Public Space and Relational Perspectives: New Challenges for Architecture and Planning (Routledge Research in Planning and Urban Design) - Hardcover

"The book is a springboard for further exploring and critically reflecting upon our roles as educators, our positionality as practitioners, and the opportunities we have as users to influence urban spatial processes and to perpetuate innovative time–space uses in everyday urban life." – Christine Mady, Urban Studies, Notre Dame University, Lebanon

"A particular highlight is the focus on playful methods and innovative pedagogical tools that enable students to learn in, about and from public space, as well as the everyday practices and everyday knowledge inscribed into them." – Julia Wesely, Environment & Urbanization

Traditional approaches to understand space tend to view public space mainly as a shell or container, focussing on its morphological structures and functional uses. That way, its ever-changing meanings, contested or challenged uses have been largely ignored, as well as the contextual and on-going dynamics between social actors, their cultures, and struggles. The key role of space in enabling spatial opportunities for social action, the fluidity of its social meaning and the changing degree of "publicness" of a space remain unexplored fields of academic inquiry and professional practice.

Public Space and Relational Perspectives offers a different understanding of public spaces in the city. The aim of the book is to (re)introduce the lived experiences in public life into the teaching curricula of those academic disciplines which deal with public space and the built environment, such as architecture, planning and urban design, as well as the social sciences.

The book presents conceptual, practical and research challenges and brings together findings from activists, practitioners and theorists. The editors provide eight educational challenges that educators can endorse when training future practitioners and researchers to accept and to engage with the social relations that unfold in and through public space.

Cover image: KARO*