Public space
Public space is the set of streets, squares, parks and promenades in common ownership and use: where the city meets without anyone having to pay or ask permission. Its quantity is measured in square metres per inhabitant; its quality, in how many people use it and how long they stay.
Jane Jacobs described in 1961 how eyes on the street —neighbours, shopkeepers, passers-by— produce safety without police. Setha Low and Anna Minton have documented the opposite drift: privately owned public squares, benches with dividers, cameras. Public space is the infrastructure of everyday democracy.
Videos on this term (76)
- Urban geopolitics
How do cities intertwine in a globalized world?
A bus stop brings together strangers, a screen, cables, vehicles, noise and expectations for a few minutes. None of…
3 min read - Urban form
Learn how invisible borders define life in the neighborhoods
Two people pass each other on a street and take only seconds to decide how to behave. A glance can communicate…
3 min read - Surveillance / data
Urbanized Fear: Security, Segregation and Resistance in the City
Teresa Caldeira explains how fear designs the city: the talk of crime, fortified enclaves in São Paulo, the paradox…
3 min read - Infrastructure
Bent Flyvbjerg: Why Megaprojects Fail Despite a Rational Plan
Bent Flyvbjerg explains why megaprojects run over budget and time: power versus rationality in Aalborg, optimism…
Bent Flyvbjerg 3 min read - Urban form
Néstor García Canclini: Where Cultures Mix, Belonging Emerges
Néstor García Canclini explains Latin American urban culture as hybridity: Hybrid Cultures, consumption as…
3 min read - Public space
Why Walking Makes Cities Livelier and Safer: Jan Gehl's Evidence
Walking is the basis of public life and safety. What Jan Gehl measured in Cities for People, his twelve quality…
Jan Gehl 3 min read - Urban form
How Five Elements Make a City Legible and Accessible
Kevin Lynch's five elements, paths, edges, districts, nodes and landmarks, explain how people read a city, and…
3 min read - Shrinking cities
Who Deserves Space in the City? Peñalosa and the Fair Street
Enrique Peñalosa turned the distribution of urban space into a policy of equality: pavements, cycle paths,…
3 min read - Public space
Richard Sennett's Open City: Open or Close the Public Space?
Richard Sennett defends the open city, designed for encounters with strangers, against closed enclosures. Ville and…
Richard Sennett 3 min read - Urban economy
Guggenheim Versus the Rest: Myths and Realities of Iconic Museums
Why the Guggenheim effect worked in Bilbao and failed when copied: the prior plan, Beatriz Plaza's data, the…
3 min read - Urban economy
The Heart Beats at the Last Mile: What Delivery Costs the City
How much city it takes for a parcel to arrive in two hours: sheds on the periphery, ghost supermarkets, more…
3 min read - Public space
Security Through Walls: Protection or Segregation?
Gated communities privatise surveillance and empty the street. What Caldeira, Low and Sabatini show about fortified…
3 min read - Public space
Who Controls Your City's Public Spaces? Private Plazas
Privately owned public spaces look like squares but carry private rules. From New York's 1961 zoning to Occupy,…
3 min read - Public space
Innovation or Disguised Austerity in Tactical Urbanism?
Tactical urbanism was born as a rehearsal for the permanent and often ends as cuts with colours: Lydon and Garcia,…
3 min read - Urban economy
Neoliberalism from Below: Verónica Gago's Popular Economies
Verónica Gago's neoliberalism from below explains how popular economies, such as La Salada in Buenos Aires,…
2 min read - Surveillance / data
Stephen Graham: Militarisation and Surveillance in the City
Stephen Graham describes in Cities Under Siege the new military urbanism: how techniques of war, surveillance and…
Stephen Graham 2 min read - Public space
Michael Hardt and the Urban Common: The City as Everyone's Work
Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri's urban common explains how the city produces collective wealth that capital…
Michael Hardt 3 min read - Public space
Asef Bayat: Everyday Urban Activism and the Insurgent City
Asef Bayat explains in Life as Politics how the urban poor of the Middle East change the city without organising:…
Asef Bayat 3 min read - Urban form
Jaime Lerner: the urban acupuncture of Curitiba
Lerner argues that one small, well-placed intervention transforms a whole neighbourhood. He proved it as mayor of…
Jaime Lerner 2 min read - Public space
Great Streets by Allan Jacobs: What Makes a Street Great
Great Streets (1993) by Allan Jacobs compares the world's best streets at the same scale and draws eight…
Allan Jacobs 3 min read - Urban geopolitics
Edgar Pieterse: Spatial Justice and Sustainable Cities in Africa
Edgar Pieterse of the African Centre for Cities proposes radical incrementalism for African cities: improving the…
Edgar Pieterse 3 min read - Public space
Henri Lefebvre: urban space as a social product
Henri Lefebvre showed that urban space is not a neutral setting: it is socially produced, and whoever produces it…
Henri Lefebvre 3 min read - Public space
Setha Low: Spatial Justice and the Right to Public Space
Setha Low studies what makes a public space just or exclusionary. Her ethnographies of plazas, parks and gated…
Setha Low 3 min read - Urban geopolitics
Çağlar Keyder: Istanbul Between the Global and the Local
Istanbul: Between the Global and the Local (1999), edited by Çağlar Keyder, explains how Istanbul turned its…
3 min read - Urban geopolitics
Henri Lefebvre: The Urban Revolution as a Global Process
In The Urban Revolution (1970) Henri Lefebvre argues that urbanisation overflows the city and becomes a global…
Henri Lefebvre 2 min read - Urban history
Chris Ealham and Barcelona's Class Struggle (1898-1937)
Chris Ealham reconstructs how industrial Barcelona produced anarcho-syndicalism and how strikes, riots and planning…
Chris Ealham 3 min read - Urban geopolitics
Manuel Castells: the space of flows
What Manuel Castells means by the space of flows: how networks of information and capital reorganise global cities,…
Manuel Castells 2 min read - Urban geopolitics
The Urban Condition: The Fragmented Metropolis of Globalisation
The Urban Condition (1999) by the Ghent Urban Studies Team describes the dispersed metropolis of globalisation and…
3 min read - Urban economy
Urban Fortunes by Logan and Molotch: The City as a Growth Machine
Urban Fortunes (1987) by John Logan and Harvey Molotch explains who rules cities: the coalition that gains from…
3 min read - Urban economy
Critical Urban Studies by Davies and Imbroscio: Social Justice
Critical Urban Studies (2010), edited by Jonathan Davies and David Imbroscio, revisits urban studies from social…
2 min read - Urban psychology
Diane Davis: Urban Resilience in Situations of Chronic Violence
Diane Davis explains how communities resist and adapt to chronic violence and which governance reduces it:…
Diane Davis 3 min read - Public space
Ana Falú: Feminist Urbanism and Inclusion in Cities
Ana Falú, a reference of feminist urbanism in Latin America: urban safety from a gender perspective, women's…
Ana Falú 2 min read - Mobility
Enrique Peñalosa and the Transformation of Bogotá (1998-2000)
Enrique Peñalosa transformed Bogotá between 1998 and 2000 with TransMilenio, cycle paths, pavements and libraries…
3 min read - Public space
Richard Sennett and the Decline of Public Life
In The Fall of Public Man (1977) Richard Sennett explains how the tyranny of intimacy emptied public space. Key…
Richard Sennett 3 min read - Urban economy
The Spectacle City: Consumption and Exclusion per Debord and Zukin
The spectacle city is built to be seen: events, icons and showcases that exclude residents. What Guy Debord and…
3 min read - Public space
Setha Low and Don Mitchell: The Politics of Public Space
The politics of public space decides who may be in the plaza. What Setha Low shows in On the Plaza and Don Mitchell…
Setha Low 3 min read
