Companion to Public Space

Vikas Mehta is an Associate Professor of urbanism at the School of Planning at the University of Cincinnati. His research explores the various dimensions of urbanity through the exploration of place as a social and ecological setting and as a sensorial art. Mehta is the author of Public Space, an anthology of 98 chapters; The Street: A Quintessential Social Public Space, which received the 2014 Book Award from the Environmental Design Research Association; and with Matthew Frederick, 101 Things I Learned in Urban Design School. Danilo Palazzo is a Professor and Director of the School of Planning at the University of Cincinnati. Prior to moving to Cincinnati, Palazzo was on the faculty at the Polytechnic University of Milan. His major fields of interest are urbanism, urban design, and planning. Palazzo, with Frederick Steiner, has authored Urban Ecological Design: A Process for Regenerative Places, as well as contributing a chapter on "Pedagogical Tradition" to the Companion to Urban Design.

Part 1: Perspectives 1. Public space: a critique of a metamorphosis 2. Crossing disciplinary and locational boundaries in public space-research 3. The collective outdoors: memories, desires and becoming local in an era of mobility 4. Appropriation of public space: a dialectical approach in designing publicness 5. Landshape urbanism: the topography of public space 6. Social justice as a framework for evaluating public space Part 2: Influences 7. Planetary public space: scale, context, and politics 8. Public Space and the New Urban Agenda: fostering a human-centered approach for the future of our cities 9. Safety, public health and public space 10. Inclusiveness and exclusiveness in public open spaces for the visually impaired 11. Public space, austerity and innovation (the London case) 12. Cultural visibility and place quality 13. (Post?)-Colonial parks: urban public space in Trinidad and Zanzibar 14. Global homogenization of public space? a comparison of Western and Eastern contexts 15. Right to the city (at night): surveillance and spectacle in public space 16. No, Hiroba is not public space; so what?! Part 3: Types 17. Types as descriptive and analytic tools in public space research 18. Public space use: a classification 19. How public is public space?: a public/private typology 20. Private, semi-private, and public spaces: Urban design quality critique, comparisons, and recommendations 21. Throwntogether spaces: disassembling ‘city beaches’ 22. Parks and open spaces for older adults? 23. Expanding common ground 24. The skyscraper and public space: an uneasy history and the capacity for radical reinvention 25. Memory, monuments and creating inclusive public spaces Part 4: Actions 26. Public space as a space of resistance and democratic resilience 27. Public space and the political – reconnecting urban resistance and urban emancipation 28. Performing protestability: the dynamic between protests and public spaces 29. Public space, publicness and public-facing art 30. Public space, immigration, and gentrification in the Raval 31. Public space challenges and possibilities in Latin America: the city’s socio-political dimensions through the lens of everyday life 32. Typologies of the temporary: constructing public spaces 33. Bringing public spaces to life: the animation of public space Part 5: Futures 34. Public space and the terror(ism) of time 35. Solidarism: exploring the publicness of parks 36. Events on our urban parkland: scrutinizing public private partnerships in parks governance regimes 37. The private lives of public spaces 38. How can big data transform public space research and design? 39. Digital Technologies and Public Space in Contemporary China 40. What if? Forecasting and composing public spaces 41. The idea of the commons: challenges of enclosure, encroachment, and exclusion