Musings on theorizing, co-producing, designing, and encountering the public space

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URBAN DESIGN International
https://doi.org/10.1057/s41289-024-00249-0
EDITORIAL
Musings ontheorizing, co‑producing, designing, andencountering
thepublic space
MahyarAre1· PatriciaAelbrecht2
Accepted: 23 April 2024
© The Author(s) 2024
Musings on theorizing, co-producing, and encounters
with public space
Public space design, management, and use have been
major concerns of urban design. Over the past three dec-
ades, urban design researchers and practitioners have often
engaged with scholarly debates on topics ranging from close
encounters with buildings (Gehl etal. 2006) to the privatiza-
tion of public space (Loukaitou-Sideris 1993). In this issue
of Urban Design International, we find it timely to revisit
these discussions and shed new light on them. The debates
covered in this issue focus on four themes: the concept of
public space as a “learning landscape,” the advantages of
affordance, assemblage, and actor-network theory (ANT) in
thinking about public space, the interface between verticality
and public space, and finally, the co-production of public
space (Vicuña and Rivas 2022).
The first contribution on by Działek etal., focuses on
campus learning. While public space plays an essential role
in learning, its spatial attributes for promoting more mean-
ingful experiences in university campuses remain under-
explored. The authors introduce the concept of “learning
landscape” against the broader backdrop of the “changing
context” of universities, and how their shifting mechanisms
affect the students’ learning experience. These spaces serve
as both facilitating the students’ routine movements from
building to building and stimulating social interaction and
casual encounters among students. Using a Polish university
as a case study, the authors delve deeper into this concept.
Using crowdsensing mobile data, the authors take advantage
of the research participants experiences on campus while
walking. This way of data collection (both audio and video
recordings) has provided a fresh outlook to collect, analyze,
and interpret big data. This comprehensive interpretation,
done by first-year college students along with expert opin-
ions, can help identify the underutilized public spaces that
despite their strategic or unique locations, do not induce
their expected social support and participation by students
and or failed to “encourage people to stop and spend their
time there” (ibid.). Based on their findings, the authors make
clear design recommendations to offset their existing short-
comings in attracting people to campus public spaces.
Using Gibson’s theory of affordance, Stevens etal.
underline the inherent complexities associated with “uses
and meaning” and problematize the design of public space.
Exploring the advantages of assemblage and actor–network
theory, the authors offer new ways of thinking about the
outcomes and possibilities of designing public space. Opera-
tionalizing perception as a conduit of not just one sensory
experience, i.e., visual, affordance calibrates all senses
including auditory and olfactory. Understanding the public
space this way adds cultural differences to its perceptual
complexities and variabilities. Assemblage thinking, on
the other hand, adds another dualistic thinking of mind and
body as opposed to either or, to the public space perception
equation. Seen this way, understanding the real goes beyond
the actual materials of here and now, and enters the realm
of possibilities and capacities that are not yet materialized.
Viewing affordance and assemblage in this way enables the
meaningful integration of other concepts, including actor-
network theory (ANT). This perspective allows designers
and users to see stairs not merely as a means of moving
up and down, but as a realm of possibilities—envisioned
as a set of diagonal relations between horizontal surfaces
(steps) designed to facilitate human movement between lev-
els. Operationalizing these concepts comprehensively, the
authors introduce four possible types of affordance from
enabling and constraining to improvisation and serendipity.
The third paper by Magdalena Vicuña and Leonel Rivas
casts a different light on public space. Using eight neighbor-
hoods in Santiago, Chile, the author explores the verticality
of plot transformation impacts on the use and configuration
* Patricia Aelbrecht
aelbrechtP@cardiff.ac.uk
1 University ofTehran, Tehran, Iran
2 Cardiff University, Cardiff, UK

M.Arefi, P.Aelbrecht
of public space. Analyzing four plot structures, including
homogenous, incomplete, scattered with a partial plot con-
figuration, and scattered with changes in plot configuration,
the author discusses the impacts of verticality on neigh-
borhood public spaces in Santiago. The findings show that
increasing building heights and density impose significant
changes in plot configuration including size, shape, and
geometry. According to the authors' report on the transfor-
mation of public spaces, while verticality may often improve
the quality of sidewalks, it also reconfigures the intersection
of buildings and sidewalks. This reconfiguration decreases
the points of contact between public and private spaces,
deteriorates the sidewalk's capacity to sustain walkable
conditions, and changes environments from 'soft and lively'
to 'hard and lifeless,' thereby weakening the interaction and
exchange between interior and exterior activities.
Conducting interviews with six experts in addition to
exploring archival information, the last article by Lee and
Scholten in this issue addresses the why, who, and when
aspects of the “co-production” of privately owned public
space (POPS) in Hamburg, Germany. As per the who ques-
tion, the authors report that the co-producers range from
local authorities and developers to the private sector and
the public, who step in in different stages of the design
process and for different reasons. As per the why or how
question, the production involves four phases: co-planning,
co-designing, co-delivery, and co-management, and by
enacting or leveraging different instruments including com-
petition, legally binding land-use plans, and contracts. This
study clearly differentiates between the unfolding of POPS
in Europe and the common practices of privately owned or
privatization of public space in the U.S. (Loukaitou-Sideris
1993).
Contributing Articles/Authors
1) The assessment of the quality of campus public spaces
as key parts of the learning landscape: experience
from a crowdsensing study on the Third Campus of
Jagiellonian University, Krakow, Poland by: Jarosław
Działek, Bartłomiej Homiński, Magdalena Miśkowiec,
Agnieszka Świgost-Kapocsi, Krzysztof Gwosdz
2) Designing for possibility in public space: affordance,
assemblage, and ANT by: Quentin Stevens, Jonathan
Daly, Kim Dovey
3) Plot transformation and effects on public space in eight
verticalized neighborhoods of the Santiago Metropolitan
Area, Chile by: Magdalena Vicuña and Leonel Rivas
4) Co-production of privately owned public space: Who,
why, when, and how? By: Dahae Lee, Nele Scholten
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References
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