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During the process of modernization, a number of Islamic countries encouraged women to unveil. Among them, only Iran has recently returned to the earlier era of requiring women to veil themselves as the precondition of presence in public spaces. However, this time the difference was that women were already present in almost all public spaces: in universities, administrations, industries, and even in the government. Being marginalized after the revolution, Iranian women have learned how to overcome the obstacle of the veil. To maintain their presence and activity in public, they constantly reinvented new strategies to challenge the existing authority, by claiming, appropriating, and re-inventing new public spaces. Paradoxically, the reveiling of women and the gender segregation of public spaces helped many traditional women enter public spheres as social actors and to gain power, albeit in silence, in different socio-political and cultural fields. Today, more than ever, Iranian women try to conquer new public spaces/ public spheres with their transparent visibility and with a stress on their differences.

In this article, I seek to combine the two areas of popular cultural studies and urban social history through a study of what I call street culture, including the use of the street as a public arena, changes in the regulation of the street and the popular response to these changes, and the redefinition of street politics during the decades immediately prior to the [Chinese] Revolution of 1911.

In this study we examine the spatial practices and lived experiences of an understudied subgroup, observant Muslim women of Arab descent, to explore the extent to which they experience representation and inclusion in the context of Brooklyn, New York. In an attempt to provide a more in-depth understanding of space, we utilize a phenomenological approach in which gender is central. We conceptualize our analysis based on Lefebvre’s spatial triad. The narratives of the women in this study elucidate how they interpret and navigate publicly accessible urban spaces as women marked by both ethnicity and religious difference in a multicultural city such as New York. Our study finds that the physical accessibility of public spaces, the aspect that planners tend to emphasize, matters for the observant Muslim women in this study both in ways with which planners are familiar and in other ways. The main aspects of physical accessibility that facilitated their sense of inclusion and engagement in Bay Ridge public spaces are the ease of getting around, often called ‘walkability’ in planning circles, the extent of access to mass transit, and the types of destinations in the area. Streetlights and the openness of public spaces were also critical to participants’ lived experiences, as was the presence of a number of women wearing the Islamic headscarf. The latter enabled participants to become active actors in space because they marked a place as culturally, religiously, and socially appropriate for them. Participants’ lived experiences (representational space) in turn shaped and were shaped by the characteristics of physical space. For example, well-lit open spaces enabled their spatial engagement because this made them visible to the community and at the same time allowed them to see the community. For immigrant women the Arabic landscape of the neighborhood marked by the Arabic signage, the Arabic language being spoken, and women wearing the Islamic headscarf provided them an opportunity to communicate with other women who share their cultural and religious values (spatial practice), and thereby to experience a safe space of normalcy (representational space).

There is a revolution underway in the interface between architecture and planning. Very recent research is enabling a novel understanding of the neuroscience behind how people perceive and experience the built environment. One such work, Cognitive Architecture: Designing for How We Respond to the Built Environment (Sussman, Ann, and Justin B. Hollander. 2015. New York: Routledge), argues for a set of testable principles for architecture and planning practice. Its overall line of investigation is that certain design characteristics of the built environment can influence brain wave production. Specifically, the interest lies in whether the presence of features suggestive of Cognitive Architecture is associated with certain brain responses. This working paper presents the results of a pilot study into this question, discusses technical issues and limitations and provides suggestions for future research avenues.

We worry these days that public space, indeed the public realm, is shrinking. This essay examines the underlying causes of such discontent, in the context of historic and recent transformations in social values and public ethos. Seemingly, three major trends - privatization, globalization, and the communications revolution - will continue to shape the future demand and supply of public space. Planners must anticipate the effects of such trends, but also focus on the concept of public life, which encompasses both private and public realms. The article concludes by reviewing the role that planners may play in advancing the cause of public space and the opportunities and initiatives for the future.

This article searches for public domains in the history of public spaces in Monterrey from the perspective of their colloquial use by different social groups. Through documentary analysis, it reconstructs the transition from publicly owned public spaces to their privatised counterparts. The article expands the traditional somewhat idyllic narrative of public spaces and offers clues to how different social groups have used them. Public spaces have changed during four main periods. A centralised public space appeared during the colonial period (1596–1810), followed by socially segregated spaces between the beginning of the war for independence until after the revolution (1810–1940). The dispersion of public space characterises the period of the metropolitan expansion of Monterrey (1940–1980). Finally, the privatisation of public spaces occurred at the turn of the millennium (1980–2015). Women, children and lower socioeconomic classes have had unequal access to public spaces in Latin America, thus precluding them from being considered public domains.

A number of recent studies have examined the sources of conflict surrounding the presence of Muslim minorities in Western contexts. This article builds upon, and challenges, some of the principal findings of this literature through analyzing popular opposition to mosques in Badalona, a historically industrial city in Catalonia where several of the most vigorous anti-mosque campaigns in Spain have occurred. Drawing upon 46 semi-structured interviews and ethnographic observation conducted over a two-year period, I argue that opposition to mosques in Badalona is not reducible to anti-Muslim prejudice or fears of Islamic extremism. Rather, it is rooted in powerful associations drawn between Islam, immigration, and a series of social problems affecting the character of communal life and the quality of cherished public spaces in the city. These associations are expressed through local narratives that emphasize a sharp rupture between a glorified ethnically homogeneous past of community and solidarity, and a troublesome multicultural present fraught with social insecurity and disintegration. I show how the construction of these "rupture narratives" has entailed active memory work that minimizes the significance of prior social cleavages and conflicts, and selectively focuses on disjuncture over continuity with the past. I also highlight how these narratives have been reinforced by strong socio-spatial divisions, which have intensified contestations over public space and led to the integration of mosque disputes into broader struggles over social justice and public recognition.

The aim of this paper is to study how women’s privacy needs are met through the physical form of public spaces in both old and new urban designs, using as a case study the city of Nablus, Palestine, which has been significantly influenced by the culture of gender separation. The findings will help develop a better understanding of the relationship between women’s privacy and the physical form of public spaces and will enhance the development of public spaces that women can use comfortably and actively to participate in the urban life. An environmental approach based on the concept of behavioural setting was used to examine women’s privacy issues in the chosen public spaces. Direct observations and questionnaires were used in the fieldwork, in addition to interviews with women and relevant people who influence the women’s privacy. Maps (GIS), sketches and SPSS techniques were used to interpret the data.

An entire category of urban space, albeit hardly recognized as such, is disappearing across North America. As retail logistics globalizes and big-box power centres replace enclosed shopping malls from the postwar era, a distinct form of social infrastructure vanishes as well. ‘Dead malls’ are now a staple of North American (sub)urban landscapes, and have provoked local activism in many places. But despite popular concern for the demise of mall space, critical urban scholarship has largely sidelined the phenomenon. Much of the disjuncture between popular outcry and academic silence relates to conceptions of ‘public’ space, and specifically the gap between formal ownership and everyday spatial practice. Spatial practice often exceeds the conceptions of designers and managers, transforming malls into community space. This is particularly true in declining inner suburbs, where poor and racialized communities depend more heavily on malls for social reproduction as well as recreation and consumption. In this article we investigate the revolution in logistics that has provoked the phenomenon of ‘dead malls’ and the creative activism emerging that aims to protect mall space as ‘community space’. Taking the case of the Morningside Mall in an old suburb of Toronto, we investigate the informal claims made on mall space through everyday spatial practice and the explicit claims for community space that arise when that space is threatened. We argue that many malls have effectively become community space, and activism to prevent its loss can be understood as a form of anti-globalization practice, even if it never employs that language.