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Analyzing the spatial genealogy of the student riots in May 1960 in Ankara, the capital city of Turkey, this article investigates the relation between space and identity politics. Besides the social practices it contains, the “publicness” of space is also marked by the meanings and values attributed to the space by various social actors. The political participation of the social groups in public sphere becomes possible through spatial appropriation, which does not only mean the practical occupation of space but also the appropriation of the image of the (public) space. In the context of Ankara, the student riots transform Kizilay Square, which had been the prestigious center of a wealthy neighborhood, into a site of contesting spatial imageries and social identities.

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This study interprets critical stages in the changing design and landscape of urban squares, or praças, in Brazil and assesses the circumstances of their cultural-historical production. Urban squares were shaped by, and in the process contributed to and shed light on, several of the country's major social and artistic movements. The history of the square illustrates a theme of European cultural dominance, especially French, that was a product of the colonial experience and neocolonial influences which were overcome only in the twentieth century through spontaneous creative fusion with indigenous Brazilian elements.

Recently, social movements worldwide have introduced innovations in their communication methods. The #spanishrevolution that started on 15 May 2011 shows this new-style communication in action. Amidst regional election campaigning, thousands of people, mainly young, took to the streets and occupied Spain’s main squares, becoming known as the Outraged (los Indignados) or 15M Movement. This article evaluates how the Outraged involved with the #acampadabcn, the camp in Barcelona’s central square, used online–offline tools to get information about the Movement. This research combines participant observation, surveys, in-depth interviews, and web analytics. The results show that social media were vital for getting information during 15M. While the majority of those surveyed became aware of the camps via word of mouth, a posteriori it was social media that were the main tools for informing and mobilizing. 15M Movement, together with networked social movements, has updated the communication methods of social movements.

The aim of this article is to explore new ways of integrating technology, nature and infrastructures into urban public spaces. This is done through a case study, the design of General Vara del Rey, which is offered here as a model to explore a novel urban political ecology that calls into question dominant definitions of public spaces as self‐contained sites operating independently of natural and infrastructural spaces. Through the double movement of ‘the technification of public space’ and ‘the publicization of infrastructures’, the square aims to rethink the political ecology of urban public spaces by enabling the effective incorporation and participation of infrastructural and natural elements as active actors into the public and political life of the community. It is argued that the transformation of infrastructures into fully visible, public and political agents provides a useful model to address the growing proliferation of infrastructural and technological elements onto contemporary urban surfaces and to open up the possibility of new forms of civic participation and engagement.

Urban designers and their design process remain largely outside the literature on public space. Either designers are cast as simple tools of capitalist social relations, producing exclusionary public spaces, or they figure as entrepreneurs that complement economic renewal schemes through beautification measures that bring business and jobs to the city. This paper analyzes both of these arguments, through an ethnographic analysis of the urban design process behind the redevelopment of a public square in Syracuse, NY. I argue that aesthetic considerations most often derive from economic and political pressures, pressures that draw upon the social contexts of urban designers within an international division of labor and their relationship to class struggle. Because public space serves such an important role in political and social life, its status as a product of urban design should therefore act as a crucial component in any discussion of rights to the city.

The main objective of the present quasi-experi- mental study was to examine the influence of culture (Swedish vs Japanese) and environmental attitude (urban vs open-air person) on participants’ thermal, emotional and perceptual assessments of a square, within the PET (physiological equivalent temperature) comfortable inter- val of 18–23°C. It was predicted that persons living in different cultures with different environmental attitudes would psychologically evaluate a square differently despite similar thermal conditions. Consistent with this prediction, Japanese participants estimated the current weather as warmer than did Swedish participants and, consistent with this, they felt less thermally comfortable on the site, although participants in both countries perceived similar comfortable thermal outdoor conditions according to the PET index. Compared to the Japanese, the Swedes estimated both the current weather and the site as windier and colder, indicating a consistency in weather assessment on calm-windy and warm-cold scales in participants in both cultures. Furthermore, Swedish participants felt more glad and calm on the site and, in line with their character (more glad than gloomy), they estimated the square as more beautiful and pleasant than did Japanese participants. All this indicates that thermal, emotional and perceptual assessments of a physical place may be intertwined with psychological schema-based and socio-cultural processes, rather than fixed by general thermal indices developed in line with physiological heat balance models. In conse- quence, this implies that thermal comfort indices may not be applicable in different cultural/climate zones without modifications, and that they may not be appropriate if we do not take into account the psychological processes involved in environmental assessment.

The ‘problem’ of skating has been conflated with a ‘problem’ with young people in public spaces, reflecting a rise in fear of crime from the mid-twentieth century and referencing more general questions about public space and citizenship. My task in this paper is to highlight some of the tensions between skating and urban governance in Franklin Square, Hobart, the capital city of Tasmania in Australia. This task is indebted to ideas about governance and citizenship advanced by Nikolas Rose; about the proper city as conceived by Michel de Certeau; and about fortress strategies and species of spaces promulgated by Stephen Flusty. Franklin Square functions in two ways in this work. First, its examination encourages consideration of local cases. Second, it can be deployed as a heuristic device through which to explore the edges of public space and citizenship. The essay is intended to make two contributions to social and cultural geography, one enlarging on some well-rehearsed debates about situated and contested socio-spatial relations in what I hope are innovative ways, the other unsettling particular strategies that place skaters ‘on the edge’ and yet draw them into particular domains of citizenship via specific practices of urban governance.

Public space plays an important role in sustaining the public realm. There is a renewed interest in public space with a growing belief that while modern societies no longer depend on the town square or the piazza for basic needs, good public space is required for the social and psychological health of modern communities. New public spaces are emerging around the world and old public space typologies are being retrofitted to contemporary needs. Good public space is responsive, democratic and meaningful. However, few comprehensive instruments exist to measure the quality of public space. Based on an extensive review of literature and empirical work, this paper creates a public space index to assess the quality of public space by empirically evaluating its inclusiveness, meaningfulness, safety, comfort and pleasurability. Four public spaces in downtown Tampa, Florida, are examined using the index and several applications for public space planners, designers and managers are suggested.

There is a growing body of evidence that indicates that for creating civic consciousness and sustaining urban identity and memory people need civic interaction and social reconciliation, which are promoted by public open spaces. However, in an era of globalisation, public open spaces are mostly discussed in relation to privatisation, disappearance, obsolescence and loss of place identity, leading to urban decay problems in many city centres. The aim of this study is to propose a research method for monitoring changes in place identity in public open spaces to set the right objectives and policies in the design process of these spaces for keeping them alive and for sustaining public life. In this context, a case study was conducted in Bursa’s Republic Square in Turkey, using different interpretive historical, quantitative and qualitative strategies. The main findings of the case study are that there has been a gradual decline in sense of place in recent years, although the architectural and artistic elements of the area and the name of the place are still effective in defining the identity of the area.

The general aim of this paper is to demonstrate the significance of intentional soundscape design in urban squares by investigating people’s general perceptions of urban soundscape and sound preferences, and the effects of demographic factors. An intensive questionnaire survey was carried out in two urban squares in Sheffield. Sound identification and classification were both considered. The results show that natural sounds as a group were generally preferred to urban sounds; the preferences of soundscape elements influenced people’s choice of using an urban square; and in terms of sound preference, the differences amongst age groups were rather significant, whereas between males and females only slight differences were found. Finally, some suggestions on soundscape design in urban squares are given.

Thermal comfort is an important issue to be considered in the design of urban squares. This study hypothesized that thermal experience can be affected by the perception of spatial structures and materials, which can be influenced by urban design. Therefore, surveys were conducted in three Dutch squares (in Den Haag, Eindhoven and Groningen, respectively) to identify relationships between people’s long-term thermal experience and three factors: width of the square, spatial openness and appearance of materials. The results reveal that all three factors have an influence: Dutch people experience thermal discomfort when spaces are ‘too wide’, ‘too open’ and consist of ‘cold’ materials.

Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in post-unification Berlin, this article examines the re-articulation of the problematic of “the social” in city planning. It juxtaposes the contrasting visions of city planners and youth workers for Alexanderplatz, a controversial square in Berlin’s eastern centre. I argue that the notion of “robustness” is helpful in understanding an important contemporary shift in thinking about planning and the social. In a sense, both planners and youth workers accused each other of taking insufficient notice of “the social.” While planners spoke of robustness as a technical, economic and aesthetic quality to which public space needs to aspire, the youth workers’ vision for Alexanderplatz was a proposal for a kind of “social” robustness where the social is, quite literally, built into the urban design. These ethnographic observations need to be understood in a context where city planning has been one of the most critical domains in which the tensions provoked by German unification are played out. Taking such socio-cultural specificities into account will lead to a more nuanced understanding of forms of neoliberal city planning.

In summer 2011, Israel was swept by unprecedented political protest as multiple encampments occupied streets and mass rallies were held weekly in Tel Aviv and other cities. The article focuses on the spatial politics of this protest, analysing the particular strategies it used to activise urban public space. The protest initially reflected a specific urban context and limited agenda—namely, the lack of affordable housing in Tel Aviv. However, as it materialised and expanded in public space, it also became more inclusive, incorporating more marginalised publics and places, addressing long-standing socio-spatial inequalities between Israel’s ‘centre’ and ‘periphery’, and advancing a message of ‘social justice’—with the noted exception of Palestinians in the Occupied Territories. The analysis of the Israeli protest foregrounds some dynamics that it shares with other ‘global’ protests in 2011, from Tahrir Square to Occupy Wall Street, pointing to the spatial politics of centrality, multiplicity and ‘media-space’, a mutually enforcing relationship between physical public space and mainstream and social media.

For much of the last quarter of the 20th century debates on the state of public spaces in the UK concentrated on issues of neglect and abandonment. New public spaces, increasingly developed by private developers were of equal concern, seen simultaneously as creating privatized, socially exclusive enclaves and characterless ‘anywhere’ regeneration schemes, filled with the same retail outlets, coffee shops and anonymous pieces of public art. This paper addresses this latter concern of homogenization, examining the dynamics behind it and exploring whether local diversity can thrive in the face of such pressure. The paper further reports on a research project that was conducted on a series of prominent public spaces in North East England. The results of this study suggest that the spaces studied are far from passive recipients of global processes. Not only does the quality and quantity of public space often seem to have improved in the recent past, but that long standing locally significant traditions are thriving and new ones are being developed. So, while homogenization in retailing may be significant and harmful to some traditional shopping streets, it is not necessarily damaging the social and cultural lives of the public spaces in our towns and cities to the degree that may be expected.

Urban public space is once again a 'hot' topic and figures strongly in place quality discourse. City spaces are being recycled, reinterpreted and reinvented in a drive for a competitive quality of place. This article illustrates the changing face of contemporary UK public space through a qualitative analysis of the perceptions held by public and professional-bureaucratic actors. Drawing on empirical case study research of five recent enhancement schemes at prominent nodes throughout the North East of England, the research explores the culture and economics of urban public space design. Tentative observations are expressed in terms of the links between cultural activity and economic vitality, and some reflections on policy and practice are put forward.

This paper looks at new, high-profile redevelopment projects in Tokyo and New York City and their surroundings for examples of trends in the design of urban public spaces and changing patterns in how they are used. This includes new parks and other open spaces, landscaped plazas or public squares associated with new office towers, shopping centers and other largescale commercial developments, and various popular “festival sites” such as those along recreation waterfronts. A comparison indicates that both cities have quite a few new public spaces that enhance the quality of urban life and add aesthetic appeal, but that also reflect certain social problems and divisions. We see the following common trends: (1) increasing privatization of spaces that were once more clearly in the public domain; (2) increasing surveillance of public spaces and control of access to them in order to improve security; and (3) increasing use of design themes that employ “theme park” simulations and break connections with local history and geography. In the Tokyo area there is also a curious trend to create large, landscaped open areas near new development projects that few people use. They can be called “planned wastelands” or “new urban deserts”. New York City, on the other hand, has succeeded in having more people come together for enjoyment in parts of the city that were once all but abandoned. The paper is illustrated with photographs, and draws on the examples of Times Square, South Street Seaport and Battery Park City in New York, and Yebisu Garden Place, Teleport–Daiba, Makuhari New Town and Minato Mirai 21 in the Tokyo–Yokohama area.

This article investigates the relationship between political identity and public space in the communities of the Colca Valley, in Peru’s rural Andes, by examining two moments in which the built environment became a medium for formatting and engaging a local indigeneity. The first is the colonial invasion, during which the reducci´on plan condensed and dispersed “unruly” native subjects around a public square and a church. The second is the contemporary moment, in which that same space is used to stage audits, evaluations, and competitions in the context of a development paradigm shifting from service provision to investing in indigeneity by financing the promotion of entrepreneurial and agricultural practices that organizations classify as typically indigenous. This article offers two arguments: (1) in the colonial era, notions of indigenous identity configured efforts to improve and regulate daily life—or, to achieve development; and (2) through changing historical contexts, the built environment is used as a medium for defining Colcan indigeneity, deploying it to generate strategic knowledge and regulatory force, and investing it with the potential for various kinds of salvation. This approach suggests that transnational paradigms do not simply “touch down,” but also, adjust and push existing dynamics through the local media at their disposal.

This article focuses on the dynamics between migrant street vendors and public security forces and the complex social production of urban public space in Guangzhou. As an answer to daily contestation of public order, security agencies reluctantly open flexible windows of business opportunities to hawkers. Zones and periods of control, ‘soft’ approaches, and categories of ethnic belonging influence everyday governance and accessibility of public space. This results in a transient public space, fluid and continuously changing, which offers a new perspective on openness and functioning of public space in urban China.

This study examined patterns of activity in street-side public spaces in one city. Eye-level videotape was employed to document public activity, characteristics of the population and characteristics of the downtown street-side surroundings. A scheme for organizing the data is presented. Patterns of use, disaggregated across activities, groups and time periods were derived, and limitations and implications are discussed.