Public Space Unbound

Public Space Unbound
Author: Sabine Knierbein
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 312
Release: 2018-03-15
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 1315449188

Through an exploration of emancipation in recent processes of capitalist urbanization, this book argues the political is enacted through the everyday practices of publics producing space. This suggests democracy is a spatial practice rather than an abstract professional field organized by institutions, politicians and movements. Public Space Unbound brings together a cross-disciplinary group of scholars to examine spaces, conditions and circumstances in which emancipatory practices impact the everyday life of citizens. We ask: How do emancipatory practices relate with public space under ‘post-political conditions’? In a time when democracy, solidarity and utopias are in crisis, we argue that productive emancipatory claims already exist in the lived space of everyday life rather than in the expectation of urban revolution and future progress.

Companion to Public Space

Companion to Public Space
Author: Vikas Mehta
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 621
Release: 2020-05-13
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 1351002163

The Companion to Public Space draws together an outstanding multidisciplinary collection of specially commissioned chapters that offer the state of the art in the intellectual discourse, scholarship, research, and principles of understanding in the construction of public space. Thematically, the volume crosses disciplinary boundaries and traverses territories to address the philosophical, political, legal, planning, design, and management issues in the social construction of public space. The Companion uniquely assembles important voices from diverse fields of philosophy, political science, geography, anthropology, sociology, urban design and planning, architecture, art, and many more, under one cover. It addresses the complete ecology of the topic to expose the interrelated issues, challenges, and opportunities of public space in the twenty-first century. The book is primarily intended for scholars and graduate students for whom it will provide an invaluable and up-to-date guide to current thinking across the range of disciplines that converge in the study of public space. The Companion will also be of use to practitioners and public officials who deal with the planning, design, and management of public spaces.

Why Public Space Matters

Why Public Space Matters
Author: Setha M. Low
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 337
Release: 2023
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0197543731

'Why Public Space Matters' examines how public space contributes to individual and societal flourishing. Based on thirty-five years of ethnographic fieldwork on plazas, walkways, parks, markets and beaches in the United States, Costa Rica, Argentina, India, Kenya and France, it presents a new understanding of the role of social contact, public culture and affective atmosphere in the creation of places essential to everyday urban life.

Evolving Public Space in South Africa

Evolving Public Space in South Africa
Author: Karina Landman
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 389
Release: 2018-11-09
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 1351129422

Evolving Public Space in South Africa discusses the transformation of public space highlighted in the country. Drawing on examples from major cities, the author demonstrates that these spaces are not only becoming wasted space, but are also adapting and evolving to accommodate new users and uses in various parts of the city. This process of evolution tends to challenge the more traditional visions and general global views of declining public space in cities and argues that it rather resembles the resilience of these spaces and the potential for regeneration through continuously emerging and mutating forms, functions and meanings. Including over 20 black-and-white images, this book would be beneficial to academics and students of urban planning and design and those interested in the regeneration of cities.

Unsettled Urban Space

Unsettled Urban Space
Author: Tihomir Viderman
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 303
Release: 2022-10-31
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 100079962X

While urban life can be characterized by endeavors to settle stable and safe environments, for many people, urban space is rarely stable or safe; it is uncertain, troubled, imbued with challenges and perpetually under pressure. As the concept of unsettled appears to define the contemporary urban experience, this multidisciplinary book investigates the conflicts and possibilities of settling and unsettling through open and speculative analysis. The analytical prism of unsettled renders urban space an indeterminate ground unfolding through routines, temporalities and contestations in constant tension between settling and unsettling. Such contrasting experiences are contingent on how urban societies confront, undergo and overcome turbulence and difficulties in time and space. Contributions drawing on theoretical reflections and empirical accounts—from Argentina, Austria, Germany, Greece, Italy, the Netherlands, the UAE, the UK, the USA and Vietnam—give insights into plural occurrences of the unsettled, which might tie down or unleash transformative, liberatory and emancipatory potentials. This book is for students, professionals and researchers interested in the uncertainties, foundations, disturbances, inconsistencies, residuals and blind fields, which constitute the urban both as lived space and as social, cultural and political ideal.

Public Spaces, Marketplaces, and the Constitution

Public Spaces, Marketplaces, and the Constitution
Author: Anthony Maniscalco
Publisher: State University of New York Press
Total Pages: 320
Release: 2015-10-15
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1438458452

In spite of their public attractions and millions of visitors, most shopping malls are now off-limits to free speech and expressive activity. The same may be said about many other public spaces and marketplaces in American cities and suburbs, leaving scholars and other observers to wonder where civic engagement is lawfully permitted in the United States. In Public Spaces, Marketplaces, and the Constitution, Anthony Maniscalco draws on key legal decisions, social theory, and urban history to demonstrate that public spaces have been split apart from First Amendment protections, while the expression of political ideas has been excluded from privately owned, publicly accessible malls. Today, the traditional indoor suburban shopping mall, that icon of modern American capitalism and culture, is being replaced by outdoor retail centers. Yet the law and courts have been slow to catch up. Maniscalco argues that scholars, students, and the public must confront these innovations in commercial design and consumer practices, as well as what they portend for contemporary metropolitan America and its civic spaces.

On South Bank: The Production of Public Space

On South Bank: The Production of Public Space
Author: Dr Alasdair J.H. Jones
Publisher: Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.
Total Pages: 305
Release: 2014-07-28
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1409440036

Through an in-depth ethnographic examination of London's 'South Bank', this book explores the value widely presupposed on urban public space. Based on subjective accounts of the value of public space, as well as observations of how the South Bank is used and 'practised' on a daily basis, it argues that this value is not so much inherent to physical public space itself as it is derived through the everyday use and production of that space. Public space is valued not only for its essential material characteristics but also for the productive potential that these characteristics, if properly managed, afford on a daily basis.

Henri Lefebvre and the Theory of the Production of Space

Henri Lefebvre and the Theory of the Production of Space
Author: Christian Schmid
Publisher: Verso Books
Total Pages: 552
Release: 2022-11-29
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1786637014

Shortlisted for the Deutscher Memorial Prize 2023 This book presents an encompassing, detailed and thorough overview and reconstruction of Lefebvre's theory of space and of the urban. Henri Lefebvre belongs to the generation of the great French intellectuals and philosophers, together with his contemporaries Michel Foucault and Jean-Paul Sartre. His theory has experienced a remarkable revival over the last two decades, and is discussed and applied today in many disciplines in humanities and social sciences, particularly in urban studies, geography, urban sociology, urban anthropology, architecture and planning. Lefebvre, together with David Harvey, is one of the leading and most read theoreticians in these fields. This book explains in an accessible way the theoretical and epistemological context of this work in French philosophy and in the German dialectic (Hegel, Marx, and Nietzsche), and reconstructs in detail the historical development of its different elements. It also gives an overview on the receptions of Lefebvre and discusses a wide range of applications of this theory in many research fields, such as urban and regional development, urbanization, urbanity, social space, and everyday life.

The State Otherwise

The State Otherwise
Author: Alice Stefanelli
Publisher: Berghahn Books
Total Pages: 164
Release: 2024-08-01
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1805396285

The city of Beirut is increasingly congested, polluted and suffocating. Its already limited green public spaces are under growing threat of privatisation and redevelopment. The State Otherwise examines the difficult predicament of Beirut’s public green spaces from the vantage point of the civic campaign to reopen Horsh al Sanawbar, the city’s largest public park. Analysing the relationship between neoliberal sectarianism, private interest and political action, the book asks questions about the nature of privatisation of public property, civic society’s potential to mobilise individuals and the role of public authorities in promoting the public good.