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This paper reports on a research study that examined if and how older adults use urban waterfront promenades for physical activity. The research involved case studies of three waterfront promenades in Vancouver, British Columbia. Research methods included field observations and surveys. The findings conclude that older adults use Vancouver's waterfront promenades in significant numbers, overwhelmingly for walking; that more of them walk with others rather than alone; that nearness to home may be a determining factor as to which promenade they use; and that the most important environmental characteristics of promenades may be well-separated walking and biking paths, trees, shade when it's hot, and sun when it's cool.

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The paper examines four case studies of neighborhood parks in socially and ethnically diverse communities of Los Angeles in order to explore similarities and differences of their uses and assigned meanings. More specifically, the study utilizes structured field observations and surveys of users in order to examine sociocultural patterns of park use, the relevance of past models of park design, and the level of fit between current park form and contemporary user needs.

This study investigated influences of residential street layout on neighboring. The study design was quasi-experimental with one pretest and two posttest measurements in an intervention group and two control groups. Data were collected using a recently developed questionnaire (MMN) and through field observations. The intervention implemented in this study was a transformation of three sections of residential streets into street parks, entailing considerable changes in street floor and spatial layout, provisions of street furniture like benches, planting of trees and flower beds, installation of play equipment, and prohibition of traffic and parked vehicles. Supportive acts of neighboring, neighbor annoyance, and children's play showed an overall increase in the intervention streets, interpreted as a sign of increased involvement in the neighborhood. Weak social ties and neighborhood attachment showed more complex patterns of changes, depending on demographic factors. It is suggested that symbolic effects of the changes may be more significant than functional effects, and thus that a change of neighborhood identity is an important mechanism.

While public spaces in city centres still provide for the traditional uses for which they were created, today - as the example of the sidewalk cafe shows - their attraction lies more in their ability to generate individual pleasure and play.

Based primarily on an observational study, this paper addresses privately owned and managed public space at the Tjuvholmen waterfront development in Oslo. To date, no other research has been published internationally on external private-public space in a Nordic context. The four factors or processes dealt with are planning and development, design, management and, in particular, use. The main finding is that Tjuvholmen’s public spaces are characterized by ‘tightness’ and reduced publicness. As such, they share key characteristics with private-public spaces described in the literature from the US and the UK, while in some other respects they also deviate from these.

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.

Our children are the citizens of tomorrow, who will have to safeguard the future of our cities. Yet children are too frequently ignored by architects, devel- opers, city officials and planners. Inattention and brutality in human relationships are internalized and leave their traces in the child's development. The monotony, indifference and placelessness of the physical environment also leaves a lasting impact on the cognitive and emotional development of children (Dubos, 1968).

Street hawking is generally considered as a "menace" or an "eyesore" that prevents the development of Mumbai as a world-class city. But this article explores the essential presence of hawkers in a city, which requires a critical understanding of the functioning of public space. The experiences of hawkers in Mumbai, as elsewhere in India, have taught them not to fear a regulatory state, but a predatory one, a state that constantly demands bribes and threatens demolition, against which a licence provides security.

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.

Recent critiques of conventional poverty research have highlighted the need to move beyond the conceptual limitations of “neighborhood effects” models and the use of the tropes of “adaptation” or “resistance” to explain the behaviors and actions of the urban poor. We use ethnographic field observations and interviews with public-housing residents to address these limitations in the poverty literature, assess competing explanations of poor people’s agency, and provide insight into the importance of space as a mediating link between macrostructural constraints and locally situated behaviors. We theorize agency and identity as spatial phenomena—with spatial attributes and spatial influences—and examine how different spatial meanings and locations enable or constrain particular forms of social action and behavior. Our ethnographic and interview data depict several strategies by which residents “use space” to provide a measure of security and protection, to designate and avoid areas of criminality and drug activity, and to challenge or support the redevelopment of public housing. From these data we show that urban space is not a residual phenomenon in which social action occurs, but a constitutive dimension of social life that shapes life experiences, social conflict, and action.

The authors seek to extend the literature on inequalities and exclusion in the nighttime economy through a rhythmic analysis of visitor presence in public space in nightlife districts in the city centres of the Dutch cities of Groningen, Utrecht, and Rotterdam. Substantial inequalities in visitor presence, based on race/ethnicity and gender, are demonstrated. In the cities considered, racial/ethnic inequalities vary more in spatial terms, and gender inequalities fluctuate more heavily over the course of the night. Overall, however, the findings support the argument that exclusion from the nighttime economy needs to be understood in temporal—ecological terms. Multiple drivers, or pacemakers, of rhythmic inequalities rooted in race/ethnicity and gender are identified, including opening hours and revellers' collective habits. For advocates of greater diversity among nighttime-economy participants, the analysis suggests that neither a more varied supply of nightlife premises, nor more surveillance and policing, are straightforward solutions: a strong orientation of premises toward university students and urban professionals may promote gender-based inclusion, but deters nonwhite revellers, and more police on the street may empower women to move through a nightlife district unaccompanied yet reduce the inclination to do so among racial/ethnic minorities.

The modern world is facing rapid urbanisation, increasing urban population, constant growth of cities and the construction of new neighbourhoods. Moreover, new neighbourhoods often lack the elements of identity in the context of the place and the people who live there. Therefore, it is necessary to construct these identities together with the physical and natural structure of place and the cultural identity of the people. The construction of spatial identities has been studied in two case studies of “new” neighbourhoods, Mađir (Banjaluka, Bosnia- Herzegovina) and Ilsvika (Trondheim, Norway), using a qualitative analysis method. The comparison makes use of a triangle model that includes three elements of identity construction as three points of analysis: a) spatial context, b) participation in processes of planning and construction and c) action in place. The two cultural contexts and two ways of constructing spatial identity in the new neighbourhoods studied show certain similarities and differences. The study points to the universal significance of this phenomenon and indicates that the process could be improved in each case by applying positive experiences from the other, with adaptation to the specific context. Considering the importance and interrelation of the three elements involved in construction of spatial identities, they should be harmonised in all stages of development.

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.

Preferences for urban spaces were studied as a function of spatial category and nine predictor variables: spaciousness, refuge, enclosure, coherence, legibility, complexity, mystery, typicality, and age. A non-metric factor analysis of the preference ratings yielded four categories of urban spaces: Open-Undefined, Well- Structured, Enclosed Settings, and Blocked Views. These categories are similar to the spatial categories proposed for natural environments by S. Kaplan (1979, Assessing Amenity Resource Values. USDA Forest Service General Technical Report RM-68), who stressed openness and spatial definition as bases for categorization. The Well-Structured category was best liked, with the other categories not very well liked and about equal in preference. Regression analyses revealed three variables as consistent predictors of preference. Coherence and complexity were positively related to preference, and age was negatively related. Overall, the results support the Kaplans' proposal that both spatial and non-spatial factors are important in categorizing environments and in explaining environmental preferences.

This article analyses post-apartheid public spaces through social and spatial practices at the Victoria & Alfred (V&A) Waterfront mall in Cape Town. Our empirical evidence suggests that these public spaces involve much more than just consumption patterns, as they sustain and support novel ways of asserting social identities in a new political situation. These changes are, however, quite complex and fraught with ambivalence. Consequently, we scrutinize how race is staged in that space, and how racial diversity produces various kinds of boundaries. We then argue that these urban practices lead us to an understanding of the precarious balance between private and public spaces. We propose the notion of ‘publicization’ – the process whereby private spaces acquire a more public dimension.

High street shopping centres are at the core of cities. The continuing design challenge is to adapt a built environment inheritance to meet the present commercial needs of retailers, maximize the potential of the physical environment and address the social amenities that are expected from a city/town centre public realm. This paper addresses the question of what makes a successful high street shopping centre and seeks to understand the relationship between property values, location, physical characteristics, diversity of retailing and use, and social vitality in two successful city centre retailing environments. The research also demonstrates the blurring between commercial and public space, and supports Carmona’s argument that successful social space also creates economic value.

This article examines contemporary Americans' collective conceptions of childhood and children by focusing attention on the young's participation in public life. Children's behavior and treatment in public places were observed and recorded in fieldnotes over a two year period. These observations, related findings from previously published studies, contemporary urban legends, newspaper stories and advice columns are analyzed in light of the history of childhood in Western societies. That analysis indicates that the young's access to public places in contemporary American society is quite limited and that they are commonly treated as less than complete persons. At least in public places, there is little evidence that the distinction between childhood and adulthood is eroding in contemporary American society, as many have claimed.

The policing of the anti-poll tax campaign allows an insight into how protest is incorporated. Protestors were both accommodated and coerced as police sought to balance various threats of 'trouble.' Concessions and overt assistance were offered as a means of 'winning over' the protest organizers, whilst legal conditions were imposed to ensure that any threat of disorder was contained. This analysis suggests that notions of an ubridled shift towards a more confrontational style of policing in the wake of the Public Order Act are unfounded. It illustrates the relationship between institutional and interactional social processes, for institutional considerations limit the police's room for manoeuvre, whilst low-level decisions by police officers themselves have implications for those institutions.

AIDS media lead unexpected lives once distributed through urban space: billboards fade, posters go missing, bumper stickers travel to other cities. The materiality of AIDS campaign objects and of the urban settings in which they are displayed structures how the public interprets their messages. Ethnographic observation of AIDS media in situ and interview data reveal how the materiality of objects and places shapes the availability of AIDS knowledge in Accra, Ghana. Significantly for AIDS organizations, these material conditions often systematically obstruct access to AIDS knowledge for particular groups. Attending to materiality rethinks how scholars assess the cultural power of media.