Providing Public Space in a Contemporary Metropolis, livre ebook

Treats public space as a complex ensemble of multiple types of spaces with different attributes, responding to different sets of conflictive interests and resulting in varying degrees of publicness, rather than as a homogenous entity, measurable along a simple and uniform scale.

Increasingly, public space provision and management are being transferred from the public sector to real estate developers, private sector organisations, voluntary groups and community bodies. Contrasting the more historical, horizontal character of London with the intense street life of high-rise Hong Kong, this book tells the story of the two cities’ relationships with non-traditional forms of public space governance.

The authors consider the implications for the ‘publicness’ of these complex spaces and the challenges and impacts that different forms of provision have on those with a stake in them, and on the cities as a whole.

1. Introduction

2. Conceptualising Public Space for Governance: A Complex Shared Common Good

3. The Nature of Publicness

4. The Governance and Management of Public Space

5. Public Space Management in London and Hong Kong

6. The Quantitative Challenges of Public Space Provision and Management

7. The Qualitative Challenges of Public Space Provision and Management: Quality and Responsiveness

8. Conclusions and the Sketch of a Practical Theory of Public Space Governance