Understanding vitality of public space: A review with an example of capital city Kathmandu in Nepal

Abstract

By definition, public spaces are areas or locations that are open and accessible to all people, and in cities they are open space that is specifically concerned with public health, social cohesion, and the quality of urban life. This paper reports a review of literatures on urban public spaces attempting to gauge the research gaps on public spaces through a scoping-review analysis of relevant studies. The review of relevant literatures published from 1990 to 2023 led to an inference that there is a huge gap in defining the publicness (non-excludable and non-rival) of the public spaces in Nepal. Furthermore, knowledge about public spaces is found to be scattered. However, all Nepal-based research identified that open spaces in Kathmandu valley were severely encroached upon. Rapid urbanization, along with a lack of resilient urban planning and governance, appears to have a significant influence on urban public spaces and social cohesion, as well as diseconomies in emerging economies. Social inequalities, health disparities, environmental injustice, economic instability and stifled cultural expression are all intricately bound to urban public spaces, particularly green public space, which still remains a research priority for new evidence-based urban policymakers and urban planners in developing countries. Future research should therefore focus on a multilevel approach preferably using network model to cover and comprehend the societal-benefits of public space, extending large-scale quantitative assessments with field evaluations of each public space, community surveys, and other qualitative research in Nepal. Component-wise research gaps are also evidently explored in the course of separate domains.