As part of our new podcast, Perspectives on Public Space, we’re posting stories, bibliographies, and links to introduce some of the theories and ideas that have shaped the definition and perception of public space. As with all our stories, the red J icon indicates free access to the linked research on JSTOR.

Public space is a tangible presence in everyday urban life but simultaneously contradictory and abstract as a concept. While defining public space may seem like an obvious distinction of property rights, it doesn’t necessarily have a clear-cut or universal definition. Tracing its history back to the forum and agora of Greek antiquity, public spaces have been sites of gathering, where people of different classes, races, genders, and histories can meet and grapple with each other. Public space could be thought of as existing along a spectrum of “publicness,” whereby factors like access, ownership, regulation, and cultural meaning can determine just how “public” a public space really is.

Many of us who grew up in urban or suburban areas may have fond childhood memories of parks or playgrounds as spaces of social connection and play. As adults, nearby plazas or parks may be spaces of respite and relaxation or places to meet up with friends and family after work or on weekends. Public spaces serve many purposes for many people, and this broad utility makes it a fruitful area of inquiry into human societies and cultures. For decades, scholars have studied public space in its many forms to better understand its social, cultural, and political implications.

While urban planners often describe public space as idealistic and free of conflict, true publicness is far from utopian. Struggles over the right to access public space connects many social movements like the global feminist movements, environmental justice movements, racial justice movements, and others. From Union Square in New York City to Tahrir Square in Cairo, public spaces are the immersive theaters through which revolutionary action is staged, and everyday life is performed.

The following reading list presents some of the main debates in public space scholarship. The list begins with relevant works on park politics that help to illustrate historical and contemporary struggles for access and strategies for the ethnographic study of public space. It then examines texts that touch on political protest, public expressions of sex/sexuality, safety, security, and privatization. As a whole, this list offers perspectives on the varied approaches and focuses of the study of public space.

The Politics of Parks, Plazas, and Playgrounds

Setha M. Low, “Spatializing Culture: The Social Production and Social Construction of Public Space in Costa Rica,” American Ethnologist 23, no. 4 (1996): 861–79.

In this classic paper, anthropologist Setha Low establishes a methodological framework for the ethnographic study of public space. The author studies two plazas in Costa Rica’s capital city, San José: the Parque Central, a historic plaza, and the Plaza de la Cultura, a contemporary plaza emblematic of San José’s “new Costa Rican culture.” Through participant observation, interviews, and historical analysis, Low identifies “sociopolitical forces, spatial practices, and efforts at social control that provide insight into the conflicts that arise as different groups attempt to claim and define these urban spaces.” The study spatializes the socio-cultural haunting of Indigenous and colonial histories and demonstrates how public spaces can be sites of democratic contestation and negotiation. Additionally, the noted difference between the historic Parque Central’s dense foliage and Plaza de la Cultura’s modern, more open design resulted in “increased social controls” and a decreased social tolerance for illegal activities. Low’s ethnographic innovation continues to lay out a framework for future studies of public space.

Kevin G. McQueeney, “More than Recreation: Black Parks and Playgrounds in Jim Crow New Orleans,” Louisiana History: The Journal of the Louisiana Historical Association 60, no. 4 (2019): 437–78.

According to historian Kevin McQueeney, parks and playgrounds were sites of struggle in Jim Crow New Orleans wherein Black New Orleanians challenged their exclusion from public space. While Civil Rights era struggles for access focused on the desegregation of public space, these earlier activists “sought recreation in private parks…lobbied the government to build separate [B]lack parks or playgrounds…took it upon themselves to build the [B]lack-operated Crescent Star Park and supply their own playgrounds; and…claimed ‘squatter rights’ to Shakespeare Park, a previously whites-only space.” While more recent redevelopment and budget cuts have obscured the physical traces of this rich political history, African American residents have become New Orleans’ predominant park patrons, proving the strength of local racial-justice advocacy during the Jim Crow era. McQueeney argues that the pursuit of public space and recreation contends that Black Americans saw parks as political and recreational spaces and that these spaces should continue to be viewed “as sites of the [B]lack freedom struggle in New Orleans.”

Setha M. Low, Dana Taplin, and Suzanne Scheld, Rethinking Urban Parks: Public Space and Cultural Diversity (University of Texas Press, 2005).

Setha Low et al. build upon urban sociologist William H. Whyte’s foundational text, The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces, to grapple with the threats facing public spaces at the turn of the twenty-first century. According to the authors, modern-day parks face the effects of “patterns of design and management that exclude some people and reduce social and cultural diversity.” While exclusionary practices are inscribed in the history of American parks, major contemporary events like the 9/11 terrorist attacks intensify these practices and reverberate out at the local level through “fear of the other.” Low et al. warn that when public parks are designed and/or managed in a way that restricts and excludes “immigrants, local ethnic groups, and culturally diverse behaviors,” the last of the democratic spaces in the United States will be gone. Rethinking Urban Parks is an attempt to retain and reimagine the democratic public park wherein community members may meet and grapple with each other in a public forum.

Assembly and Occupation

Joanna Merwood-Salisbury, “Patriotism and Protest: Union Square as Public Space, 1832–1932,” Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 68, no. 4 (2009): 540–59.

Architectural historian Joanna Merwood-Salisbury tracks the unintended, political history of Union Square, a small park in New York City which “has played a…central role in symbolizing democracy, serving as a place for democratic action from the time of the Civil War until today.” Unlike New York’s more famous Central Park, Union Square quickly shed its quiet, pastoral character for more active use by the public in the mid-nineteenth century. While not intentionally designed as a forum for public dissent, public use of the park transformed the space from a site for Olmstedian passive enjoyment to a site of political realization. Merwood-Salisbury describes the 1861 rally following the attack on Fort Sumner as reframing “urban space…as an active setting, amplifying the public voice.” However, the square’s political meaning was persistently contested, especially during the communist and socialist demonstrations during the early twentieth century. Despite decades of pressure from developers, urban elites, and the state to restrain and regulate the park, Union Square stands as a testament to the enduring radical potential of public space.

Nasser Rabbat, “The Arab Revolution Takes Back the Public Space,” Critical Inquiry 39, no. 1 (2012): 198–208.

Scholar of architecture Nasser Rabbat investigates the role of public space in the Arab Spring. Through a close reading of Libyan scholar al-Sadiq al-Nayhum’s Islam in Captivity: Who Stole the Mosque and Where Did Friday Disappear? and what Rabbat calls “the new revolutionary episode on the path to Arab liberation,” Rabbat counters the idea “that modernity had failed to take root in the Arab world because in large part it had grown out of Western history and developed in a Western cultural and epistemological context, which is incompatible with the culture and knowledge nurtured by Islam.” While the mosque had historically been the spatial focus of mobilizations in Islamic cities, the imported public square or plaza became the stage for political demonstration in the 2010s. Rabbat describes how mosques serve as “incubators of political protest” whereby Muslim and non-Muslim protestors can find refuge, as well as “the will to march.” Tradition, in this way, is intricately interwoven with modernity through the outpouring of political will into the streets and, ultimately, the square.

Wladimir Riphagen and Robbert A. F. L. Woltering, “Tales of a Square: The Production and Transformation of Political Space in the Egyptian (Counter)Revolution,” Arab Studies Quarterly 40, no. 2 (2018): 117–33.

Wladimir Riphagen and Robbert Woltering build upon the work of French philosopher Henri Lefebvre to investigate the evolution of Tahrir Square before, during, and after the famous public space’s involvement in the 2011 Egyptian revolution. Lefebvre, well-known for his work on the social production of space, is responsible for a framework called “the conceptual triad” that “explains how contentious politics can change the political meaning political meaning of a particular space.” The triad is comprised of perceived space, conceived space, and lived space, which describe “physical space as we see it,” “space that… planners conceive of,” and “how [space] is lived in by people,” respectively. According to Riphagen and Woltering, Tahrir Square morphed into a sacred counter-space during the eighteen-day revolt, wherein “the lived space was radically different from its conceived space.” While the Square’s post-revolt life is largely quiet, it is marked by a policed emptiness. The authors posit that Tahrir Square’s imbalanced conceptual triad as the heavily policed, political artifact, as well “as the patch of grass, the traffic roundabout without meaning” points to its continued political promise as a counter-space.

Safety, Security, and Promiscuous Publicness

Gill Valentine, “The Geography of Women’s Fear,” Area 21, no. 4 (1989): 385–90.

Geographer Gill Valentine’s paper on the spatial implications of women’s fear opens with a striking example of one woman’s nightmare coming to life. “In March 1988,” she writes, “Deborah Linsley was stabbed to death in an empty train compartment on the Orpington to Victoria Line.” According to Valentine, public response to Linsley’s death demonstrated the personal responsibility of women to avoid finding themselves in unsafe spaces and situations. Valentine argues that public blame “encourages women to transfer their threat appraisal from men to certain public spaces where they encounter attackers.” In the rest of the paper, Valentine details the relationship between women’s fear and their use of public space, noting that the negotiation of safety results in “a restricted use and occupation of public space.” Finally, Valentine reveals an assumption “that the location of male violence is unevenly distributed through space and time” and more likely to occur in public, despite the statistical probability of domestic violence being much higher than an assault in public space by a stranger. Valentine reframes common myths about safety in public space through the experiences of women in a society that privileges personal responsibility over collective care.

Dimitris Chalastanis, “Public Space during the Covid-19 Pandemic: Expanding Policing/Emerging Politicization in Athens, Greece,” Análise Social 60, no. 2 (255) (2025): 2–22.

Urban scholar Dimitris Chalastanis investigates the expansion of policing in public space in Athens, Greece during the COVID-19 pandemic. He proposes that COVID-19 governance—including lockdown policies to slow the spread of the virus—enabled “the suspension of political rights and the imposition of advanced surveillance mechanisms regulating nearly every facet of people’s lives.” In other words, lockdown policies meant to reduce the spread of the deadly virus were also an opportunity for the state to control and securitize public space. He outlines twenty years of Athens’s political history prior to the COVID-19 pandemic to illustrate pandemic policing as an advancement of the state into the public space. Rather than recognizing a lack of proper healthcare as the cause of growing death rates, the state targeted informal politics like demonstrations in public space for spreading the virus. While COVID became an invisible enemy, the unruly public and public space became visible enemies vulnerable to suppressive policing.

Samuel R. Delany, Times Square Red, Times Square Blue (NYU Press, 1999).

Anyone who visits New York City today will experience a totally different Times Square than the one American writer Samuel R. Delany encountered in the 1980s and 1990s and subsequently described in his now classic text, Times Square Red, Times Square Blue. Instead of today’s massive, illuminated billboards and roaming Mickeys and Minnies, Delany found a vibrant public space dotted with vendors, tourists, sex work, and, yes, gay movie houses. Split in two distinct essays, “Times Square Blue” and “…Three, Two, One, Contact: Times Square Red,” this book puts forward a compelling case for the nurturing of spaces where “large numbers of people understand, appreciate, and seek out interclass contact and communication conducted in a mode of good will.” Through the retelling of his own personal experiences, Delany describes a complex social fabric wherein men in pursuit of sex with other men negotiate privacy and publicness in the darkness of Times Square’s pornographic theaters. In no way utopian, the theaters and the surrounding streets provide messy spaces of contact and connection for those who may not have access elsewhere.

Privatizing Public Space

Claudio De Magalhães, “The Governance of Urban Public Spaces in London: In the Public Interest or in the Interest of Local Stakeholders?” in Critical Dialogues of Urban Governance, Development and Activism: London and Toronto, edited by Susannah Bunce, Nicola Livingstone, Loren March, Susan Moore, and Alan Walks (UCL Press, 2020), 80–92.

As stated by architecture and urban planning scholar Claudio De Magalhães, London parks and other public areas are increasingly under the control and management of non-profit organizations. De Magalhães describes how the semi-privatization of public space can be an “effective way of ensuring that towns and cities remain viable and competitive,” not to mention better resourced. On the other hand, privatization can lead to the privileging of “commodity imperatives…over communal ones.” In this paper, De Magalhães outlines the attributes of a truly public, public space and analyzes four cases of public spaces in London which “still belong to local governments but whose governance has been fully and successfully transferred to other social actors.” While much of the literature on park privatization has found privatized park management to reduce the “publicness” of public parks, the author found that the four case parks are well-managed by private governance structures with relatively minimal conflict. Interestingly, this study suggests that London’s emergent park privatization process is “creating a landscape of multiple ‘publicnesses’ catering to diverse groups of interests, rather than a narrow contraposition between public and private, or between individual and corporate.”

Melissa Checker, The Sustainability Myth: Environmental Gentrification and the Politics of Justice (NYU Press, 2020).

According to urban anthropologist Melissa Checker, public green spaces like parks raise property values in surrounding neighborhoods, thereby aiding urban displacement phenomena like gentrification. To explain this, Checker introduces a framework called “environmental gentrification” which identifies the process by which “urban development unevenly distributes environmental benefits and burdens,” especially through the development and siting of green spaces in low-income neighborhoods.

Focusing on Harlem in New York City, Checker tracks the role of public green spaces in New York’s social reform and urban renewal eras from the nineteenth century to the present, unfurling a history of contestation regarding public spaces including Central Park and Marcus Garvey Park. Through ethnographic research and historic analysis, she presents a striking portrait of the relationship between urban development and public green space and the complicity of public space in the privatization of public goods and the displacement of racialized urban residents. Checker may leave you wondering if your neighborhood park is just the remnant of “an aggressive, growth-driven agenda in bright, green cloth.”

Don Mitchell, “The End of Public Space? People’s Park, Definitions of the Public, and Democracy,” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 85, no. 1 (1995): 108–33.

Geographer Don Mitchell details the contested history of the People’s Park, a grassy parcel of land owned by University of California and “a haven for those squeezed out by a fully regulated urban environment” in Berkeley, California. In the late 1980s, University of California began negotiations with Berkeley City Council to regain some control of the People’s Park after around twenty years of community-led management of the space. By August 1991, the City and the University turned to violence to clear the park, beating unhoused Park residents and other dedicated Park users. Through this case, Mitchell reveals the “two opposed, and perhaps irreconcilable, ideological visions of the nature and purpose of public space.” In the eyes of the activists and unhoused people who used and lived in the People’s Park, “public space was an unconstrained space within which political movements can organize and expand.” And, in the eyes of the University, public space was “open space for recreation and entertainment, subject to usage by an appropriate public.” Mitchell argues that the case of the People’s Park invites curiosity about the “appropriate uses of public space, the definitions of legitimate publics, and the nature of democratic discourse and political action.” Public space, then, is not a purely physical space but an invitation for collective struggle. In this sense, politics and “publicness” are made and remade in the same arena.