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"Recent global appropriations of public spaces through urban activism, public uprising, and political protest have brought back democratic values, beliefs, and practices that have been historically associated with cities. Given the aggressive commodification of public resources, public space is critically important due to its capacity to enable forms of public discourse and social practice which are fundamental for the well-being of democratic societies. Public Space Reader brings together public space scholarship by a cross-disciplinary group of academics and specialists whose essays consider fundamental questions: What is public space and how does it manifest larger cultural, social, and political processes? How are public spaces designed, socially and materially produced, and managed? How does this impact the nature and character of public experience? What roles does it play in the struggles for the just city, and the Right to The City? What critical participatory approaches can be employed to create inclusive public spaces that respond to the diverse needs, desires, and aspirations of individuals and communities alike? What are the critical global and comparative perspectives on public space that can enable further scholarly and professional work? And, what are the futures of public space in the face of global pandemics, such as COVID-19? The readers of this volume will be rewarded with an impressive array of perspectives that are bound to expand critical perspectives on public space"--

"Through illustrated case studies and conceptual re-framings, this volume showcases ongoing transformations in public space, and its relationship to the public realm more broadly, in the world's most populous urban megaregion-the Greater Bay Area of southeastern China-projected to reach eighty million inhabitants by the year 2025. This book assembles diverse approaches to interrogating the forms of public space and the public realm that are emerging in the context of this region's rapid urban development in the last forty years, bringing together authors from urbanism, architecture, planning, sociology, anthropology and politics to examine innovative ways of framing and conceptualizing public space in\of the Greater Bay Area. The blend of authors' first-hand practical experiences has created a unique cross-disciplinary book that employs public space to frame issues of planning, political control, social inclusion, participation, learning/education and appropriation in the production of everyday urbanism. In the context of the Greater Bay Area, such spaces and practices also present opportunities for reconfiguring design-driven urban practice beyond traditional interventions manifested by the design of physical objects and public amenities, to the design of new social protocols, processes, infrastructures and capabilities. This is a captivating new dimension of urbanism and critical urban practice and will be of interest to academics, students and practitioners interested in urbanization in China"--

"In alligning architectural thinking with current critical theory debates, this book argues forcefully that by dissociating culture from place and identity, and detaching the idea of architecture from both, we can reframe our understanding of spatial and architectural practices."--Page 4 of cover