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Planners and urban designers place high value on public open spaces, because of the latter's contribution to the quality of life and social interaction of residents in an urban development. Many urban theorists consider open space as an important component of a healthy urban environment. It is well established in the literature that the utilisation of public space varies from context to context. This article investigates whether the utilisation of open space at the neighbourhood level is more associated with the physical and functional properties of open space or if it varies across different cultures and contexts of cities. This research adopts the method of comparative analysis, involving three case studies from different cultures, and climatic and geographical contexts. In each of these three cities, the opinions of residents and visitors about public open space were obtained and observation surveys were conducted to measure the utilisation of these spaces. The research found that the utilisation of public space at various levels of neighbourhood significantly differs between cities because of the local context, such as culture, social values and climate, instead of just being due to the physical and functional properties of open space.

Applying a gender perspective to cities reveals how spatial structure and social structure are mutually constitutive. This article reviews the ways cities have reflected and reinforced gender relations in the United States from the turn of the twentieth century to the present. First, I discuss ways in which women in industrial cities challenged the ideology of separate spheres. Next, I suggest that the post–World War II city was shaped by an era of high patriarchy similar to the architectural high modernism of the same era, and in the third section, I explore how that urban structure limited women's opportunities outside the home. In the fourth part, I examine changes in the concept of gender as it expanded beyond masculine and feminine categories to include lesbians, gays, and transgender individuals. The article ends with a review of how women's and gay rights movements, gentrification, and planning practices have shaped a more gender-neutral contemporary metropolis.

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.

This paper aims to produce new insights into the complex relationship between the spatial and social dimensions of ethnic segregation in the public space of the walled city of Nicosia. The ethnic demographic of Cyprus is subject to a changing population dynamic by net in-migration, from both the EU and Third World countries, which is mainly found in the city centres. The mechanisms involved in the ways Cypriots and ethnic minorities use the public space of the city centre and the interface (or lack of it) between them lies at the heart of this paper. Building on existing research, the study focuses on a ring of public spaces which, despite their small size and the absence of any clearly defined boundaries, form a physically continuous spatial entity that is distinctly divided among different users. An attempt to account for the observed phenomenon is facilitated by the discussion of a number of relevant topics such as: the city centre as an edge condition; the entrance of users into the space through injection versus infiltration; the relationship between history and spatial adjacency; and the emergence of social phenomena from the attempts of individuals to 'make-do'.

This article examines cultural practices and social life in urban public spaces of postreform China, focusing on the everyday leisure, entertainment, and cultural activities spontaneously organized by grassroots residents or groups. It examines performativity in constituting cultural meanings, reproducing everyday identities, and building up mutual engagements, and unravels the ways in which ordinary people devote resources, labor, and energy to keep alive individual or collective identities. Performances of cultural identities in public spaces entail improvised and temporary social relations which emerge from the immediate contexts of mundane spatial practices. Empirical analyses of public performativity in Guangzhou identify three scenarios, namely, the performativity of public teaching, public shows and performances, and the performative displays of cultural difference between carnivalesque dancing and “high-end culture” in public leisure.

Public space is a topic of great interest for urban scholars and urban planners. Such space, like parks, sidewalks, and plazas, it is argued, can provide the common grounds where the inhabitants of a city meet, exchange ideas, even engage in a variety of cultural performances. This article reports on fieldwork about the use of public space in Shanghai today. We find a great diversity of uses, ranging from vendors who sell their wares to people who engage in heated and extensive political discussions to performers of Beijing opera and ballroom dancing. We also find that the local authorities use a light, and sometimes covert, hand in their oversight of inhabitants in such spaces. Finally, we discover that powerful social differences and inequalities between native inhabitants and working-class migrants, which have emerged during the period of economic reform and market transition, are now actively in evidence in the quality and use of public space in Shanghai. The article puts these findings within a broader theoretical context, concluding in the end that for many—though not all—inhabitants public man is alive and well in Shanghai.

This paper explores the complex relationship between transgendered people and cities in the USA, and, in particular, their relationship with queer spaces within those cities. Some have argued that queer spaces occur at the margins of society and constitute a safe haven for LGBT oppressed by the hetero-normative nature of urban areas. Data from a survey of 149 transgendered individuals indicate that although queer spaces provide a measure of protection for gender variant people, the gendered nature of these spaces results in continued high levels of harassment and violence for this population. The author argues that the strongly gendered dimensions of these spaces suggests that a discursive revisioning of gender is needed to create more transgender friendly urban spaces.

In this essay, I paint a portrait of women in public places and their concerns with crime prevention, based on a survey of the literature and in-depth interviews with women. I argue that there is a situationally appropriate self that crime-prevention advice literature suggests women adopt and that women attempt to adopt. This situated self, however, is sometimes constrained by the general character of public places and by the particular character of the belief system that women have and that the literature recommends with regard to crime prevention. In particular, I view normative beliefs about crime prevention as a "rhetoric" that involves negative contingencies for the woman's situated self in public, including frequent reliance on others, self-profanation, and lengthy or consuming preparations.

This paper examines the relationship between ethnic residential segregation and two components of the built environment: the geographic distribution of its elements and their spatial configuration (i.e., the spatial relations and visual access between those elements). This relationship is investigated through a case study of Arab-Jewish residential segregation in Jaffa. Statistical and structural analyses (Q-analysis) of this case show that the conjunction of elements having different meanings (symbolic, cultural, functional, etc.) with spatial and visual integration attributes provides varying conditions for the expansion of the Arab Jewish residential patterns, a process potentially affecting the geographic scale intensity of residential segregation. It was found, for example, that public land uses having relatively 'neutral' ethnic and symbolic meanings (e.g. commercial sites and parks) and spatially integrated with the surrounding urban environment tend to moderate residential segregation. Identification of the institutional character of the built environment—segregation/encounters in mixed ethnic areas—may contribute to a more socially oriented spatial policy.

The correlation between class and delinquency often observed in areal studies and assumed in prominent sociological theories is elusive in studies of individuals commonly used to test these theories. A restricted conceptualization of class in terms of parental origins and the concentration of self-report survey designs on adolescents in school have removed from this area of research street youth who were once central to classic studies of delinquency. We argue that street youth experience current class conditions that cause serious delinquency, and that life on the street is an important intervening variable that transmits indirect effects of control and strain theory variables, including parental class origins. Data gathered from nearly 1000 Toronto school and street youth are analyzed with important implications for the conceptualization of class and delinquency, testing and integrating sociological theories of delinquency, the measurement of delinquency, and the use of cross-sectional and longitudinal research designs. Our findings especially encourage incorporation of street-based samples into research on class-based aspects of theories of delinquency.

Temporary uses of vacant urban spaces are usually not foreseen in conventional urban planning and have often been linked to economic or political disturbances. In New Zealand, Christchurch’s vacant spaces came into existence after the city was hit by several devastating earthquakes in 2010 and 2011. Parallel to the ‘official’ rebuild dis- course, temporary uses have emerged on vacant post-earthquake sites including community gardens, urban agriculture, art installations, event venues, eateries and cafés, and pocket parks. Based on the review and analysis of exemplary transitional community-initiated open spaces and correlated literature, the paper looks at how the post-disaster urban context in Christchurch has influenced particular aspects of temporary urbanism in comparison with case studies in non-disaster environments. By focusing on the anticipated benefits of community-initiated open spaces, the paper dis- cusses the relevance of temporary uses of vacant urban spaces for urban sustainability in relationship to concepts of community resilience and raises questions about possible long-term values.

In India, there are religious practices intersecting with the process of urbanization at various levels. This paper looks at the practice of tree worship which continues to be a part of everyday life here. Specifically, it looks at how the Peepul tree (Ficus Religiosa) shrine with its serpent stones and the raised platform around it (katte) contributes to the territorial production of urban space in the city of Bangalore. Based on a study of 10 kattes in the city, it finds that these urban spaces belong either to a process of territorialization by the local community or its deterritorialization by the government. The paper builds a theoretical argument for how the katte as a ‘human activity node’ contributes to an ‘urban web’ which is categorized here as the physical layer. It finds that the Peepul tree could enable a ‘network of relations’, termed as the social layer. It suggests that the information fields generated within these layers influences collective memory of the people. Finally, the paper argues that the two layers acting together can help formulate an urban design model that can minimize deterritorialization.

The literature on cities in the developing world equates segregation with the proliferations of enclaves and slums and tends to overlook how the people associated with those places are further segregated in public spaces and enclaves. To account for the symbolic partitioning of Metro Manila, I document the segregating practices of the residents of enclaves (villagers) and slums (squatters). These practices reveal a well-developed sense of place on both sides, a commitment to the relative status positioning of the two groups as expressed through their separation in space. A sense of place explains why squatters and villagers engage in segregating practices. It also enables us to identify other spatial practices that conform to or challenge its logic. Integrating practices are largely consistent with a sense of place, while desegregating practices challenge it and may set up or advance contentious situations. By using this approach we are better able to understand how class patterns of residential segregation are extended to encompass virtually all urban spaces where class interaction occurs.

This article argues critically that the consequences of a binary system of gender norms is experienced as a kind of gender tyranny both for those who transgress gender in their daily lives, but also for those whose lives are lived within such constraints. Feminist geographers and urban theorists have argued that space is gendered and that gendering has profound consequences for women. This article extends this analysis and shows how rigid categorizations of gender fail to include the intersexed and transgendered populations, a small and highly marginalized segment of the wider population. This article uses autoethnographic methods to illustrate the ways that those who transgress gender norms experience a tyranny of gender that shapes nearly every aspect of their public and private lives. The nature of these consequences is explored using citations from the transgender and queer literature as well as the lived experience of this tyranny by the author in a continuum of public to private spaces, including: parking lots, public restrooms, shopping malls, the workplace and the home.

In this symposium, we explore how urban citizenship is about expressing, if not producing, difference, and how fragmentation of claims affects urban citizenship and right to the city movements with their universal, all-inclusive ideals. Investigating social movements, political participation and conflicting diversities in public space in Tel Aviv and Berlin, we see a trend towards a diversification of interests, a weakening of movements, and even a competition over rights and resources rather than a development of mutual support and solidarities among various groups on the pathway to a livable city. This tension, we argue, deserves attention. Radical urban scholarship and politics need to better understand the historical and place-specific contexts that structure the formation of citizenship claims and the courses that citizenship struggles take. Celebrations of urban citizenship as a more contextualized, community oriented, and bottom-up framework (in comparison to national citizenship) should therefore be complemented by a careful investigation of their fragmented and fragmenting practices.

In this paper, I adopt a concept of informal public space from socialist social life as part of the language of postsocialism to explore changing uses of social space by women in contemporary Hồ Chí Minh City. Following Zdravomyslova and Voronkov, I describe the informal public as the space in culture where urbanites are able to demonstrate normality and belonging by participating in neighborhood life. I argue that the use of informal public space has been adapted to meet the new conditions of the post-reform era. Because of this, the informal public is simultaneously a space where urbanites not only can demonstrate belonging but also can mark relative social position by producing or mitigating social distance.

Most theoretical perspectives on neighborhood effects on youth assume that neighborhood context serves as a source of socialization. The exact sources and processes underlying adolescent socialization in disadvantaged neighborhoods, however, are largely unspecified and unelaborated. This article proposes that cross-cohort socialization by older neighborhood peers is one source of socialization for adolescent boys. Data from the National Educational Longitudinal Survey suggest that adolescents in disadvantaged neighborhoods are more likely to spend time with older individuals. I analyze qualitative interview data from 60 adolescent boys in three neighborhoods in Boston to understand the causes and consequences of these interactions and relationships. Some of the strategies these adolescents employ to cope with violence in disadvantaged neighborhoods promote interaction with older peers, particularly those who are most disadvantaged. Furthermore, such interactions can expose adolescents to local, unconventional, or alternative cultural models.

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 article deals with women's use of public space and sense of place in El Raval, a neighbourhood located in the historical center of Barcelona. Attention will be paid to discover to what degree the existence of a quality public space fosters the creation of socially meaningful places, thus contributing to the construction of women's sense of place and urban identities. A qualitative approach, based on direct observation and in-depth interviews with women living in the neighbourhood, has allowed us to capture the main aspects of the building of a sense of place and belonging, that is the use of public space and facilities, the attitude towards living in the neighbourhood, etc.

This research, which uses an intersectional feminist methodological approach, explores the relationships and intersections among women, public urban space, and bicycling, and the gendered processes through which the use of space is claimed, negotiated, and constrained. It builds on the existing scholarship on the gendered nature of public space, and uniquely uses bicycling as the site of inquiry. Drawing primarily from interviews with women cyclists in Chicago, this article explores how gender and other social identities are constructed, challenged, and constituted through an interaction with public space, urban processes and structures, and societal expectations and attitudes. It brings to the forefront and centers these narratives and empirically contextualizes them by linking the scholarship on the gendered (and raced, classed, and sexualized) nature of public space with the scholarship on women’s participation rates and barriers to bicycling. This research examines, through the everyday lived experiences of bicyclists and their multiple subject positions and privileges, how the gendered nature of public space affects the participation and experiences of women cyclists; how public space is negotiated and constrained; and how gender can be both (re)produced and challenged in and through urban space via women bicyclists’ actions. In particular, the research findings explore how women bicyclists must demand and negotiate public space; how their movement and activities are constrained in public space; how gender roles and social reproduction issues intersect with bicycling; and how social, quasi-advocacy group bicycle rides are used as a strategy, with mixed results, to address barriers to women bicyclists’ mobility.