prioritize safe, inclusive, accessible, green and quality public spaces that are friendly for families, enhance social and intergenerational interactions, cultural expressions and political participation, as appropriate, and foster social cohesion, inclusion and safety in peaceful and pluralistic societies, where the needs of all inhabitants are met, recognizing the specifc needs of those in vulnerable situations; (c) Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls by ensuring women’s full and effective participation and equal rights in all felds and in leadership at all levels of decision-making, by ensuring decent work and equal pay for equal work, or work of equal value, for all women and by preventing and eliminating all forms of discrimination, violence and harassment against women and girls in private and public spaces; […] QUITO IMPLEMENTATION PLAN FOR THE NEW URBAN AGENDA […] Transformative commitments for sustainable urban development […] 36. We commit ourselves to promoting appropriate measures in cities and human settlements that facilitate access for persons with disabilities, on an equal basis with others, to 214

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the physical environment of cities, in particular to public spaces, public transport, housing, education and health facilities, public information and communication (including information and communications technologies and systems) and other facilities and services open or provided to the public, in both urban and rural areas. 37. We commit ourselves to promoting safe, inclusive, accessible, green and quality public spaces, including streets, sidewalks and cycling lanes, squares, waterfront areas, gardens and parks, that are multifunctional areas for social interaction and inclusion, human health and well-being, economic exchange and cultural expression and dialogue among a wide diversity of people and cultures, and that are designed and managed to ensure human development and build peaceful, inclusive and participatory societies, as well as to promote living together, connectivity and social inclusion. […] 53. We commit ourselves to promoting safe, inclusive, accessible, green and quality public spaces as drivers of social and economic development, in order to sustainably leverage their potential to generate increased social and economic value, including property value, and to facilitate business and public and private investments and livelihood opportunities for all. […] 67. We commit ourselves to promoting the creation and maintenance of well-connected and well-distributed networks of open, multipurpose, safe, inclusive, accessible, green and quality public spaces, to improving the resilience of cities to disasters and climate change, including floods, drought risks and heat waves, to improving food security and nutrition, physical and mental health, and household and ambient air quality, to reducing noise and promoting attractive and liveable cities, human settlements and urban landscapes and to prioritizing the conservation of endemic species. […] Effective implementation […] 97. We will promote planned urban extensions and infll, prioritizing renewal, regeneration and retroftting of urban areas, as appropriate, including the upgrading of slums and informal settlements, providing high-quality buildings 215

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and public spaces, promoting integrated and participatory approaches involving all relevant stakeholders and inhabitants and avoiding spatial and socioeconomic segregation and gentrifcation, while preserving cultural heritage and preventing and containing urban sprawl. […] 99. We will support the implementation of urban planning strategies, as appropriate, that facilitate a social mix through the provision of affordable housing options with access to quality basic services and public spaces for all, enhancing safety and security and favouring social and intergenerational interaction and the appreciation of diversity. We will take steps to include appropriate training and support for service delivery professionals and communities in areas affected by urban violence. 100. We will support the provision of well-designed networks of safe, accessible, green and quality streets and other public spaces that are accessible to all and free from crime and violence, including sexual harassment and gender-based violence, considering the human scale, and measures that allow for the best possible commercial use of street-level floors, fostering both formal and informal local markets and commerce, as well as not-for-proft community initiatives, bringing people into public spaces and promoting walkability and cycling with the goal of improving health and well-being. […] 109. We will consider increased allocations of fnancial and human resources, as appropriate, for the upgrading and, to the extent possible, prevention of slums and informal settlements, with strategies that go beyond physical and environmental improvements to ensure that slums and informal settlements are integrated into the social, economic, cultural and political dimensions of cities. These strategies should include, as applicable, access to sustainable, adequate, safe and affordable housing, basic and social services, and safe, inclusive, accessible, green and quality public spaces, and they should promote security of tenure and its regularization, as well as measures for conflict prevention and mediation. […]

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Not all public space needs to be clear and explicit.

All public space—its program, its operation, and the space itself—need not be purposeful or explicit. Urbanites should have access to some public space that is diffuse, inconclusive, and ambiguous. The form of such spaces may not be typologically identifable. Nor should the program be determined. The use of such spaces may not be restricted by tight cultural norms, but be based on the negotiation among the publics. It could lead to inventive or banal use— or be left unused, an apparent failure. The ability to have spaces for contingency, chance, and unimagined possibilities is important to counter the mechanistic tendencies and demands of urban life. Public spaces that encourage experimentation also act as counterparts to the predictable and often unimaginative landscape of space types that proliferate cities and regions.

Experiment & Tinker

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Within the built landscape of cities, the network of public spaces offers an antidote to the destructive practices.

Weave an Ecosystem

The damaging industrial and environmental policies of the past demand a swift and proactive response to sustain urban areas. The network of public spaces can be integral to this mission. Besides being used as a system of defense, the numerous typologies of public space add up to a vast amount of land area (one-third to over half in many settlements) that has the ability to restructure the city toward a resilient landscape responsive to recurrent and episodic environmental events. Perceiving the full range of public spaces—streets, parks, squares, waterfronts, urban greens, woods, common areas, and other publicly owned residual space—as a cohesive ecosystem is the frst step. This vast and varied landscape can accommodate the range of terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems including marsh systems, wetlands, grasslands, forests, and more, that are needed to tackle critical environmental challenges. On a regular basis, public spaces can be envisioned and designed as a system to be a key component of the hydrological cycle to move, retain, absorb, flter, and replenish water. When understood and managed as an ecology, public space can be harnessed to collectively address air quality, water quality, reduce heat island effect, capture and store carbon, and more, while at the same time also being a restorative space for humans. 218

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During the pandemic residents took on an active role in claiming agency and reimagining public space. COVID-19 has hit the world hard. With the closure of places, the pandemic diminished our territories and contracted public space and public life. But a keen observation reveals a more nuanced picture. In the absence of unlimited urban territory, neighborhood residents have taken the space within reach and used it to make it public as is evident in many neighborhoods across the globe.17 This is aside from the efforts of local municipal authorities, such as to reclaim street space for walking and biking, expanded outdoor dining, etc. With diminished vehicle use, driveways became gathering places; pedestrians were no longer limited to the meager sidewalk, and the pavement became a space to walk, bike, have conversations and play; street junctions, cul-de-sacs, and parking lots were places for music and happy hour; many streets morphed into gathering spaces—a path to place. This repurposing shows an adaptation of space and sociability—an expansion of public space. The elimination of events and programming, and the cordoning off of equipment in customary public spaces left it in a state of bareness. This transformed public space may not be unmanaged, but it was certainly unguided. For this short period, the grip of capital on public space loosened. Space was available for residents to make public. People claimed space. This adaptation is an expansion of the public's agency.

The COVID-19 Shift

Taking a broader citywide view shows a typological switch in the occupancy of public space. With several quasi-public and public spaces closed, partially closed, or inaccessible, many embraced the more open-ended and loose public spaces such as neighborhood streets, natural parks, trails, and woods. Although the situation seemed dismal, we must not ignore the value of this adaptation where the public had to shed their dependency on consumption in public space. The pandemic has taken many lives, caused devastation to economies that has brought so many families to the brink of economic collapse. This is not a time to romanticize the situation. Yet, there are takeaways for the future from these unique circumstances. Let us hope that, through the current processes of adaptation and claiming of agency, we are able to generate an augmented public space. 219

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Public Space has immense capacity ...

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only limited by our imagination ... 221

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Acknowledgments Notes

Further Reading Image Credits Index

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Acknowledgments This book has had a long journey. During the last several years, aside from my own research and teaching on public space, I have had the opportunity to edit pre-published works as well as new compilations on the subject. As is evident in this small but expansive text, I have learned from the work and wisdom of many—scholars, teachers, collaborators, anonymous reviewers, students, colleagues, and friends. Two decades ago Michael Sorkin’s seminal book, Variations on a Theme Park (1992) was what got me interested in public space. Later in 2011, I was fortunate to collaborate on an architectural studio with Michael, with whom walking or driving in the city was a masterclass in learning about the nuances of reading the city—its buildings, public spaces, and the people that used them. More recently, I am grateful for the discussions on public space in numerous forums with many scholars and practitioners including Setha Low, Ken Greenberg, Jeff Hou, Karen Franck, Tim Jachna, and many more. My special thanks to Miodrag Mitrašinović, with whom I co-edited the Public Space Reader (Routledge, 2021). Miodrag has since become a partner in co-teaching and co-hosting forums on public space and bouncing off ideas. He was also kind enough to provide feedback on an early version of the manuscript. My sincere thanks to him. For the last six years I was fortunate to be a part of a group to curate a database of research on public space. Now called Terra Publica, we set out to classify and structure the research and knowledge on public space covering more than a dozen disciplines. This meant long discussions, disagreements, but eventually a structure to broadly organize the expansive research in public space. The core group included Setha Low, Michael Mehaffy, Tigran Haas, David Brain, me, and Peter Elmlund as the initiator of the project, and Patrick Condon, Yodan Rofé, and Valentina Gulin Zrnic as reviewers. The many conferences included numerous forums and rich dialogues with guest speakers including Julian Agyeman, Christine Boyer, David Canter, Matthew Carmona, Ali Madanipour, Don Mitchell, Saskia Sassen, Richard Sennett, Emily Talen, and many more. I am grateful to each one of them for all that I learned from their work. 223

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Many of the contributing authors to the Companion to Public Space (2020) that I edited, brought new perspectives to public space that were refreshing. I would also like to thank Matthew Frederick, with whom I collaborated on a previous book. I am most grateful to Sidney Brower, who always pushed me to test and question theoretical ideas (often normative and ideological ones) by looking at how those played out in real life, and what that meant to and impacted ordinary people. Portions of the research and materials in this book have been previously published in edited books including Public Space (Routledge, 2015), Companion to Public Space (co-edited with Danilo Palazzo, Routledge, 2020), Public Space Reader (co-edited with Miodrag Mitrašinović, Routledge, 2021), in several book chapters, and in journal articles in the Journal of Planning Education and Research, Journal of Urban Design, Environment and Behavior, Urban Design International and the Journal of Urbanism. My thanks to all the anonymous referees and editors of these journals and books, for their comments and feedback. I am grateful to Tigran Haas for believing in this work and helping me procure grant support from the Center for the Future of Places, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden. Thanks to Kate Schell and Magha Patel at Routledge for patiently working with me on this project. For the design of the book, I'd like to thank Oscar Fernandes, with whom I worked on early conceptual ideas. Eventually, Muhammad Rahman created the fnal design of the book with me, including the many overarching and subtle elements in it. Partnering with Muhammad in creating the design of the book was a pleasurable journey. Thanks also to my doctoral student Szymon Nogalski for providing the many last-minute edits. I am especially grateful to my wife Shilpa Mehta for her support, patience, and enthusiasm about my work, her keen eye toward the design of the book, and her many valuable suggestions.

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Notes 1. Why Care? 1 Lewis Mumford, The Highway and The City (London: Secker & Warburg, 1964), 173. 2 See, for example, Setha Low, “Spatializing culture: the social production and social construction of public space in Costa Rica,” in Theorizing the City, ed. Setha Low (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1999), 117–137. 3 Julianne Holt-Lunstad, Timothy Smith, Mark Baker, Tyler Harris, and David Stephenson, “Loneliness and social isolation as risk factors for mortality: a meta-analytic review,” Perspective on Psychological Science 10, no. 2 (March 2015): 227–237; Nicholas Leigh-Hunt, David Bagguley, Kristin Bash, Victoria Turner, Stephen Turnbull, Nicole Valtorta, and Woody Caan, “An overview of systematic reviews on the public health consequences of social isolation and loneliness,” Public Health 152 (2017): 157–171; Andrew Steptoe, Aparna Shankar, Panayotes Demakakos, and Jane Wardle, “Social isolation, loneliness, and all-cause mortality in older men and women,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 110 (April 2013): 5797–5801; and Nicole Valtorta, Mona Kanaan, Simon Gilbody, Sara Ronzi, and Barbara Hanratty, “Loneliness and social isolation as risk factors for coronary heart disease and stroke: systematic review and meta-analysis of longitudinal observational studies,” Heart 102 (2016): 1009–1016. 4 Jane Jenson, Mapping Social Cohesion: The State of Canadian Research (Ontario: Canadian Policy Research Networks, 1998). 5 Vikas Mehta, “The street: a fluid place of social cohesion,” in Public Space Design and Social Cohesion: An International Comparison, eds. Patricia Aelbrecht and Quentin Stevens (New York: Routledge, 2019), 296–316. 6 Ceren Sezer, “Visibility in public space and socially inclusive cities: A new conceptual tool for urban design and planning,” in Companion to Public Space, eds. Vikas Mehta and Danilo Palazzo (London: Routledge, 2020), 137–151. 7 See, for example, Urie Bronfenbrenner and Pamela Morris, “The ecology of developmental processes,” in Handbook of Child Psychology: Vol. 1: Theoretical Models of Human Development, eds. William Damon and Richard M. Lerner (Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 1998), 993–1028; for an expansive discussion on public space for youth and children see Kate Bishop and Linda Corkery (eds.), Designing Cities with Children and Young People: Beyond Playgrounds and Skateparks (New York: Routledge, 2017); and Janet Loebach, Sarah Little, Adina Cox and Patsy Eubanks Owen, The Routledge Handbook of Designing Public Spaces for Young People: Processes, Practices and Policies for Youth Inclusion (New York: Routledge, 2020). 8 For a detailed discussion of play and the city see Quentin Stevens, The Ludic City: Exploring the Potential of Public Spaces (London: Routledge, 2007).

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9 Jane Jacobs, The Death and Life of Great American Cities (New York: Vintage Books, 1961). 10 See the work of Clare Rishbeth, for example, Clare Rishbeth, “The collective outdoors: memories, desires and becoming local in an era of mobility,” in Companion to Public Space, eds. Vikas Mehta and Danilo Palazzo (London: Routledge, 2020), 27–34. 11 See, for example, Gregory N. Bratman, Christopher B. Anderson, Marc G. Berman, Bobby Cochran, Sjerp de Vries, Jon Flanders, Carl Folke, Howard Frumkin, James J. Gross, Terry Hartig, Peter H. Kahn Jr, Ming Kuo, Joshua J. Lawler, Phillip S. Levin, Therese Lindahl, Andreas MeyerLindenberg, Richard Mitchell, Zhiyun Ouyang, Jenny Roe, Lynn Scarlett, Jeffrey R. Smith, Matilda van den Bosch, Benedict W. Wheeler, Mathew P. White, Hua Zheng, and Gretchen C. Daily, “Nature and mental health: an ecosystem service perspective,” Science Advances 5, no. 7 (July 2019): eaax0903; Howard Frumkin, Gregory N. Bratman, Sara Jo Breslow, Bobby Cochran, Peter H. Kahn Jr., Joshua J. Lawler, Phillip S. Levin, Pooja S. Tandon, Usha Varanasi, Kathleen L. Wolf, and Spencer A. Wood, “Nature contact and human health: a research agenda,” Environmental Health Perspectives 125, no. 7 (July 2017): 075001-1; and Andrea Faber Taylor & Frances Kuo, “Children with attention defcits concentrate better after walk in the park,” Journal of Attention Disorder 12, no. 5 (March 2009): 402–409. 12 Ming Kuo, Matthew H. E. M. Browning, and Milbert L. Penner, “Do lessons in nature boost subsequent classroom engagement? Refueling students in flight,” Frontiers in Psychology 8, Article 2253 (January 2018); and Naomi Walmsley and Dan Westall, Forest School Adventure: Outdoor Skills and Play for Children (London: GMC Publications, 2018). 2. What is Public Space? 1 Tridib Banerjee, “The future of public space—beyond invented streets and reinvented places,” Journal of the American Planning Association 67, no. 1 (2001): 9–24. 2 Margaret Kohn, Brave New Neighborhoods: The Privatization of Public Space (New York: Routledge, 2004), 1–19. 3 Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958). 4 Setha Low and Neil Smith, The Politics of Public Space (New York and London: Routledge, 2006). 5 Nancy Fraser, “Rethinking the Public Sphere: A Contribution to the Critique of Actually Existing Democracy,” Social Text no. 25–26 (1990): 56–80. 6 Lynn A. Staeheli and Don Mitchell, “Locating the public in research and practice,” Progress in Human Geography 31, no. 6 (December 2007): 792–811. 7 Don Mitchell, The Right to the City: Social Justice and the Fight for Public Space (New York: Guilford Press, 2003), 35.

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8 Leonie Sandercock and Ann Forsyth, “A gender agenda. New directions for planning theory,” Journal of the American Planning Association 58, no. 1 (1992): 49–59. See also Kristen Day, “Feminist approaches to urban design,” in Companion to Urban Design, eds. Tridib Banerjee and Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris (New York: Routledge, 2011), 150–161. 9 Matthew Carmona, “Contemporary public space, part one: critique and classifcation, part one: critique,” Journal of Urban Design 15, no. 1 (2010): 123–148; Matthew Carmona, “Contemporary public space, part two: classifcation,” Journal of Urban Design 15, no. 2 (2010): 157–173. 10 Alexander Cuthbert, “Urban design: requiem for an era–review and critique of the last 50 years,” URBAN DESIGN International 12, no. 4 (December 2007): 177–223. 11 Karen Franck and Quentin Stevens, “Tying down loose space,” in Loose Space: Possibility and Diversity in Urban Life, eds. Karen Franck and Quentin Stevens (London: Routledge, 2007), 1–33. 12 David Sibley, Geographies of Exclusion (London: Routledge, 1995). 13 Karen Malone, “Street life: youth, culture and competing uses of public space,” Environment and Urbanization 14, no. 2 (October 2002): 157–168. 14 See, for example, Edward T. Hall, The Hidden Dimension (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1966); and Amos Rapoport, History and Precedent in Environmental Design (New York: Plenum Press, 1990). 15 Michael Dear and Jennifer Wolch, “How territory shapes social life,” in The Power of Geography: How Territory Shapes Social Life, eds. Jennifer Wolch and Michael Dear (Boston, MA: Unwin Hyman, 1989), 3–18. 16 Ray Oldenburg, The Great Good Place (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1991). 17 Jürgen Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1989). 18 Vikas Mehta, The Street: A Quintessential Social Public Space (London: Routledge, 2013). 19 Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris and Renia Ehrenfeucht, Sidewalks: Conflict and Negotiation Over Public Space (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2011). 3. Paradoxes 1 Ali Madanipour, Public and Private Spaces of the City (London: Routledge, 2003). 2 See, for example, Keith N. Hampton, Oren Livio, and Lauren Sessions Goulet, “The social life of wireless urban spaces: internet use, social networks, and the public realm,” Journal of Communication 60 (December 2010): 701–722. 3 Matthew Carmona, Claudio de Magalhães, and Leo Hammond, Public Space: The Management Dimension (London: Routledge, 2008).

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4 Troy Glover, “Bringing public spaces to life: the animation of public space,” in Companion to Public Space, eds. Vikas Mehta and Danilo Palazzo (London: Routledge, 2020), 414–425. 4. Possibilities 1 Edward Casey, Getting Back into Place: Toward a Renewed Understanding of the Place World (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1993). 2 Christian Norberg-Schulz, Genius Loci: Towards a Phenomenology of Architecture (New York: Rizzoli, 1980); Ray Oldenburg, The Great Good Place: Cafes, Coffee Shops, Bookstores, Bars, Hair Salons and Other Hangouts at the Heart of a Community (New York: Paragon Books, 1989); David Seamon, The Geography of the Lifeworld: Movement, Rest and Encounter (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1979); and Edward Relph, Place and Placelessness (London: Pion, 1976). 3 Steve Harrison and Paul Dourish, “Re-placing space: the roles of place and space in collaborative systems,” in CSCW Proceedings of the 1996 ACM Conference Supported Cooperative World, ed. Mark Ackerman (New York: ACM Press, 1996), 67–76. 4 David Seamon, The Geography of the Lifeworld: Movement, Rest and Encounter (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1979); and Edward Relph, Place and Placelessness (London: Pion, 1976). 5 Michel de Certeau, “Spatial practices: walking in the city,” in The Practice of Everyday Life (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1984), 91–110. 6 Patrick Doreian and Thomas Fararo, The Problem of Solidarity: Theories and Models (Amsterdam: Gordon & Breach, 1998); Noah E. Friedkin, A Structural Theory of Social Influence (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998); and Mark Granovetter, “The strength of weak ties,” American Journal of Sociology 78 (May 1973): 1360–1380. 7 Mark Granovetter, “The strength of weak ties,” American Journal of Sociology 78 (May 1973): 1360–1380. 8 Elijah Anderson, The Cosmopolitan Canopy: Race and Civility in Everyday Life (New York: W. W. Norton and Co., 2011). 9 Ananya Roy, “Urban informality: toward an epistemology of planning,” Journal of the American Planning Association 71, no. 2 (2005): 147–158. 10 Vinit Mukhija and Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris, The Informal American City: Beyond Taco Trucks and Day Labor (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2014). 11 Iris Marion Young, Inclusion and Democracy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000). 12 Stanley Benn and Gerald Gaus, Public and Private in Social Life (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1983). 13 Margaret Kohn, Brave New Neighborhoods: The Privatization of Public Space (New York: Routledge, 2004).

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14 Rianne Van Melik, Irina Van Aalst, and Jan Van Weesep, “Fear and fantasy in the public domain: the development of secured and themed urban space,” Journal of Urban Design 12, no. 1 (2007): 25–41. 15 George Varna and Steve Tiesdell, “Assessing the publicness of public space: the star model of publicness,” Journal of Urban Design 15, no. 4 (2010): 575–598. 16 Jeremy Nemeth and Stephan Schmidt, “The privatization of public space: modeling and measuring publicness,” Environment and Planning B: Planning and Design 38 (February 2011): 5–23. 17 Vikas Mehta, “Evaluating public space,” Journal of Urban Design 19, no. 1 (2014): 53–88. 18 Yiming Wang, Pseudo-Public Spaces in Chinese Shopping Malls: Rise, Publicness and Consequences (London: Routledge, 2019). 5. Propositions 1 The Urban Task Force, “The public realm: a public responsibility,” in Towards an Urban Renaissance (London: Taylor and Francis, 2003), 28–31. 2 Several researchers, practitioners and organizations have developed and refned methods and protocols to study public space. See the work of Jan Gehl, William H. Whyte, Donald Appleyard, Allan Jacobs, Peter Bosselmann, Vikas Mehta, and Project for Public Spaces. 3 Vikas Mehta, “Streets and social life in cities: a taxonomy of sociability,” Urban Design International 24, no. 1 (March 2019): 16–37. 4 Jane Jacobs, The Death and Life of Great American Cities (New York: Vintage Books, 1961); Mark Granovetter, “The strength of weak ties,” American Journal of Sociology 78 (May 1973): 1360–1380; Susan Greenbaum, “Bridging ties at the neighborhood level,” Social Networks 4 (December 1982): 367–384; and Jan Gehl, Life Between Buildings (New York: Van Nostrand-Reinhold, 1987). 5 Jane Jacobs, The Death and Life of Great American Cities (New York: Vintage Books, 1961). 6 Doreen B. Massey, For Space (London: Sage, 2005). 7 Susan Ruddick, “Constructing difference in public spaces: race, class and gender as interlocking systems,” Urban Geography 17, no. 2 (1996): 132–151. 8 Clare Cooper Marcus and Carolyn Francis, People Places: Design Guidelines for Urban Open Space (2nd edition) (New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1998). 9 Ray Bromley, “Street vending and public policy: a global review,” International Journal of Sociology and Social Policy 20, nos. 1/2 (February 2000): 1–28.

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10 Jay Appleton, The Experience of Landscape (New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1975). 11 Derk de Jonge, “Applied hodology,” Landscape 17, no. 2 (1968): 10–11. Derk de Jonge observed that in public spaces the open parts of the space are occupied only after the edges have been fully occupied. This he termed the “edge effect.” It is suggested that if the edge fails, the space is also likely to fail. 12 Vikas Mehta, “Space, time and agency on the Indian street,” in Handbook on Bottom-up Urbanism, eds., Mahyar Aref and Conrad Kickert (London: Palgrave, 2018). 13 Tridib Banerjee, “The future of public space—beyond invented streets and reinvented places,” Journal of the American Planning Association 67, no. 1 (2001): 9–24. 14 In his book Edward T. Hall coined the term proxemics. Edward T. Hall, The Hidden Dimension (New York: Doubleday, 1966). 15 Vikas Mehta, “The new proxemics: COVID-19, social distancing, and sociable space,” Journal of Urban Design 25, no. 6 (2020): 669–674. 16 Julianne Holt-Lunstad, Timothy Smith, Mark Baker, Tyler Harris, and David Stephenson, “Loneliness and social isolation as risk factors for mortality: a meta-analytic review,” Perspective on Psychological Science 10, no. 2 (March 2015): 227–237; Nicholas Leigh-Hunt, David Bagguley, Kristin Bash, Victoria Turner, Stephen Turnbull, Nicole Valtorta, and Woody Caan, “An overview of systematic reviews on the public health consequences of social isolation and loneliness,” Public Health 152 (2017): 157–171. 17 Vikas Mehta, “Public space and COVID-19: contraction, expansion, and adaptation,” Journal of Public Space 5, no. 3 (2021): 15–22.

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Further Reading Alexander, C. (1965). A City is Not a Tree. Architectural Forum, April/May, 58-62. Alexander, C., Ishikawa, S., Silverstein, M., Jacobson, M., Fiksdahl-King, I., and Angel, S. (1977). A Pattern Language: Towns, Buildings, Construction. New York: Oxford University Press. AlSayyad, N., and Roy, A. (eds.) (2004). Urban Informality: Transnational Perspectives from the Middle East, Latin America and South Asia. Lanham: Lexington Books. Altman, I. (1975). The Environment and Social Behavior: Privacy, Personal Space, Territory, Crowding. Monterrey, CA: Brooks/Cole. Altman, I. and Zube, E. (eds.) (1989). Public Places and Spaces. New York: Plenum. Amin, A. (2008). Collective Culture and Urban Public Space. City, 12 (1), 5–24. Amin, A. and Thrift, N. (2002). Cities: Reimagining the Urban. Oxford: Polity. Amster, R. (2004). Street People and the Contested Realms of Public Space. El Paso, TX: LFB Scholarly Publishing LLC. Anderson, E. (1999). Code of the Street: Decency, Violence, and the Moral Life of the Inner City. New York: W. W. Norton. Anderson, E. (2011). The Cosmopolitan Canopy: Race and Civility in Everyday Life. New York: W. W. Norton and Co. Anderson, S. (1978). On Streets. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Andersson, C. (2016). Public Space and the New Urban Agenda. Journal of Public Space, 1 (1), 5–10. Appleyard, D. (1981). Livable Streets. Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press. Arendt, H. (1958). The Human Condition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Atkinson, R. (2003). Domestication by Cappuccino or a Revenge on Urban Space? Control and Empowerment on the Management of Public Spaces. Urban Studies, 40 (9), 1829–1843. Auge, M. (1995). Non-places: An Introduction to an Anthropology of Supermodernity. London: Verso. Avritzer, L. (2002). Democracy and the Public Space in Latin America. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Bacon, E. (1992). Design of Cities. London: Thames & Hudson. Banerjee, T. (2001). The Future of Public Space—Beyond Invented Streets and Reinvented Places. Journal of the American Planning Association, 67 (1), 9–24. Barker, R. (1968). Ecological Psychology. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Bechtel, R. (1997). Environment and Behavior: An Introduction. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. Benjamin, W. (1999). “Arcades” and “The Arcades of Paris.” In The Arcades Project, translated by H. Eiland and K. McLaughlin. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 871–884. Benn, S. and Gaus, G. (1983). Public and Private in Social Life. New York: St. Martin’s Press. Bentley, I., Alcock, A., Murrian, P., McGlynn, S. and Smith, G. (1985). Responsive Environments: A Manual for Designers. London: Architectural Press. Berman, M. (1983). All That is Solid Melts into Air. London: Verso. Berman, M. (1986). Take it to the Streets: Conflict and Community in Public Space. Dissent, 33 (4), 476–85. Bishop, K. and Corkery, L. (eds.) (2017). Designing Cities with Children and Young People: Beyond Playgrounds and Skateparks. New York: Routledge. Bishop, P. and Williams, L. (2012). The Temporary City. London: Routledge.

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Image Credits All sketches, photographs, and images by the author except the following.

p. 17.

The New Plan of Rome by Giambattista Nolli part 5/12 from 1748. Source: Wikimedia Commons, Creative Commons CC-BY-2.0.

p. 63.

Sketch created from photograph of anti-molestation street art by Yelahanka Action Heroes Aishik Saha.

p. 85.

Image created from photograph by Alican Yildiz.

p. 103. Image created from photograph by Ryan Swanson. p. 139. Image created from Umbrella Movement gathering in Admiralty, Hong Kong, December 7, 2014. Photograph by Gary Chan. Source: Wikimedia Commons, Creative Commons CC-BY-2.0. p. 195. Image created from photograph by Nadir Ali. Photo Copyright: Michigan Urban Farming Initiative, Detroit, MI. p. 199. Image created from photograph by Gargi Kadoo. p. 205. Image created from photograph by Enid Gomez.

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Index access 11, 17, 29, 31, 45, 48, 59, 63, 65, 68–9, 71, 79, 83, 88, 101, 103, 105, 119, 133, 147, 151, 164–6, 171, 181, 186, 197, 201, 208, 213–4, 216–7 accessible 39–40, 53, 58, 103, 111, 113, 117, 142, 161, 181, 214–6 accessibility 68–9, 166–7 activity (activities) 10–1, 17, 23, 33, 37, 41, 45, 47, 49, 67, 70, 83, 85, 87, 99, 103, 106, 115, 117, 121, 124, 127, 139, 143, 151, 153–4, 161, 167–9, 174, 178, 186, 188–9, 191–2, 199, 202, 207, 211 economic 11, 153 pay-to-play 117 physical 17, 186, 211 adaptability 178, 207 adaptable 76, 178, 199 adaptation 158, 219 Adbusters 124 adjacencies 67, 183 aesthetic 19, 21, 49, 51, 92, 107, 155, 166 aestheticizing 129 affordances 30, 76-7, 202 Africa 168 age 20, 27, 63, 81, 103, 189 agency 5, 10, 17, 27, 63, 69, 119, 121, 137, 164–7, 172, 197, 199, 207, 219 agora 41, 96, 103, 159 air conditioning 73 alley(s) 4, 10, 21, 67 ambiance 81, 88, 158, 193 ambiguity(ies) 11, 107, 151, 178, 207 ambiguous 31, 107, 139, 217 Anderson, Elijah 153 anonymity 70, 80–1, 125 appropriation 15, 53, 60, 92, 107, 111, 124, 147 Arab Spring 141 arcades 67, 87, 203 architectural-scale 167 arena 16 Arendt, Hannah 47 Aristotle 159 art 64, 129, 133, 155, 158, 166, 178 articulated 40, 59, 204 articulating 204 artifact 60, 202 artifacts 23, 27, 199, 202 assemblage 101, 139 assembly 41, 47, 97, 214 Asia 7, 41, 71, 168, 208 Australia 3, 7 Sydney Opera House 3 Bangalore (see: India) Barcelona 4 Plaça De Catalunya 4 beach(es) 121, 204 beautifcation 155 behavior(s) 23, 31, 34, 37, 45, 53, 63, 70, 76–7, 80, 87–8, 93, 103, 115, 121–3, 127, 131, 151, 153, 158–9, 168–9, 182, 184, 188–9, 192–3, 202 social 31, 37, 93, 153, 192, 202 travel 34

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Beirut 4 Martyrs' Square 4 belonging 20, 35, 75, 81, 121, 125, 214 bench(es) 202, 204 Benn, Stanley 68, 166 biking (see: cycling) biodiversity 179 Black Lives Matter 141 block(s) 142, 190, 193 block party 129 Bogota 71 bottom-up 4, 97, 105, 117, 174, 201, 207 bottom-up actions 4, 97 bottom-up initiatives 105 bottom-up processes 105, 174 boundaries 40, 81, 107, 208 public-private 208 bourgeois 47, 71, 92 breweries 77 Buenos Aires 71 Burgers, Jack 72 business districts 99, 119 Business Improvement District (BID) 45 café culture 77 cafes 77, 79, 167 Cairo 4 Tahrir Square 4 campuses 213 Canada 7 canopy (canopies) 203 capital 3, 20, 51, 61, 81, 97, 101, 114, 129, 141, 193, 197, 208, 219 Caracas 4 Las Mercedes Avenue 4 carbon footprint 197 Carmona, Matthew 72 Carr, Stephen 68 carriageway 117 caste 103 Cattell, Vicky 72 Caucasians 103 celebration(s) (celebrating) 11, 17, 33, 121, 129, 155, 168, 178, 191, 195 cemeteries 136 center(s) 3, 67, 71, 83, 97, 162, 195, 211 ceremonial 49, 72 ceremonial civic space 49 ceremonies 10, 15, 41 ceremonious 190 CHAZ (see: Seattle - Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone) Chennai (see: India) child 29, 199 children 4, 10, 48, 61, 96, 103, 105, 119, 149, 181, 199, 202 children’s 37, 91, 149, 154, 199 child’s play 149 CHOP (see: Seattle - Capitol Hill Organized Protest) Cincinnati 103 citizen 142 citizenry 48, 209 citizens 47, 65, 96–7, 99, 105, 141, 209 citizenship 4, 11, 16, 39, 97, 173 city 3–7, 9–11, 17–8, 20, 23, 29, 31, 33–4, 40–1, 45, 48–9, 61, 63–4, 67,

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71, 76–7, 80–1, 83, 85, 92–3, 97, 99, 101, 103, 105, 107, 113, 117, 121, 131–4, 136, 139, 142, 149, 153–4, 158–9, 161, 163, 165–9, 172–4, 179, 184, 186, 188, 190–1, 195, 197, 201–3, 207, 209, 211, 214–8 branding 3 building 97, 105, 129, 174, 208 center(s) 3, 67, 71 design 48, 186 dwellers 192 global 9 heterogeneous 20, 107 Indian 77, 207 market 81 medieval 203 modern 199 neighborhoods 4, 97 park(s) 4 planning 48, 163 postindustrial 67 revitalized 93 walkable 173 civic 5, 31, 39–41, 49, 51, 72, 81, 83, 99, 132, 137, 141–2, 151, 168, 173, 193, 197, 209, 214 civic engagement 41, 214 civic solidarity 31, 81, 141, 173 civil rights 4, 97, 173 civil society 41, 47–8, 97 class 18, 20, 23, 47, 63, 71, 77, 103, 119, 141, 143–4, 159 middle- 20, 61, 63, 99, 103 upper-middle 103 working 18, 47 classifcations 67, 72 climate change 158, 171–2, 197, 215 climate-controlled spaces 88 climate crisis 7, 11, 34 coffeeshops 30, 79, 142 cohesion 7, 11, 16, 20, 22, 40, 51, 142, 173, 214 cohesive 11, 142, 199, 218 collective 11, 15–6, 39, 41, 49, 51, 58, 75, 80, 93, 131–3, 136–7, 141, 186, 192–3 collectively 11, 45, 51, 83, 87, 172, 218 colonnades 203 commodifcation 4 commons 7, 51, 91, 111, 113, 137, 163, 213 communal 41, 141, 155, 193 communality 80 commune 79–80, 138 communication 5, 31, 47, 76, 83, 88, 93, 122–3, 127, 147, 153, 158–9, 215 communitarian 105 communities 4–5, 10, 15, 41, 93, 97, 105, 125, 154, 168, 174, 216 community 4, 11, 34, 37, 41, 48, 57, 59, 72, 75, 79, 81, 91, 93, 99, 105, 121, 124, 127, 129, 132, 137, 141, 143, 149, 155, 159, 169, 173, 192–3, 208, 211, 213, 216 community centers 79, 211 community garden(s) 129, 173, 211 community identities 173 community initiatives 216 community-managed 208 complex 9, 45, 92, 136, 142, 185, 207 complexities 7, 71

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complexity 85, 183, 185, 207, concerts 4 conflicts 22, 40, 76, 207 contacts 124, 143, 173, 192, 197 low-intensity 173, 192 contestation 47, 85, 131, 155 contested 97, 107 contesting 79 control(s) 48, 53, 59, 69, 73, 76, 79, 101, 106, 113, 137, 151, 159, 167–8, 172, 195, 207 controlled 73, 99, 119 convivial 79 conviviality 48, 85, 131, 141 convivializing 129 Copenhagen 77 co-produce 154 co-production 129 corner store 21 “cosmopolitan canopy” 153 Costa Rica 99 creativity 16, 39, 92, 149, 174 Cruz, Sara Santos 69 cul-de-sacs 219 culinizing 129 cultural expression 132, 165, 215 cultural heritage 216 cultural identities 10, 15–6, 173 cultural norms 30, 44, 133, 217 cyberspace 124, 159 cycling 37, 127, 213, 215–6, 219 lanes 215 daily life 11, 19, 133, 157, 168 Dear, Michael 77 decision-making 47, 158 Delhi (see: New Delhi) democracy 45, 47–8, 96, 111, 141, 166 democratic 41, 68, 92, 96, 124, 151, 168, 187 demonstrations 20, 88, 123, 132, 137, 168, 195 depression 17, 19, 37 dialogic 145 dialogue 5, 51, 85, 131, 147, 151, 215 difference 20, 29, 31, 41, 57, 68–9, 76, 80–1, 115, 119, 132–3, 144–5, 151, 154, 165–6, 169, 172, 174, 178, 183, 193, 195 differences 27, 40, 161, 174, 195 different 5–6, 10–1, 19–21, 23, 27, 30, 35, 40–1, 57, 61, 63, 67, 70–1, 76, 80–1, 101, 103, 107, 111, 115, 119, 123, 125, 127, 129, 136, 142, 151, 154, 158–9, 161, 169, 179, 181, 188–9, 192–3, 195, 199, 209 differentiated 142–3 differentiation 53, 195 differently 7, 41, 48, 63, 80, 168 differing 143 Dines, Nick 72 disorder 123, 183, dissent 20, 91, 123, 141 disparities 71, 115, 132, 145, 171 display 16, 31, 49, 59, 61, 85, 97, 114, 131, 138, 158–9, 192, 208, 211 displayed 20, 72, 96, 168 diverse 4, 6, 10–1, 16, 20, 23, 34, 48, 76, 80–1, 111, 127, 132, 143, 153–4, 165, 169, 179, 181, 186, 195, 199, 207–8 diversity 4, 23, 67–8, 76, 80–1, 92, 97, 107, 142, 154, 179, 215–6

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DIY 105, 174 dogmatic 53, 92, 107, 154 domestic realm 63–4 downtown(s) 3–4, 67, 119, 195, 209 drinking 17, 45, 61, 77, 121, 133, 153, 161 driving 151, 179 drought 215 drug dealers 169 Dubai 71 Burj Khalifa 3 dynamic 77, 92, 107, 132 East 41, 71, 79, 168 Eastern 41, 168 e-commerce 73 ecosystem 218 ecosystems 179, 218 Ecuador 214 e-economy 197 e-entertainment 197 egalitarian 18 Einstein, Albert 122 elderly 29, 101, 105–7, 181 emancipation 4, 7, 39, 111, 159, 171 empower(s) 214, 197 empowered 159 empowering 31 empowerment 57, 111, 159 enclose 113 enclosure 87–8, 203 encounter(s) 9, 10, 31, 33, 49, 51, 60, 63, 67, 79–80, 85, 138, 142, 169, 179, 186 encountering 20, 162 environmental resilience 16, 197, 215 ethnicity 20, 81, 103, 119 Euclidean zoning 199 evaluate 68, 166–7 evaluating 51, 166 evaluation 167 evaluative 167 Europe 3, 7, 168 events 4, 10, 15, 34, 41, 48, 70, 73, 79, 124, 129, 136, 154, 167, 172, 188–9, 201, 218–9 impromptu 129 eventifying 129 eventization 174 eviction(s) 4 exchange(s) 9, 10, 23, 39, 40, 49, 51, 59, 72, 81, 83, 85, 87, 88, 111, 124, 131, 138, 141, 142, 147, 154, 164, 165, 166, 192, 209, 213, excludable 51 exclude 45, 53, 208 excluded 51 excludes 64 exclusion 96, 100 exclusionary 18, 20, 96, 137 exclusions 47 exclusive 49, 51, 61, 81, 119 exclusively 166 expand (s) 30, 31, 85, 87–8, 92, 131, 137, 147, 155, 209 expanded 17, 211, 219 expanding 124

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expands expanse 34, 88 expansion 91, 97, 163, 219 expansive 9, 21, 91, 149, 204, 213 expansiveness 155 experience 6, 16, 21, 23, 29, 31, 35, 49, 61, 63, 67, 77, 80, 87, 124, 131–2, 136, 143, 162–3, 166, 169, 182, 186, 188, 195, 211 experienced 11, 63–4, 141, 157 experiences 7, 10, 20, 23, 35, 37, 60, 63, 93, 131, 133, 154, 209 experiencing 23, 30, 61, 142, 186 experiential 10, 166 express 11, 16, 61, 138, 195, 209 expressed 76, 169 expressing 121 expression 10, 19, 31, 70, 77, 97, 107, 123, 131–3, 165, 169, 215 expressions 92, 214 eyes on the street 33, 201–2 face-to-face interactions 143, 169 familiarity 80, 122, 131, 189 families 4, 10, 61, 103, 105, 149, 213–4, 219 family 33, 41, 63, 80, 168, 178, 208, 211 feminist 63 festivalizing 129 festivals 4, 15, 129, 154, 168 festas 162 flows 16, 29, 49, 83, 147, 186 Floyd, George 20, 173 flux 31, 91 food 4, 11, 20, 27, 39, 45, 77, 129, 161, 171, 173, 197, 201, 213, 215 carts 77, 129 fairs 4 healthy 171, 173, 197, 213 inequity 11 producing 197 production 197 security 197, 215 forests 218 formal and informal economies 16 forms 31, 37, 67, 75, 85, 88, 91, 101, 105, 127, 165, 174, 199, 207, 209, 214 Francis, Mark 68 Fraser, Nancy 40, 47 free market 208 free speech 47, 101 fresh air 11, 17, 37, 48 friction 154, 172, 183 friends 33, 61, 79–80, 193, 211 furniture 129, 161, 178 future 11, 136, 158, 167, 171–2, 209, 219 futures 39 garden(s) 81, 87, 129, 136, 173, 211, 213, 215 medicinal 213 gates 45 gathering 15, 17, 21, 48, 73, 91, 103, 121, 141, 158–9, 178, 193, 219 gatherings 47 Gaus, Gerald 68, 166 Gehl, Jan 77, 191 Gemeinschaft 137 gender 4, 41, 63, 119, 171, 173, 189, 214

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inequities 4, 173 genius loci 40 gentrifcation 216 geographer(s) 5, 48, 87 Gesellschaft 137 Gezi Park (see: Istanbul) global capital 101, 208 Global North 3, 71, 117, 165, 174 global recession 172 Global South 30, 64, 71, 117, 165, 173, 208 global warming 34 graffti 39, 129 green space(s) 71, 213 greenways 67 group expression 70, 107, 131–2 group-expression 31 groups 9–11, 16, 20, 23, 27, 40, 48, 60, 67, 76, 80–1, 92–3, 97, 101, 105–7, 111, 125, 127, 131–2, 136, 139, 142–3, 145, 151, 154, 161, 165–6, 169, 174, 179, 181, 186, 189, 193, 195, 199, 202–3, 207, 209 group’s 119, 121 Guggenheim Museum (see: United States - New York) Gulick, John 72 Habermas, Jürgen 47 Habitat III 214 hawkers 201 healing 7, 49, 171, 213 health 11, 16–7, 37, 49, 51, 71, 171, 173, 197, 213, 215–6 benefts 11, 51, 197 cardiac 37 mental 11, 37, 215 public 11, 17, 51, 171, 173, 213 healthcare 141, 171 hike 21 home(s) 10–1, 17, 19–21, 31, 35, 67, 79–81, 136, 149, 158, 168, 188 homeless 61, 181 homogeneity 151 homogeneous 114, 172 homogenization 100 homogenized 20, 101, 151 horticulture 197 hospitable 203 humane 4, 97, 186 humanity 39, 122, 192 humanize 204 humanizing 192 human-scaled 142, 186, 203 hybrid 164, 208 hydrological 218 hyper-connected 77 hyper-programmed 174 iconic 3–4, 136, 169 identity (identities) 4, 10–1, 15–6, 27, 41, 47, 49, 70, 75, 80–1, 87, 93, 97, 100, 103, 106–7, 111, 119, 132, 159, 173, 195, 209 ideological 7 ideologies 53, 101, 201 idiosyncratic 184 image 3–4, 48–9, 101, 199, 222 image-building 3

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immigrant(s) 77, 105, 125, 139 inclusion 20, 68–9, 154, 165–6, 214–5 inclusive 40, 58, 147, 197, 214–6 inclusiveness 4, 68–9, 97, 167 India 3, 7, 41, 71, 103, 207 Bangalore 71 Chennai 71 Indian cities 77, 207 Indian public space 207 Indian towns 162 Mumbai 71 Taj Mahal 3 Indian 77, 162, 207 inequalities 47 inequality 171 inequitable 18 inequity 4, 11, 97, 144, 161, 173 informal 16, 31, 49, 71, 132–3, 142–3, 165, 169, 173–4, 190, 215–6 informal civility 133, 142–3, 169 informal economy (economies) 16, 173–4 informality 132, 164–5 infrastructure(s) 9, 29, 34, 49, 67, 85, 136, 147, 165, 208 injustice(s) 4, 7, 20, 71, 97, 132, 141, 171, 173 spatial 4, 97, 173 innovating 129 innovation 9, 92 innovative 5, 34, 99, 105 insideness 88 inside-outside 168 institutions 9–10, 47, 51, 61, 207, 213 insurgency 207 interactions 5, 10, 17, 20–1, 23, 33, 37, 49, 57, 59, 73, 80, 92, 99, 123, 131, 137, 142–3, 147, 153–4, 165, 169, 191–3, 199, 207, 209, 211, 214–6 active 21, 37 intergenerational 214, 216 passive 57 social 5, 10, 17, 49, 99, 143, 147, 192, 211, 215 intercommunication 16 interconnectivity 16 intergenerational 214, 216 internet 124 intersubjective 70 intersubjectivity 40, 51, 68, 92–3, 143, 165–6, 197, 209 intimacy 80–1, 87–8, 137 intimate 37, 80, 83, 132, 190 investment 71, 91, 97, 103, 139, 158, 213 investors 3, 103 Istanbul 4, 71 Gezi Park 4 Iveson, Kurt 72 Jacobs, Jane 188 joy(s) 21, 22, 40, 83, 92, 149, 154, just city 67 justice 16, 64, 69, 179 Kingwell, Mark 39, 118 Kohn, Margaret 40, 68, 166 Kostof, Spiro 191

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landscape 92, 101, 107, 119, 136, 147, 166, 178, 190, 209, 217–8 landscape architect(s) 3, 5, 48, 178, 190 landscapes 27, 34–5, 147, 158, 173, 215 natural 34 land use(s) 199, 201 Langstraat, Florian 68 Larsen, Libby 122 Las Mercedes Avenue (see: Caracas) laws 53, 103, 162–3 Jim Crow 103 Laws Of The Indies Revisited, The 163 learn(ing/s) 6, 16, 23, 30, 33, 37, 133, 138, 143, 149, 167, 172, 193, 195, 207 leisure 16, 61, 85, 131, 153, 166, 192, 209 LGBTQIA+ 125 libraries 30, 87–8, 154, 188 lifestyle 27, 37, 92, 107, 161 active 37 life-threatening diseases 17 light 35, 83, 157, 203 lighting 64, 99, 158 liminal (public) spaces 131, 139 livability 197 local 4, 10–1, 41, 71, 81, 97, 101, 105, 132, 137, 142, 154, 168–9, 173, 189, 193, 197, 201, 207, 209, 213, 216, 219 locales 35, 41, 188 localism 201 Loh, Sandra Tsing 99 loiter 138 loitering 64, 167 loneliness 37 looseness 76, 178 Lopes, Miguel 69 Low, Setha 69 low-intensity 173, 192 ludic 31 lungs of the city 17 macro 179 management 33, 45, 51, 53, 67–9, 77, 97, 99, 127, 133, 149, 166–7, 178, 199, 208 Mantey, Dorota 68 marginal 61, 92, 97, 121, 136, 139, 159, 197 marginalized 67, 72, 107, 139, 159 groups 67, 107, 139 market(s) 10, 35, 41, 44, 51, 60, 67, 73, 81, 87, 91–3, 101, 103, 105, 132, 137, 154, 159, 168, 172, 208–9, 213, 216 Martyrs' Square (see: Beirut) mass consumption 99 meaningfulness 69, 87 meanings 15, 23, 31, 39, 47, 67, 75, 92, 106, 129, 136, 142 media 30, 47, 73, 93, 124, 143, 159 meditation 141 meetings 9, 80 megacities 9 megapolis 9 megaregions 9 Mehta, Vikas 69, 72, 167 memorials 67 memories 10, 15, 131, 136

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meso 179 Me Too 141 metropolis 179 Mexico 71 Mexico City 4, 71 Plaza de la República 4 microblogs 159 micro-ecologies 179 micro-politics 92 Middle East 41, 71 minorities 71, 97, 101, 103, 107, 119, 125, 181 Mitchell, William J. 159 mix of uses 33, 174 mobility 16, 153, 186 monocultural places 201 monotony 19, 48 monumental 157 monuments 97, 178 morphology 83 mountains 204 mourn(ing) 11, 17, 61 movement 15, 19, 49, 85, 105, 113, 124, 141, 178 movements 79, 141 multidimensional 166 multidisciplinary 6 multifarious 209 multifunctional 215 multi-layered 132 multipronged 34 multi-public 72 multipurpose 215 multi-use 199 Mumbai (see: India) Mumford, Lewis 9 Mundigo, Axel 163 municipalities 158, 197, 213 municipal authorities 207, 219 murals 129 museums 87, 154 music 73, 168, 219 musician(s) 48, 143, 153 Muslim 119 mutual aid 5, 11, 17, 34, 132, 173 napping 121 narrative(s) 15, 105, 137, 141–2, 174 natural disasters 34 naturalizing 129 nature 5, 85, 97, 129, 131 negotiable 85 negotiate 31, 88, 149, 166, 174, 193, 195 negotiated 96, 169, 207 negotiating 159 negotiation(s) 41, 59, 60, 85, 93, 207, 217 neighborhood(s) 4, 10–1, 17, 40–1, 45, 49, 61, 67, 71, 73, 80–1, 97, 99, 103, 125, 129, 132–3, 136–7, 153–4, 172, 179, 190, 193, 195, 197, 201, 207, 211, 219 African American 103 business districts 99 center city 4, 97 park 67

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residential street 10 square 81 streets 132, 137, 219 water source 73 residential 201 neighbors 79–80, 154, 211 Nemeth, Jeremy 69, 167 neoliberal 51, 97, 107, 129, 208 network(s) 9–11, 16, 29, 34, 81, 83, 85, 87–8, 132, 143, 147, 159, 172, 179, 186, 193, 215–6, 218 New Delhi (see: India) New York (see: United States) non-proft(s) 45, 208, 209 non-Western contexts 208 world 41 norm(s) 19–20, 30, 44, 53, 63, 77, 81, 87, 92, 99, 105, 131, 133, 154, 159, 165, 217 normative 7 North America 3, 117 obesity 17 observations 6, 166, 188–9, 219 observers 141, 193 observing 92, 188–9 occupancy 109, 111, 142, 151, 153, 203, 207, 219 occupiable 204 occupied 96, 103, 107, 109, 149, 204 occupy 10, 31, 40, 61, 103, 106, 111, 113, 122, 124, 138, 141, 153, 157, 161, 204, 207 occupying 109, 121, 142 Occupy Wall Street 113, 124 Oldenburg, Ray 79 open-ended 20, 31, 53, 133, 149, 166, 178, 195, 199, 219 open-endedness 30, 133, 171, 172, 178, 183 open space(s) 17, 30, 71, 73 public 71, 83, 88, 153 oppression 39, 64, 159 outdoors 11, 17, 37, 48–9, 73, 87–8, 186, 203 outlook 20, 101, 105, 119, 154 over-maintained 189 over-management 127, 139 ownership 45, 59, 68–9, 80, 117, 149, 158, 166–7, 197, 208–9, 214 pan-cultural 7, 83 pandemic 5, 7, 11, 17, 161, 172–3, 211, 219 panhandle 61 panhandlers 153 panhandling 153 panoptic 88, 91, 159 paradigms 92, 107 paradox(es) 6–7, 90-3, 96, 106, 122 paradoxically 92–3, 111, 113, 123 paranoia 106 Paris 4 Eiffel Tower 3 Place de la Republique 4 park(s) 4, 10, 15, 17, 21, 30, 34, 41, 45, 51, 59, 67, 70, 80–1, 88, 91, 99, 101, 103, 113, 117, 121, 136, 154, 157, 173, 178, 188, 193, 201, 204, 208, 211, 213, 215, 218–9 neighborhood 67, 154, 211

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parking 45, 71, 117, 161, 219 parklets 117, 161 parkour 39, 129 parochial 10, 49, 60, 80–1, 93, 122, 125, 137, 143, 172, 195 bubbles 93, 122 groups 81 realm(s) 10, 80, 143 participation 20, 40, 47, 96, 99, 124, 159, 214 participatory 214–6 party 21, 129 passive 10–1, 17, 20–1, 37, 49, 57, 64, 70, 99, 142, 173, 188, 192–3 play 10 pastime 143 patriarchal 87 patterns 11, 19, 34, 133, 165, 178, 203 pedestrians 85, 117, 142, 219 pedestrian space 85 people of color 103, 141 perceptible 27, 157, 166 perception 53, 87, 178 perceptions 166–7, 189 performance 85, 129, 131, 153, 158, 166–7 of public space(s) 158, 167 performative 6, 70 Phadke, Shilpa 65 phenomenological 48, 131 Pinho, Paulo 69 Plaça de Catalunya (see: Barcelona) Place de la Republique (see: Paris) places 4–5, 7, 9, 17, 23, 33–5, 37, 47–8, 59, 61, 72, 75, 77, 79, 81, 85, 97, 99, 103, 105, 125, 132–3, 136–7, 142, 151, 154, 159, 161, 186, 188–9, 192–3, 195, 199, 201–3, 209, 219 planetary 7 play 4–5, 10, 16–7, 31, 33, 48, 88, 92, 127, 129, 132, 138, 149, 154, 165, 172, 174, 189, 192, 202, 209, 211, 219 active 10, 127 areas 154, 211 child’s 149 equipment 149 passive 10 spaces 149 plaza(s) 15, 51, 67, 70, 81, 101, 113, 162–3, 178, 188, 201 Plaza de la República (see: Mexico - Mexico City) pleasurability 69, 167 pleasurable 224 pleasure(s) 21, 195 pluralistic 214 police 59, 207 polis 159 political 4–7, 11, 29–30, 35, 39–41, 44–5, 47–9, 60, 70, 72–3, 88, 91–3, 99, 107, 113, 118, 123, 132–3, 141–2, 153–4, 165–6, 168–9, 171–3, 179, 192, 197, 207, 209, 211, 214, 216 political action 40, 47, 88, 93, 192 political awareness 132, 165 political places 99 political protest 49 politicians 207 politics 47, 137, 155, 166 pollution 39 POPS 113 pop-up 4, 105, 174

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porch(es) 73, 211 portals 162 porticoes 162 praying 41, 168 preaching 168 privacy 80, 88, 109, 121, 158 private property 29, 85 private realm(s) 21, 35, 80, 87, 131, 133, 208–9 private sector 49, 51, 91, 208 private space(s) 9–10, 18, 30, 37, 40, 59, 79, 87, 113, 136, 153, 161, 169 safe 169 private territories 57 privatization 100, 213 protest 20, 33, 47, 49, 59, 61, 70, 91, 123, 132, 137–8, 141, 165, 173, 178, 191 proxemics 211 pseudo-public spaces 208–9 psychological 10–1, 15, 17, 21, 30, 35, 37, 88, 132, 142, 203–4 psychologically 88, 186 psychosocial 37 public art 155, 178 public behavior 158–9 public culture 77 public domain 39, 47 public land 117, 157 public life 7, 9–10, 17, 23, 30, 33, 40, 67, 75, 79, 87–8, 91, 97, 105, 107, 125, 132, 136–7, 154, 165–6, 178, 188, 208–9, 211, 219 publicness 17, 40–1, 60, 68, 76, 85, 111, 113, 124, 127, 133, 147, 151, 153, 161, 165–7, 207, 209, 211, 213 public ownership 59 public place(s) 47, 159 public-private partnerships 51, 53, 114 public realm 9, 39–40, 47, 80, 87, 124, 157 public sector 51, 208 public space(s) 3–7, 9–12, 15–23, 27, 29–31, 33–42, 44–5, 47–51, 53, 55, 57, 59–65, 67–8, 70–3, 75–7, 79–81, 83, 85, 87–8, 91–3, 96–7, 99, 101–3, 105–7, 109–11, 113–5, 117–9, 121–7, 129, 131–4, 136–7, 139, 141–5, 147, 149–51, 153–5, 157–9, 161, 164–9, 171–4, 176, 178–9, 181–90, 192–5, 197, 199, 201–4, 207–9, 211, 213–20 Indian 207 network of 10, 29, 34, 83, 87, 147, 172, 179, 193, 218 occupancy of 109, 111, 153, 219 privately-operated 99 privately-owned 99 publicly-owned 209 resurgence of 4, 97 right to 97, 207, 213 public sphere 18, 39–40, 47, 51, 57, 59, 70, 72, 79, 91, 93, 97, 107, 124, 155, 159, 168 qualitative 166 quasi-public spaces 9, 79, 107, 153, 219 Quito Declaration 214 race 20, 63, 71, 103, 119, 189 racial inequities 4, 97, 173 racism 20, 171, 173 recreation 5, 11, 17, 19, 33, 37, 61, 99, 131–2, 153, 158, 163, 165–6, 173, 192 passive 11, 17, 173

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region 4, 9, 11, 76, 80–1, 97, 169, 172, 179, 197, 217 regulations 77, 88, 101, 103, 107, 113, 151, 178, 193, 207 relational 27, 49, 83, 132 relaxation 192, 209 religion 41, 103, 163 represent(s) 11, 19, 27, 41, 77, 101, 105, 119, 141, 161, 168, 195 representation(s) 5, 40, 49, 87, 113, 137, 141, 155, 168, 184, 186 representational 7, 60, 74 re-purposed 117 repurposing 172, 219 residents 3–4, 10, 17, 48, 61, 67, 71, 93, 97, 101, 103, 105, 119, 149, 186, 189, 201, 207, 219 resilience 16, 49, 172, 197, 215 resilient 11, 67, 218 resistance 64 responsive 34, 68, 158, 178, 195, 199, 213, 218 restaurants 27, 30, 79 resting 121, 168 restoration 7, 171 restorative 40, 49, 72, 213, 218 restorativeness 141 restrict 63, 119 restricting 87, 103 restriction(s) 31, 76, 97, 99, 103, 113, 211 resurgence 4, 97, 124 revitalization (revitalize) 3–4, 93, 97, 100 rhythmic 137 rhythms 15, 19 right to public space 97, 201, 207, 213 right to space 15 right to the city 18, 64, 92, 103, 142, 187 risk(s) 17, 133, 169, 172, 182 rituals 15 Rivlin, Leanne 68 roadway 117 Robinson, Charles Mulford 83 Rogers, Richard 157 Ruddick, Susan 40 safe places 17 safe space 101 safety 63–4, 69, 93, 106, 167, 188, 214, 216 nighttime 188 scale(s) 21, 34, 39, 47, 67, 132–3, 136–7, 158, 172, 191, 193, 197, 201, 208, 216 Schmidt, Stephan 69, 167 sea 34–5, 77, 162 Seattle Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone 141 Capitol Hill Organized Protest 141 securescape 106 securitization 169 security 75, 88, 122, 197, 215–6 segregation 11, 216 seniors 10, 193 sensorial 21, 49 sensory 27, 35, 37, 73, 85, 166, 192, 201, 204 serendipitous 33, 80, 186 settlement(s) 7, 71, 83, 214–6, 218 informal 71, 215–6 sexual harassment 63–4, 169, 216

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sexuality 103 sexual orientation 20, 81 sexual violence 169 shade 203 Shanghai 71 shelter 34, 88, 203 sheltered spaces 203 shopping 20, 30, 33, 49, 59, 61, 153 shops 27, 30, 79, 163, 208 sidewalk 29, 70, 85, 117, 161–2, 167, 186, 188, 201, 208, 211, 215, 219 signage 27 Simmel, Georg 211 Simone, Nina 99 sit-ins 123 sittable 202 sitting 117, 204 skateboarding (skateboarders) 21, 39, 81, 127 sketches 189 slaves 96, 103 sleeping 121, 141, 168 slum(s) 37, 80, 215–6 SMS 159 soccer 35 sociability 17, 40, 45, 49, 79–80, 166, 174, 188, 192–3, 211, 219 passive 17, 192–3 sociable 188, 211 social actions 137, 192 social capital 51, 61, 81, 193, 197 social cohesion 7, 11, 16, 20, 40, 51, 142, 173, 214 social contact 10–1, 17, 173, 209 social distancing 211 social identities 209 social inclusion 215 social injustice(s) 7, 132, 141, 171, 173 social isolation 17, 211 socialization 161 socialize 20, 33, 70, 129, 138, 193 socializing 37, 49, 121, 129, 153 social life 9, 23, 85, 161, 192–3 social media 93, 124, 143, 159 social needs 61, 153 social norms 63, 87 social order 31, 142, 193 social practices 147, 195 social relationships 48, 136, 193 social space(s) 10, 23, 49, 87, 99, 209, 211 social structures 155, 165, 168 society (societies) 4, 10–1, 20, 27, 41, 47–8, 51, 61, 63–4, 73, 87, 91, 97, 103, 115, 123, 125, 132, 137, 142, 151, 159, 168–9, 171, 173, 181, 184, 186, 193, 195, 208–9, 211, 214–5 Eastern 41, 168 heterogeneous 173, 209 totalitarian 159 Western 64 socio-psychological 17, 37, 211 socio-spatial 31, 48 solar energy 158 solidarity 20, 31, 40–1, 47, 49, 75, 81, 123, 132, 137, 141, 155, 173, 184, 192 solitude 192 South America 71, 168

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spaces 3–5, 7, 9–10, 17–8, 20, 23, 27, 29–31, 33–4, 37, 41, 45, 47–9, 51, 53, 61, 63–4, 67, 71–3, 75–6, 79–81, 85, 87–8, 92–3, 97, 99, 101, 103, 105, 107, 111, 113–5, 117, 119, 121, 124–5, 127, 129, 131–3, 136–7, 139, 141–3, 147, 149, 153–4, 158, 161, 166–7, 169, 172–4, 178–9, 181, 186–8, 190, 193, 195, 199, 201–4, 207–9, 211, 213–9 incidental 139 sports 10, 30, 37, 61, 129, 149, 154, 208 sprawl 71, 216 squares 15, 17, 39, 67, 70, 91, 101, 173, 178, 209, 215, 218 Staeheli, Lynn 59 stalking 63 standing 77, 199 Starbucks 77, 99 starchitects 3 state 40, 45, 47–9, 51, 53, 79, 88, 91, 93, 96–7, 101, 105, 123, 127, 158–9, 168, 201, 207–8, 213, 219 panoptic 91 stealing 117 steps 204, 216 Stimulating 129 stimulation 39, 85, 111, 118, 193 stimuli 73, 204 stimulus 31 Stone, Andrew 68 strangers 31, 33, 59, 63, 70, 79–81, 87, 93, 122, 125, 143, 169, 192, 201, 211 streateries 161 street(s) 4, 10, 15, 17, 20–1, 27, 29–30, 33–4, 41, 49, 59, 61, 64, 67, 70, 73, 81, 83, 85, 88, 91, 97, 99, 101, 103, 109, 113, 117, 123–4, 129, 132, 136–7, 141–2, 153–4, 157, 161–2, 173, 186, 188, 193, 201–2, 208–9, 211, 215–6, 218–9 commercial 4, 20, 101, 154, 208 downtown 209 Main Street(s) 21, 49, 81, 99, 136 neighborhood 132, 137, 219 residential 10, 209, 211 stress 11, 19, 37 stroll 21 stroller 29 suburban 117 suburbanites 92, 97, 99 surveillance 33, 39, 59, 65, 91, 93, 158–9, 167 sustainability 131 sustainable 173, 186, 214, 216 symbiotic 165, 207 symbol(s) (symbolic) 3, 4, 11, 40, 42, 47, 49, 59, 61, 72, 75, 97, 113, 141, 166, 209, 211 symbolism 40 tactical 105, 172, 174 tactically 71 tactile 88 Taipei 71 Taj Mahal (see: India) talking 121, 189 taxonomies 67 taxonomy 80, 87, 192 technology (technologies) 29, 39, 91, 93, 122, 124, 158–9, 166, 215 teenagers 10, 119, 149 temporal 41, 63, 88, 165, 181

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temporally 30 temporarily 31, 109, 141 temporary 105, 111, 129, 174, 197, 201 territorial 213 territorialized 18 territory(ies) 6, 10, 30, 39, 57, 73, 85, 87–8, 97, 119, 131, 161, 169, 172–3, 186, 195, 203, 219 terrorist attacks 91 thresholds 88, 169, 195 Tiesdell, Steve 69, 72, 167 Tokyo 71 tolerance 68, 166, 207 top-down 105, 117, 129, 174 top-down processes 105, 117, 174 totalitarian 159 touching 63, 85 touchpoints 172, 201 tourism 103 town(s) 3–4, 162–3 Indian 162 traffc 30, 123, 204 trails 17, 51, 67, 70, 99, 173, 219 train stations 87, 188 transform(s) 67, 87, 136, 168, 173 transformable 49 transformation(s) 5, 97, 115 transformative 49, 92, 214 transformed 73, 105, 141, 178, 209, 219 transforming 5, 71, 93 transgressions 178 transgressive 172 transience 111 transient 111 transit 29, 45, 71, 87 transitional 73, 139 transport 215 transportation 41, 165, 169, 186, 197 public 169, 215 trees 29, 203 triangulation 31 typological 67, 219 typologically 217 typology(ies) 5, 67, 83, 87, 124, 218 ubiquitous 7, 67, 77, 83 ubiquity 35 Umbrella Movement 141 uncertainty 183 unconventional 93, 101, 151, 201 under-management 127 unfamiliar 33, 49, 81, 99, 173, 186, 193 unimaginative 217 unimagined 217 uninclusive 53 unique 6, 10, 19–20, 23, 30, 34, 71, 85, 88, 107, 124, 132, 136, 147, 153–4, 171, 219 uniquely 5, 174, 197 uniqueness 87, 174, 188 United Nations 214 United States 4, 7, 71, 103, 113, 117, 141 New York 3–4, 71, 113

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feature 178 quality 11, 51, 172, 218 source 73 supply 73 waterfront(s) 3, 20, 41, 67, 91, 136, 188, 215, 218 weather 34, 73, 88, 161, 203 cold 161 hot 73 inclement 88 well-being 10, 15–7, 19, 49, 51, 131–2, 173, 215 mental 19 psychological 10, 15, 17, 132 wetlands 218 whimsicalizing 129 white-collar 71 Whyte, William H. 83, 161, 202 Wi-Fi 124, 158 winter gardens 87 Wolch, Jennifer 77 woman (women) 47, 62–5, 87, 96, 103, 106–7, 119, 169, 214 workplace 79–80 World Charter for the Right to the City 187 Young, Iris 40, 68, 166 young 4, 30–1, 61, 63, 92, 103, 105, 119, 199 youth 10, 30–1, 37, 101, 107, 125, 139, 149 zoning 199

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Guggenheim Museum 3 Zuccotti Park 4, 113 universal 55, 111, 121 unpredictability 88, 169, 183 unpredictable 34 unprogrammed 20, 30 urban 3–6, 9, 11, 20, 22–3, 29, 31, 33, 40–1, 48, 61, 69, 71, 73, 77, 79–80, 83, 85, 87, 92–3, 97, 101, 103, 107, 111, 117, 119, 131, 136, 141–3, 149, 154, 157, 159, 165–7, 172–3, 178, 186–7, 190–1, 193, 195, 197, 201, 203–4, 209, 211, 214–9 urban agriculture (farming) 197 urban areas 71, 215, 218 urban century 97, 119 urban cores 101 urban design 48 urban designer(s) 3, 5, 48, 111, 166–7, 178, 190, 195, 203–4 urban development 214 urban experience 23, 77, 131, 136, 186 urban extensions 215 urban form 186 urban gardening 141 urbanism 105, 137, 207 bottom-up 105, 174, 207 urbanisms 105, 167, 174 urbanites 33–4, 87–8, 92, 99, 133, 143, 174, 217 urbanity 23, 61, 154, 159 urbanization 7, 173 urban landscape(s) 107, 215 urban life (living) 3–6, 9, 22, 29, 31, 33, 40, 61, 69, 85, 92–3, 97, 103, 131, 154, 159, 165, 195, 217 urban places 77, 85, 209 urban planners 48 urban planning 216 urban sociologist(s) 5, 48, 79–80 urban space(s) 29, 31, 87, 143, 204 urban sprawl 216 utopic 176 Valenti, Jessica 62 Van Melik, Rianne 68, 167 variability 183 Varna, George 69, 72, 167 vending 153, 201 vendor 142–3 vendors 27, 61, 153, 201, 207 vibrancy 161, 174, 201 vibrant 20, 92 viewpoints 80–1, 103, 155, 193 violence 59, 63–4, 169, 214, 216 virtual 30, 124, 129 visibility 20, 27, 33, 40, 57, 87, 125, 137, 147, 154, 161, 169, 183, 195 walk 21, 48, 138, 186, 193, 219 walkability 216 walkable 4, 97, 173, 186 walkable places 4, 97, 186 Wang, Yiming 167 walking 10, 37, 133, 142, 186, 189, 211, 213, 219 water 11, 20, 34, 39, 45, 51, 64, 73, 158, 173, 178, 218 bodies 34 consumption 158

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