Public Cities.

Abstract

This chapter explores 'Public Cities‘, asking who the public is, how publics make claims for and of cities and how we can consider these claims in light of the built environment profession’s commitments to justice and participatory governance. In particular, the chapter considers belonging, inclusion and exclusion from both the idea of ‘the public’ and public spaces themselves, and how these dynamics can be configured along racial, gendered, classed and even species lines. It proposes an understanding of ‘the public’ as multiple, diverse, porous and shifting, and consider what this means for the design and governance of public space. Further, this chapter explores trends currently shaping ‘public cities’, including neoliberalism, commodification, securitisation, gentrification, neo-colonialism and the policing of public space, and outlines some of the ways that the production, use and governance of the public realm can reveal some of the key conflicts, tensions and possibilities of contemporary urbanism.