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This article examines two different models of space management, devised by NGOs to confront the marketization of public space in New York City through privatizing the land of community gardens. The Trust for Public Land promotes a model that emphasizes community ownership, while the New York Restoration Project promotes a model that emphasizes the preservation of land. The article compares the two models of NGO management of community gardens particularly through the lens of community participation, sense of ownership and control over space, and argues that both models transform the meaning of public space in ways that undermine its opportunity to develop as an autonomous community space.

After three decades of urban renewal in China, public spaces used by average residents have not been improved proportionally and, in some cases, have even deteriorated. Three problems can be identified. ‘Window-dressing’ prevails in government- developed squares and parks. Their locations and monumentality have made residents less willing to use these spaces. ‘Privatization’ describes how private developers maximize profits at the cost of public life in the urban environment surrounding their projects. ‘Gentrification’, different from its meaning in the West, refers to the tendency to ignore the needs of mid- and low-income residents in public facilities. Not entirely a repetition of the 1950s Western urban renewal, the Chinese cases reflect a society changing from a socialist system to a capitalist one.

This paper explores some of the discursive practices through which the place meanings are formulated, warranted and, above all, contested. Drawing particularly on the work of the social psychologist Michael Billig, we present a rhetorical analysis of newspaper reports and interview accounts about the ‘development’ of a contested public space in Barcelona, known locally both as Figuera’s Well and the Hole of Shame. This analysis explores a number of rhetorically opposed constructions of the nature, purpose and appropriate beneficiaries of this place, whose implications are discussed both within the context of local power struggles and within the context of wider ideological struggles over the nature of public spaces in Barcelona. We argue that a rhetorical perspective reveals how practices of attributing meaning and value to places are often more conflict-ridden, action-oriented, and politically-charged than is implied by much research in environmental psychology. Relatedly, we argue that environmental psychologists need to complement a ‘weak’ conception of the role of conflict in the formation of public space (focused on subjective differences in environmental tastes, preferences and values) with a ‘strong’ conception of the role of conflict (focused on ideological struggles over access, equality and inclusion).

The Knowledge Viennese have of their public parks and private gardens re-enforces their sense of belonging to the city. While place attachment may account for identification with a neighborhood or district, the sense of connection to the larger metropolis is another matter. Identification becomes possible through a "metropolitan project"— a mission or goal set by city leaders. The project's emphasis changes over time, yet commitment to it often transcends class, gender and ethnicity. Parks and gardens are shaped by the same forces that shape the metropolitan project in any given era. Green spaces become a medium through which their designers or gardeners express identification with the project, and through it, with the metropolis as a whole.

Using a narrative methodology involving 216 older people in six urban aging environments in the Netherlands, we examined how they use and experience (semi-)public spaces as spaces of encounter, and the meanings they derive from using and experiencing these spaces. The research shows that, first, older people prefer commercial spaces like shopping malls to planned and designed activity spaces in care homes or neighborhood centers. Second, older people struggle with the transformations that have taken place in urban social life since they were young adults. Third, especially frail older people derive meaning from a more passive experience of urban social life, in an observer role. The findings allow us to contribute to ongoing debates on the shifting boundaries between public and private space, and the moral implications of these shifting boundaries from the perspective of a diverse group of older users.

This paper explores the place-based meanings of an urban public space, MacArthur Park, in a Latino and immigrant neighborhood in Los Angeles, California. Both quantitative and qualitative data analysis revealed a broad range of park experiences that were both positive and negative and produced meanings that were individual, social, cultural, and political. The study found that MacArthur Park affirms traditional national, cultural, and ethnic identities for immigrants and supports their construction of a new, translocal and Central American identity in Los Angeles. Although the study found that the park also serves as a restorative, entertaining, and social space for park goers, these positive experiences were accompanied by negative experiences and meanings of the park related to maintenance and crime and conflicts associated with inequality and access, confirming the importance of considering the full range of social, cultural, and political meanings associated with place.

Urban design scholars denounce the recent trend towards the privatization of US public space. Critics emphasize the negative consequences of privatized public space, tied to private ownership, an emphasis on consumption, leisure and security, a targeted audience, and controlled behaviour and design. Yet these key qualities of privatized public spaces have meaning only in the context of one's identity. The same qualities shape experiences of privatized public spaces that can be understood as constrained, as constraining or as a form of resistance, depending on one's gender, race, class and sexuality. This paper challenges the prevailing design critique by examining women's experience of privatized public spaces, drawing on interviews with 43 middle- class women and behavioural mapping in five privatized public spaces in Orange County, California. Recommendations address changes to research and practice to better reflect and accommodate diverse experiences of public space.

Leisure preferences and open space needs were explored within a discrete, homogeneous ethnic community: the Chinese Americans of Chicago's Chinatown. Face-to-face interviews and focus group discussions were used to identify outdoor leisure patterns and preferences, in general, and with respect to new park development being planned for the community. Findings show that although some popular activities are no different from what might be expected for the mainstream Anglo American population, the meaning and significance of these activities have clear and unique ties to Chinese culture. Preferences for the new Chinatown park development mirror activity preferences, emphasizing facilities that enhance the natural environment for passive activities. Notable differences in activity preferences were found within the sample of respondents according to age, generational status, and other factors. Park planning considerations and future research needs are identified.

Focusing on imaginaries of the ideal city is an important method to illustrate the power of ideas, imagination, representations, and even visions, and how these dimensions influence the way in which cities are organized and lived. In this article, we argue that one current and important city imaginary in a Swedish context is the gender-equal city. In this imaginary, the gender-equal city becomes a symbol for the open, tolerant, bustling, safe city, a city aiming to attract the middle and creative classes. However, at the same time, the imaginary of the ideal, gender-equal city is highly ambiguous. The ambiguity will be discussed throughout the article. Based on present planning projects in the city of Umea in Sweden, we will discuss how the imaginary of the gender-equal city is presented, filled with meaning and used in place marketing, with the overall ambition of discussing the possibilities and pitfalls of what we call the gender-equality planning strategy. The aim of the article is to study how the city of Umeå is acting to create a gender-equal city and what kind of imaginaries these practices build on. The material consists primarily of a case study focusing on projects that aim to create an equal city, and also includes analyses of policy documents and media reports. This study illustrates how imaginaries are produced through local projects and different imaginaries provide different spaces for politicizing gendered power relations.

This article uses photography and ethnography to understand and represent residents’ emotional phenomenological experiences of walks through their neighborhood. It addresses how narratives of the personal and the social structure individuals’ experiences of familiar public spaces. A diverse group of residents gave the author their personal tours of emotionally significant neighborhood places. The author then continued these conversations with participants using photographs of these ordinary sites. The article addresses how these personal stories layer on public spaces and build aspects of psychologist Kurt Lewin’s situational, emotional and individual-specific life space, as well as constructing senses of dwelling and Heideggerian lifeworld. To consider ways in which people build senses of home in public spaces, the article looks at ordinary things to which people give little reflective attention yet that often support deep connections to place.

This paper focuses on the development and meaning of informal social control experiences when strangers intervene face-to-face in instances of child punishment in public. The central question is, in the absence of formal authority and institutional resources, how do strangers construe wrongful punishment, negotiate deviant import, and manage control outcomes? Thirty-seven interviews were conducted with people who intervened on at least one occasion, and seven more with witness-participants. Interviewees described the meanings, events, and circumstances surrounding 50 acts of face-to-face intervention. The analysis focuses on some of the micro-political forces, such as claim themes and audience norms, that shape control outcomes. The interpersonal predicament for interveners reflects the cultural tension created when approval of physical punishment is widespread, when distinctions between normal and deviant punishment are ambiguous, and when interaction rules for informal intervention are not institutionalized.

Geographers have effectively examined girls’ reactions and resistances to adult control in public space, but the ways that girls learn about and rein scribe social differences like race and class through ‘hanging-out’ practices in public, urban space have yet to be sufficiently explored and theorized. Therefore, in this paper I consider the normative productivity of girls’ spatial practices, as well as girls’ resistances to adultist space. I examine the case of consumption space and focus on how girls utilize, create and reproduce myriad social identifiers as they hang out in public, urban space. Consumption space and consumerism dominate the urban spaces and hanging-out practices of teenagers, and while girls complain about the ubiquity of consumption space, girls’ public social-spatial activities inevitably involve consumption space. Therefore, consumption’s symbols and spaces are central to the normative production of girls’ identities like class and race, and of social difference more generally in urban space.

Based on ethnographic fieldwork in the cities of Jakarta and Yogyakarta, this paper investigates the recent surge in the production and circulation of street art through technology and media in post-New Order Indonesia. The global style of street art communicates how public space and the street have become emblematic of changing discourses of individual rights, urban aesthetics, and the practice of citizenship in urban Indonesia. While the history of Western graffiti as a form of defacement and resistance continues to exert a powerful hold on the imagination of Indonesian street artists, I argue that the vernacular meaning of street art and graffiti refuses an easy bifurcation of public and private spaces, while blurring the lines between commercial and cultural urban interventions.

The city of Singapore has a very short history of 185 years. However, since 1972 , Singapore has been confronting significant transformations owing to different agendas and priorities of the city government. The present morphology of the city can be best described as the accumulation of different layers, carefully controlled and manipulated by the State through planning and design. Hence, the public spaces within the city are formed as a result of the interactions among these layers. The inclusion of each layer not only shapes the physical form of the public space, but also adds a newer set of meaning by adding new functional role within the existing fabric. This article is a result of the preliminary investigation of a research project that observes the urban transformation of Singapore from 1972 to 2005 within the framework of this layered morphology. It will delve deeper to discern and identify the layers that act as the main determinant for shaping the urban public spaces in Singapore.

As urbanization progresses, open space becomes structured as units of progressively smaller sizes and with more pronounced physical and functional boundaries. This paper analyzes these Open Space Units (OSUs) in Flanders, and seeks how size of open space units, hence also spatial fragmentation, affects the evaluation of these units. The results clearly confirm a ‘fragmentation bias’, meaning a lower valuation of smaller units, which leads to a strategic gap and land use uncertainty concerning large stretches of area with high degree of fragmentation. This valuation is confronted with the contrasting and positive values expressed in a strategic open space project by local stakeholders about a typical peri-urban remnant open space unit. Overcoming the ‘fragmentation bias’ in open space valuation is a continuing challenge in planning and open space policies, especially in highly urbanized environments.

The purpose of this study was to explore the ability of place attachment to predict place-specific and general pro-environment behavioural intentions. The study sample (n 1⁄4 355) consisted of visitors to a Canadian national park, Point Pelee National Park. The place attachment scale utilized in this study was designed to measure three subdimensions: place identity, place dependence, and place affect. Explor- atory factor analysis of data measured by these scales revealed two place attachment subdimensions. Place affect, an individual’s emotions and feelings for a place, acted as a more generalized or pervasive phenomenon. Place affect items loaded on both the place identity (an individual’s cognitive assessment of a place) and place dependence (an individual’s functional assessment of a place). Structural equation modeling confirmed the strength of place attachment’s ability to predict place-related pro-environment intentions. It also identified place attachment’s prediction of pro-environment behavioural intensions related to everyday life. Place identity mediated the effects of place dependence in predicting pro- environment intentions. Further research which utilizes in-depth and longitudinal case studies is sug- gested to explore the role of place-specific emotion and feelings, as well as place identity in fostering environmentally-responsible action as these factors are theorized to play an important role in promoting pro-environmental behaviour. Studies of place attachment to everyday settings rather than iconic national parks are also called for.

This paper analyses the importance of commercial signs in contemporary cities, and explores the theoretical concepts that might be helpful in understanding the operation of commercial signage controls in historic places. The focus is on issues that cluster around theories of consumer culture, as well as on the practices of city centre management, city marketing and urban tourism. The discussion is predominantly concerned with commercial city centres because these are places where different functions and meanings coexist. They are often places where different commercial and non-commercial interests have to be managed or reconciled. City centres are also public areas where human experience is given meaning and valorised through signs, symbols and patterns of behaviour, which result from a combination of physical and symbolic factors of the built environment. In many cases, the commercial city centre coincides with the historic core of a city, and the challenge of the local authority is to combine all functions with the preservation of historic buildings and places. At the end, this paper discusses how forms of aesthetic control over commercial signage can be applied to preserve local identity and stimulate commercial and touristic activities simultaneously.

The focus of this paper is the strategies of civic actors in a central Tokyo neighborhood to claim a voice in managing changes to their community and creating shared meanings for neighborhood streets and public spaces. In Yanaka an active community movement has worked to protect and improve shared community spaces by celebrating them as a historic legacy and a shared community resource, investing new and more complex values and claims on shared spaces, and redefining public streets as civic spaces in their neighborhood. They assert the rights of community participation in managing urban change by creating a neighborhood constitution, organizing art events and festivals in the streets, engaging new participants in shared property rights, proposing new criteria for evaluating urban change, and telling stories of a strong and distinct community. Claiming ownership of the meaning and management of local public spaces is a political strategy of self empowerment by community groups that has been relatively successful in this case.

This article makes the case for shadowing as ethnographic methodology: focusing attention on what occurs as interlocutors move among settings and situations. Whereas ethnographers often zoom in on one principal set of situations or site, we argue that intersituational variation broadens and deepens the researcher’s ethnographic account as well as affording important correctives to some common inferential pitfalls. We provide four warrants for shadowing: (a) buttressing intersituational claims, (b) deepening ethnographers’ ability to trace meaning making by showing how meanings shift as they travel and how such shifts may affect interlocutors’ understandings, (c) gaining leverage on the structure of subjects’ social worlds, and (d) helping the ethnographer make larger causal arguments. We show the use value of these considerations through an analysis of violence and informal networks in an ethnography of immigrant Latinos who met to socialize and play soccer in a Los Angeles park.

This article presents a field study conducted in a public park in a major city of southern France. Using a comprehensive approach and an ethnographic method, the goal is to gain insight into the everyday activities that govern the use of public space. By granting meaning to actions considered useless and insignificant, the purpose of this article is to understand how the sharing of public space, in particular the overcrowding observed in Borely Park, participates in youth socialization. People’s experiences and interactions in a public park create ties between them. The sharing of places, and the impressions generated as a result, help bring peers closer together while also bridging the generation gap. Through its description of how the youth use this metropolitan park, this study highlights the importance of the sense dimension in the building of societies. Finally, this work argues that youth are continually learning to live together without really realizing it.