Abstract

This article outlines a framework for connecting design-oriented research on accommodating and encouraging social interaction in public space with investigation of broader questions regarding civic engagement, social justice and democratic governance. How can we define the “kind of problem a city is” (Jacobs, 1961), simultaneously attending to the social processes at stake in urban places, the spatial ordering of urban form and the construction of the forms of agency that enable us to make better places on purpose? How can empirical research be connected more systematically to theories of democratic governance, with clear implications for urban design, urban and regional planning as professional practice? This framework connects three distinct theoretical moves: (1) understanding the sociological implications of public space as an urban commons, (2) connecting the making of public space to research on social capital and collective efficacy, and (3) understanding recent tendencies in the discipline of urban design in terms of the social construction of a “program of action” (Latour, 1992) at the heart of the professional practices relevant to the built environment.

Highlights

  • Over the last 30 years, the idea of public space has occupied a central place in both the critical theory and everyday practice of urbanism

  • An immediate concern is a narrower question of connecting academic research to practice: How can current sociological perspectives contribute to understanding the potential contribution of placemaking and public space to creating more resilient, equitable, and ecologically responsible cities?. This framework involves three theoretical moves that are not usually connected: (1) understanding the sociological implications of public space as an urban commons, (2) connecting the making of public space to research on social capital and collective efficacy, and (3) understanding recent tendencies in the discipline of urban design in terms of the social construction of a “program of action” (Latour, 1992) at the heart of the professional practices relevant to the built environment

  • It is a quality of public life that is experienced in concrete associational contexts, manifested as norms of trust and reciprocity that carry over to others with whom one is not directly connected, and infused in the common world of strangers encountered in public space

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Summary

Introduction

Over the last 30 years, the idea of public space has occupied a central place in both the critical theory and everyday practice of urbanism. A critical perspective that highlights the way the repairs themselves become part of the problem, manifesting the essentially contested nature of urban public space and the dominance of powerful interests in a remaking of the city that systematically serves some and excludes others. A neo-liberal logic has been built into much of the conventional thinking about public space, and it is important to note at the outset that a professional reform movement is severely limited in its ability to transcend a logic that has been deeply institutionalized in its field of operations This neo-liberal logic is implied by the underlying conception of public space, as well as in the preference for private sector and market-oriented solutions, a preference that is structurally defined and ideologically reinforced in the contemporary political economy of place. By re-thinking public space as a form of civic practice that has material and spatial dimensions, it is possible open new avenues for research that offer theoretical and practical leverage on problems related to the design and management of public space, but to challenges we face in democratic governance of cities

Public Space as a Research Problem
This article is part of the issue “Public Space in the New Urban Agenda
From Public Space to the Urban Commons
Public Space as Civic Ecology
The Project of Urbanism as a Program of Action
Conclusion
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