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Abstract
Privately owned public space (POPS) are a new type of public space that was first introduced in New York City in the 1960s. POPS have been thoroughly studied in the Anglo American world; however, little examination has been conducted in welfare states. This paper examines to what extent this type of space is relevant and needed for German cities where the private sector involvement is limited. Survey findings, document analysis, and in-depth interviews indicate that private stakeholders are important partners in the provision of public spaces, and co-produced public spaces like POPS are already part of the urban reality in Germany.
... Indeed, POPS have been associated with privatization of public space; thus, it is contentious whether they are public spaces. Yet, as actors beyond the public sector are increasingly engaged and new types of public spaces keep emerging, there is a consensus that ownership alone is not a decisive factor in defining public spaces (Lee and Scholten 2022). Several authors have suggested other dimensions such as management, accessibility, and inclusiveness (Kohn 2004;Varna and Tiesdell 2010;Langstraat and Van Melik 2013). ...
... Germany is a country that is less associated with POPS than liberal welfare states such as the US. A small number of studies on POPS in Germany suggest their particularity regarding POPS in terms of the context, i.e., welfare state where private sector involvement is rather limited (Lee and Scholten 2022), and relevant planning instrument (Berding et al. 2012;Lee 2022b). In terms of planning instrument, examining POPS in Germany is particularly useful, as it allows one to overcome Anglo-American dominance (Langstraat and Van Melik 2013). ...
The term ‘co-production’ has been used in various fields, including planning, as collaborative forms of public goods and service delivery gain significance. Co-production has two sides—the ‘co’ side refers to actors and their motivations, while the ‘production’ side refers to phases and instruments. This paper examines privately owned public space/s (POPS) based on the two sides of co-production. Thereby, it addresses two research gaps. First, less has been written to date on the involvement of actors other than local authorities and developers. Second, little attention has been paid to the phase through which POPS are co-produced. The paper fills these research gaps by presenting the empirical work undertaken in HafenCity, Hamburg. It reveals a wide range of actors engaged in four different phases through various instruments. This paper also identifies challenges of co-production of POPS, and makes recommendations.
... Maintenance, another important dimension of public space, can be divided into three categories, i.e., cleanliness, provision of amenities and the practice of control (Lee & Scholten, 2022). The maintenance of a space refers to the manner in which a space is cared for on a daily basis and the provision of amenities in the space (Langstraat & Van Melik, 2013). ...
... Entrances or thresholds are seen as a barrier; thus, public spaces that do not have such physical entrances have greater potential for use (Langstraat & Van Melik, 2013). Visual accessibility is also a crucial factor in that public spaces can only be used if they are visible from the outside (Lee & Scholten, 2022). ...
Teheran-ro in Seoul and Mediaspree area in Berlin are pristine examples for public spaces with a history of rapid change in the context of broader political and economic transitions. This study shows that in such a transitional context, the public sector alone is incapable to provide and manage public space. Hence, it engages private sector entities in the form of privately owned public space/s (POPS). By analysing the planning instruments used for POPS in both cases, their uniqueness as well as strengths and weaknesses are revealed. Based on the results this study offers a number of policy recommendations for cities that encounter similar problems.
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... On a continuum with gradual differences between the two extreme poles, i.e., fully public and fully private, there are public spaces with a hybrid character (Sylke, 2008). Examples include privately owned public spaces where private owners provide publicly accessible and usable spaces due to a legal arrangement with the public sector (Kayden et al., 2000;Lee & Scholten, 2022, 2024. Publicly owned public spaces like conservancies (Murray, 2010) and business improvement districts (Houstoun, 2003;Hoyt & Gopal-Agge, 2007) involve non-municipal actors as well, since non-profit organizations take responsibility for their management. ...
Public space is increasingly provided and managed by a variety of actors. In order to describe this phenomenon, several concepts have been used, such as co-production, co-creation and co-design. This paper reviews the existing literature on public space and reveals that these concepts are defined similarly and used interchangeably. Based on a systematic literature review, and aided by bibliometric analysis, the paper attempts to establish transparency regarding current understanding and use of the concepts. By discussing the differences, the paper aims to reduce the ambiguity and increase the clarity of the concepts. The paper concludes by suggesting in which case it would be more appropriate to use which concept.
... It has been identified that POPS make a positive contribution to German cities (Lee and Scholten 2022), however little has been done to assess the quality of them. The process for producing POPS in Germany through the application of a ROW tends to reduce the role of the private sector in open space provision in comparison to more liberal states such as the US and UK (Lee and Scholten 2022). This has led to an underdeveloped field of research in the case of Germany and provides an interesting research topic to understand some of the more nuanced differences in the co-production of POPS. ...
As new forms of public space emerge and the distinction between public and private space is increasingly blurred, the notion of hybrid space has come to light. It encompasses different kinds of public, semi-public, semi-private and private spaces. The proliferation of hybrid space across cities raises an important question as to whether they are public spaces and if so, how public are they? This paper aims to examine the publicness of privately owned public space/s (POPS). POPS are a popular mechanism to provide public spaces, however little is known about their quality. Empirical research using three case studies in Hamburg, Germany, was carried out to understand the publicness of these spaces and qualities that impact this. Through applying the OMAI model – an acronym for ownership, management, accessibility and inclusiveness – key attributes that impact the publicness of the studied POPS are revealed. The lack of private management, use of rights-of-way, inclusion of amenities, the role of public agencies, and transparency regarding ownership affect the publicness of these POPS. Based on the analysis, recommendations are provided so that POPS can functionally integrate with the broader open space network and make a positive contribution to the city overall.
... Historically in the Netherlands, the public sector has largely driven the delivery and management of public spaces (Lee and Scholten 2022;Lohof and Reijndorp 2006;Vigar 2009). Like most European countries, the Dutch nation-state has shifted many of its responsibilities either to provincial or local governments (Cullingworth and Nadin 2002;Healey et al. 1999), or to the private sector (Langstraat and Van Melik 2013; Van Melik, Van Aalst, and Van Weesep 2009). ...
Privately Owned Public Space/s (POPS) is a mechanism to increase provision of public space, particularly in densely built-up urban areas. The empirical work undertaken along the Teheran-ro in Seoul reveals that even well-equipped and highly accessible POPS can be exclusive or underused. This paper argues that the problem of exclusion and underuse of POPS is related to the lack of knowledge of POPS and of awareness that they are public spaces. The more they are known and perceived as public spaces, the more widely and actively they will be used. Hence, the paper adds further recommendations to the existing suggestions.
This paper addresses the problem of balancing the supply of public urban space with demand. It is, in that sense, a paper on the economics of the public realm. It is written with urban planners and designers in mind and offers a set of analytical tools for thinking about the dynamics of open space, explaining the evolution of urban morphologies and predicting the outcome of urban designs. It considers the way in which shared and private spaces develop public domain problems and the way in which these are resolved by the clarification of property rights. Urban open space emerges from this analysis as a residual category of land and this has implications for the way open space is both designed and governed. It leads to the idea that the hierarchy of shared spaces in a city should correspond to a hierarchy of governing institutions. Physical and institutional design are both important in creating sustainable public realms and avoiding what the paper terms the tragedy of the urban commons.
Faced with the problems associated with an ageing society, many European countries have adopted innovative policies to achieve a better balance between the need to expand social care and the imperative to curb public spending. Although embedded within peculiar national traditions, these new policies share some characteristics: (a) a tendency to combine monetary transfers to families with the provision of in-kind services; (b) the establishment of a new social care market based on competition; (c) the empowerment of users through their increased purchasing power; and (d) the introduction of funding measures intended to foster care-giving through family networks. This article presents the most significant reforms recently introduced in six European countries (France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Sweden and the UK) as regards long-term care. It analyses their impact at the macro- (institutional and quantitative), meso- (service delivery structures) and micro-level (families, caregivers and people in need). As a result the authors find a general trend towards convergence in social care among the countries, and the emergence of a new type of government regulation designed to restructure rather than to reduce welfare programmes.
Large-scale social and political changes have revolutionized policy-making. Traditionally, policy analysis has been state-centered, based on the assumption that central government is self-evidently the locus of government. However, policy-making is often carried out today in loosely organized networks of public authorities, citizen associations and private enterprises. The contributors to this book argue that democratic governance now calls for a new deliberatively-oriented policy analysis. They provide examples from around the world to demonstrate how this would work in practice.
During the last two decades the literature on public space has registered the emergence of alternative forms of pubic space provision that depart from the traditional model of direct state ownership and management. The picture that emerges is a complex one, not so much one of privatization, but instead one of complex redistribution of roles, rights and responsibilities in public space governance to a range of social actors beyond the state. This paper discusses an approach to understanding the forms of publicness implicit in alternative forms of public space governance. Issues of rights, access, accountability and control could be examined in public space governance arrangements based on contracts, legal agreements and performance management mechanisms involving private and voluntary entities instead of the traditional public sector processes of policy delivery and accountability. The paper proposes a framework for investigating how ‘publicness’ is constructed and maintained through these arrangements.
Privately owned public spaces are frequently criticized for diminishing the publicness of public space by restricting social interaction, constraining individual liberties, and excluding undesirable populations. This study empirically determines whether, as is commonly believed, privately owned public spaces are more controlled than publicly owned spaces. To frame our empirical work, we propose a conceptual model that identifies publicness as the interaction between the ownership, management, and uses/users of a space. We then examine the management dimension using an observation-based index to assess spatial management paradigms in publicly and privately owned spaces. We find that the use of the private sector to provide publicly accessible space leads to increased control over use, behavior, and access. Furthermore, while both publicly and privately owned public spaces tend equally to encourage public use and access, managers of privately owned spaces tend to employ more features that control behavior within those spaces. More specifically, spatial control in privately owned spaces is normally achieved through the use of surveillance and policing techniques as well as design measures that ‘code’ spaces as private. Important findings are presented for planners, policy makers, and others concerned with the future of publicly accessible spaces.
The main characteristics of public space are accessibility and usability for all citizens. However, current developments, primarily observed in cities, suggest the loss of a clear distinction between public and private space. Instead, urban spaces of hybrid character are emerging. Spaces with public functions, like train stations, parks or pedestrian areas, are changing in character, and semi-private spaces, like malls or plazas, are spreading. In order to get a realistic view of developments this article offers a critical appraisal
of recent privatisation trends followed by a brief summary. After discussing feasible reasons for the loss of private space the article considers potential implications for the future of citizenship.
This article discusses the concept of public space management and its evolution in a context of wider changes to urban governance. Public space management is taken as a sphere of urban governance in which conflicting societal demands on, and aspirations for, public space are interpreted through a set of processes and practices. Four interlinked dimensions for public space management are proposed: the co-ordination of interventions; the regulation of uses and conflicts between uses; the definition and deployment of maintenance routines; and investment in public spaces and their services. Within this conceptual framework, the paper looks at recent changes in public space management in England to suggest the emergence of alternative models of management. These are based on the roles ascribed to the state, to private agents and to user organisations, and on different approaches to dealing with the four management dimensions. Although the discussion shows that these models are more than just abstract formulations, and have been used to deal with a variety of public space problems, an important purpose for the paper is to provide an analytical framework through which to examine emergent practices in the management of public space and their potential consequences.
Die Kooperation zwischen Wohlfahrtsstaat und zivilgesellschaftlichen Organisationen kann in Deutschland auf eine lange und nahezu ungebrochene Tradition zurückblicken, die bis in die Anfänge der Industriemoderne im 19. Jahrhundert reicht. Für beide Partner – Wohlfahrtsstaat wie zivilgesellschaftlichen Organisationen – war diese Public-Private Partnership von Vorteil. Auf der lokalen Ebene trug sie zur Stabilisierung sozialer Milieus bei und garantierte die Bürgernähe sozialer Dienstleistungserstellung. Die zivilgesellschaftlichen Organisationen konnten mit öffentlichen Mitteln sicher rechnen und waren vor kommerzieller Konkurrenz weitgehend geschützt. Auch war die Partnerschaft Bestandteil des konservativen Regimes des Wohlfahrtsstaates. Inzwischen hat sich das Verhältnis zwischen Staat und zivilgesellschaftlichen Organisationen grundlegend geändert. Aufgrund veränderter staatlicher Rahmenbedingungen haben sich letztere am Markt zu behaupten und sich infolgedessen in Management und Organisationskultur zunehmend Unternehmen als ihren primären Konkurrenten angepasst. Gleichzeitig hat die Bedeutung zivilgesellschaftlicher Organisationen im Kontext wohlfahrtsstaatlicher Leistungen in den letzten Jahren eher zugenommen, da sie traditionell in Politikfeldern tätig sind, die im Kontext sozialer Investitionen einen Bedeutungszugewinn erfahren haben.
Collaboration between governments, business, the voluntary and community sectors is now central to the way public policy is made, managed and delivered. This book provides the first comprehensive and authoritative account of the theory, policy and practice of collaboration. Written by two leading authorities in the field the book explores the experience of collaboration in regeneration, health and other policy sectors, and assesses the consequences of the emergence of public-private partnerships contrasting the UK experience to that elsewhere in the world.
Public spaces have a surplus value for cities, as they are places for unexpected encounters, public discourse, relaxation and passage. Despite the wide range of beneficiaries, municipalities still often consider them as traditional public goods and bear sole responsibility, yet increasingly lack budgets. Co-production could be a possible solution to share costs, rights and responsibilities, but is often contested due to fear of privatisation and commercialisation. This paper evaluates different forms of co-production of public space in New York City and investigates how they could be translated to the Dutch context, where co-production of public space is still rare.
Fighting for First Amendment rights is as popular a pastime as ever, but just because you can get on your soapbox doesn't mean anyone will be there to listen. Town squares have emptied out as shoppers decamp for the megamalls; gated communities keep pesky signature gathering activists away; even most internet chatrooms are run by the major media companies. Brave New Neighborhood sconsiders what can be done to protect and revitalize our public spaces.
The global public spaces literature has been critical of contemporary manifestations of public space on a number of grounds. This article reports on a research project that attempted to gauge the validity of these critiques through an examination of new and regenerated public spaces in London. The article introduces the dominant critiques around public space before outlining the mixed-methods approach used to interrogate them. The key findings from this work are summarised before the nature of contemporary public space is re-theorised in a more avowedly positive and pragmatic manner than is often the case, one that celebrates a return of a public spaces paradigm through tentatively advancing a new narrative and set of normative principles for public space generation. The work concludes that a more balanced view of public space is required, one that recognises the multiple complex types, roles and audiences for public spaces in cities today.
Publicly accessible urban spaces are more often than not co-produced and maintained via ad hoc partnerships between public administrations and private owners and tenants. The authors describe the complex negotiations that lead to this intricate situation in German cities, and point at some directions to clarify the respective roles of private and public players in the production of urban public space. Plazas, parks and promenades play important roles in the identity of a city. But who is responsible for them? The German discourse on urban spaces often sounds as if publicly accessible open spaces are always "public" – i.e. owned and regulated by the municipality. On the contrary, by definition, spaces in private hands cannot be public. The conception of the role that stakeholders play in the creation of urban spaces also corresponds to this dual thinking: municipal actors dominate "public spaces", whereas market forces control "private spaces". However, our research 1 found something contradictory to this common-sense discourse: many urban spaces are both public and private. That is, publicly usable space not only subject to municipal planning and control, but also created and maintained by public and private stakeholders. The STARS study began by identifying over 100 possible case studies in Aachen, Hannover and Leipzig, of which 29 were chosen for further analysis. In addition to studying the function, context and design characteristics of each space, all actors involved in its design and regulation were interviewed. For each space a "responsibility profile" (see Figures 3, 4 and 5 below) was created to summarize and visualize answers to the following questions: Who is the land owner (rights)? Who planned and built the space, and who maintains and manages it (production)? And who is allowed to regulate its use and users (regulation)? In addition to these case studies, we interviewed 40 representatives from the planning and parks departments of 20 large German cities and conducted 17 interviews with private stakeholders in order to understand their perception of shared responsibilities and to find out what consequences result from 'co-producing' urban spaces, especially for municipal planning. The STARS project thus opened the way to a more polyvalent understanding of semi-public urban spaces. It revealed the complexity of public–private interdependences, the variety of interests involved, and the challenges that result from the co-production of spaces, not only during the building phase but over the years of their existence (see also Berding et al. 2010).
The increasing involvement of the private sector in the design and management of urban public space has prompted some critical scholars to predict the ‘end of public space’. This study reassesses the implications of private sector involvement through a comparative analysis of British and Dutch urban spaces, based on a threefold critique of the existing literature on the privatization of public space. The analysis is governed by a new model of pseudo-public space that consists of four dimensions of ‘publicness’: ownership, management, accessibility and inclusiveness (OMAI). The findings suggest that, while there are significant differences between the British and the Dutch cases, neither context supports the notion of a possible ‘end of public space’ in any literal sense.
This paper presents a model of, and method for benchmarking, the publicness of public space—termed here as the Star Model. The model is intended to be of value for comparative purposes (i.e. measuring the publicness of one place vis-à-vis another); as an analytic measure of publicness to be compared with more subjective interpretations of publicness; and as a departure point for deeper investigations of why particular places are more/less public than they could/should be. The paper is in four main parts. The first part discusses and then conceptualizes the nature of ‘public’ space. The second considers publicness as a multi-dimensional concept, identifying and discussing five meta dimensions—ownership; control; civility; physical configuration; and animation. The third explains the model and the integration of these dimensions into a pictorial representation of a place's publicness. The final part discusses the model's value and suggests avenues for further development and research.
The concept of ‘governance’ has become a central catchword across the social and political sciences. In Governing and Governance, Jan Kooiman revisits and develops his seminal work in the field to map and demonstrate the utility of a sociopolitical perspective to our understanding of contemporary forms of governing, governance and governability. A central underlying theme of the book is the notion of governance as a process of interaction between different societal and political actors and the growing interdependencies between the two as modern societies become ever more complex, dynamic and diverse. Drawing upon a wide range of interdisciplinary insights, the book advances a comprehensive conceptual framework that seeks to capture the different elements, modes and orders of governing and governance. A series of useful distinctions are employed, for example, between self, ‘co’, and hierarchical modes, and between first, second, or meta orders to illustrate the many different structures and levels of modern governance today. Theoretically rich and illuminating, Governing and Governance will be essential reading for all students and academics across the social and political sciences, public management and public administration.
This paper discusses planning and urban design approaches to making city centres feel safer. Planning and urban design inter alia contribute to the creation of the city‐centre landscape and are intimately concerned with the design and management of public space. Perceptions and feelings of personal safety are prerequisites for a vital and viable city centre; if a city centre is not perceived to be safe, those with choice will choose not to use it, making it less safe for those with fewer choices. This paper therefore identifies and outlines four planning and urban design approaches to making city centres feel safer: the fortress, the panoptic, the regulatory and the animated.
A study was conducted to illustrate the historical development and the latest significant trends in the design and management of Dutch public space. It also investigated the increasing role of the private sector in the redevelopment process and analyzed as to what extent this might affect the design and management of public spaces. The study revealed that most Dutch city squares originated from the Middle Ages and have played a vital role as market place, whereas only a few squares were constructed in the 19th and early 20th century. Recent redevelopments are taking place in these public places located close to the historic city center, but lacking historicity themselves, with the intention to turn them into new heart of the city. Private sector involvement in this redevelopment phase also is being encouraged, mainly for the homogenization on consumerist and aesthetics grounds in areas of the design and management of public spaces.
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