Social credibility and institutional informality in the governance of public space

Abstract

Public space constitutes the underlying fabric upon which social and economic life thrives, whereas the needs for its efficient provision and management become more pressing over time given the uninterrupted urbanization worldwide and the limitations in available land. Although the study of public space has traditionally been the main field of planning disciplines, the general recognition of the complexity of the matter has turned the attention of scholars to other perspectives looking for more holistic approaches. From this point of view, the provision and management of public space have been reframed and seen as an overall governance issue. The current work aims to advance conceptualization on public space governance and to explore possible alternatives of institutional organization that can be applied in order to provide the required public space in a manner that is effective and functional, as well as socially acceptable and credible to the real users. This conceptualization allows to shift focus from ‘institutional formality’, strict ‘legal credibility’ and ‘exogenous regulation’, to ‘institutional informality’, ‘functional user-based credibility’ and ‘endogenous ordering’, highlighting them as prominent and valid elements of sustainable asset governance. In this context, the ‘commons’ emerges as a key concept and a tool that enables to better comprehend reality and to assess the institutional organization of asset governance in a more pragmatic, meaningful and useful way.