Revisiting Publicness in Assessment of Contemporary Urban Spaces
Publication: Journal of Urban Planning and Development
Volume 145, Issue 4
Abstract
Public spaces have long defined the structure of cities and articulated the different private spaces where urban life unfolds. Over the past decades, profound asymmetries have emerged from the evolving social, economic, and spatial structures within urban areas. The growing role of private authorities in urban development and management has created new arenas for public life, changing the role of public spaces and the way society interacts with the city and the broader public sphere. Instead of attempting to understand public space through a specific thematic lens, the concept of publicness can explain the complex intricacies that justify its public nature, essential to clarifying this contemporary positioning. To properly address the current challenges of the public–private urban paradigm, the concept of publicness needs to combine distinct physical features, operation schemes, and management profiles. This paper presents a novel approach toward the use of publicness as the foundation for a space evaluation model, creating a tool to successfully integrate both new and existing spaces in the contemporary urban realm.
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Acknowledgments
The authors would like to thank the Portuguese National Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT) for their financial support.
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Published In
Journal of Urban Planning and Development
Volume 145 • Issue 4 • December 2019
Copyright
©2019 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Sep 19, 2018
Accepted: Feb 26, 2019
Published online: Aug 6, 2019
Published in print: Dec 1, 2019
Discussion open until: Jan 6, 2020
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