About the Book
Is it truly the "end" of public space? This handbook presents evidence that the answer is "no". In cities in different parts of the world, people still use public space to pursue activities of their choice.
The book is divided into seven sections. The first section presents three emerging types of public space. Each of the subsequent five sections focuses on a type of activity: recreation, commerce, protest, living and celebration. These sections are international in scope, presenting cases of activities in Brazil, China, Colombia, DR Congo, Egypt, Finland, Germany, Libya, Taiwan, Turkey and the U.S. The closing section, composed of three chapters, presents research methods for studying public space.
Graduate students, faculty members and researchers in social science, architecture, landscape architecture, geography and urban design will find the book useful for understanding, studying and designing urban public space.
Table of Contents:
1. Introduction: The Use, Design and Management of Urban Public Space
Karen A. Franck and Te-Sheng Huang
Part I: Emerging Types of Public Spaces
2. Ecological Restoration Parks: An Emerging Type of Public Space in China
Han Yan
3. City Beaches: Enlivening Marginal Spaces in Germany
Quentin Stevens
4. Pedestrian Plazas: A New Type of Neighborhood Space in New York City
Hanife Vardi-Topal
Part II: Recreation
5. New Opportunities for Women’s Recreation in Tripoli, Libya
Fathia Elmenghawi
6. Cruising in Urban Parks: Gay Intimacy in Public Space in New York and Boston
John Bezemes
7. Private Sound Environments in Urban Public Space: Headphone Use in Parks in New York
Chathurthi S. De Silva
8. Parkour: Loosening Public Urban Space in Finland
Lieven Ameel and Sirpa Tani
Part III: Commerce
9. What Commerce Can Do: The Case of Streets in the US
Vikas Mehta
10. Little Damascus: A Thriving Commercial Passageway in Sixth of October City, Egypt
Amira Mostafa Badran
11. Using and Negotiating Public Space: Street Vending in Taiwan
Te-Sheng Huang
12. Getting a Spot on the Street: Street Vendors’ Access to Public Space in Bogotá, Colombia
Ana Maria Vargas
13. Food Truck Rallies: Communal Eating in Public Space in the U.S.
John Jones
Part IV: Protest
14. The Life and Death of Tahrir Square: From Protest Platform to Roundabout
Mariam Abdelazim
15. City of Protest: From Exterior to Interior Public Space in Hong Kong
Tom Verebes
16. Displaying and Contesting State Power: The Story of Taksim Square and Gezi Park, Istanbul
Zehra Betul Atasoy
Part V: Living
17. Inhabiting the City without Shelter in Santa Cruz, California
Cory Parker
18. Living on the Streets of Kinshasa, Democratic Repulic of Congo
Kristien Geenen
19. Using Public Space to Escape Violence and Social Exclusion in São Paulo, Brazil
Daniel Jupp Kina and Lorraine van Blerk
Part VI: Celebration
20. Parades in Manhattan: Transforming Public Space
Karen A. Franck
21. Spaces and Sound: Celebrating and Protesting in Berlin
Banu Çiçek Tülü
22. Joining the Party in Downtown Brooklyn
Maryam Hosseini
Part VII: Research Methods for Studying Public Space
23. Recording Diverse Uses of a City’s Public Spaces
Sverre Bjerkeset anad Jonny Aspen
24. Using Archival Sources to Study Mass Behavior in Public Space
Johann Sagan
25. What is the Question? Answer the Question.
Karen A. Franck and Te-Sheng Huang
About the Author :
Karen A. Franck is Professor Emerita from the Hillier College of Architecture and Design at the New Jersey Institute of Technology in Newark, New Jersey. While teaching graduate and undergraduate students there, she also served as Director of the Joint Ph.D. Program in Urban Systems sponsored by NJIT and Rutgers-Newark. She took particular pleasure in advising Ph.D. students. Research conducted by many of them appears in this handbook. Karen’s own research interests have spanned several topics: alternative housing (New Households, New Housing, 1989), building and place types (Ordering Space, 1994) and the design process (Architecture from the Inside Out, 2007 and Design through Dialogue, 2010). She pursued her interest in public space with Loose Space (2007), Memorials as Spaces of Engagement (2015) and this volume. Karen holds a Ph.D. in Environmental Psychology from the City University of New York.
Te-Sheng Huang has been working in the Baltimore County Department of Planning in Towson, Maryland since 2020. He is now the Lead Planner of the Eastern Sector, one of the three sectors of the county. From 2014 to 2017, he was an assistant professor in the School of Architecture at Feng Chia University in Taiwan. He also ran a small architectural firm and was responsible for the design of a pavilion in Taichung Folklore Park and the revitalization of the Rainbow Village in Taichung City. Te-Sheng holds a master’s degree in Architecture from Cheng Kung University in Taiwan and a Ph.D. in Urban Systems from the New Jersey Institute of Technology and Rutgers-Newark. For his dissertation, Te-Sheng studied the design, management and use of privately owned public spaces in New York City, finding that they are not as exclusive as commonly believed.
Review :
"This extremely smart and astute collection will be a valuable resource for anyone who delves into the complex subject of the use, design and management of urban public space worldwide. This timely and rich collection of theories and practices criss-crosses disciplines, spaces, scales, contexts and times. Combining classic, contemporary and forward-looking views of the public realm, it offers fresh perspectives on important elements and key topics of urban public space. This outstanding handbook will be of great interest to scholars, practitioners, policymakers and students of space and place."
Tigran Haas, Associate Professor of Urban Planning + Urban Design, School of Architecture and the Built Environment, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm
"Franck and Huang take us on a world tour of public spaces, first, globally across five continents and second, typologically, exploring stories of how places have emerged and how they are used and managed. Some are big in scale and transformative – both permanent, such as China’s new ecological parklands, and ephemeral, including Manhattan’s street parades. Others are small in scale and local in impact – from the pitches (and struggles) of street vendors in Bogota to the sites (and displays) of Finland’s Parkour traceurs. As successive chapters reveal, these range from joyous to tragic venues for the full diversity of everyday urban life; lives and spaces that are always important, as is the act of bringing them together into this must read collection for public space researchers."
Matthew Carmona, Professor of Planning and Urban Design, The Bartlett School of Planning, University College London, UK
"With the pandemic lockdowns, police brutality on the streets, and attacks on Asians in North American cities, public space today faces a renewed crisis. In light of these challenges, it seems counterintuitive that the editors of this volume, Karen Franck and Te-Sheng Huang, argue that public space is alive and well. But in many ways, they have a point.
With a global view that includes cases across eleven countries and five continents, the book reminds us of the wide range of public space uses that reflect people’s creativity and engagement despite the challenges they face. This impressive, encyclopedic volume demonstrates that public space is made alive and well through the direct engagements of citizens, including acts of political resistance and everyday acts of play and gathering. These struggles and engagements are ripe for new scholarship and investigation."
Jeffrey Hou, Professor of Landscape Architecture, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA
"Public space is arguably one of the most used but least understood elements of our built environment. That is perhaps surprising, given that we all make so much use of public space in our everyday lives --from recreation to political protest. It is both this familiarity and the sheer variety of public spaces that makes understanding them so challenging. With this book, Karen A. Franck and Te-Sheng Huang have met this challenge with clear research and analysis and many examples of what actually takes place in a variety of public spaces and even in a variety of countries. Public spaces that are successful meet social needs. There is no single best way of doing that as Franck and Huang demonstrate with the many chapters they have collected for this edited volume. The Placemaking practitioner, the place researcher and the general reader have much to learn from this handbook."
David Burney, Academic Director, Urban Placemaking and Management Program, Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, NY, USA
"In The Routledge Handbook of Urban Public Space: Use, Design, and Management, Karen Franck and Te-Sheng Huang define public space broadly and include essays about public spaces in many different countries around the world. This handbook will be useful to citizens and leaders in local organizations, city planners, policy makers, and urban design educators—and their students, who will find instruction about research methods in the concluding chapter. As the founder of Body Conscious Design, which advocates for design at all scales that puts humans first, I especially appreciate the essays that attend to the senses in addition to vision—sound, smell, texture, temperature—in their discussions of public space."
Galen Cranz, Professor of the Graduate School, Department of Architecture, University of California, Berkeley, CA, USA
"At first glance, you might say, "Oh no, not another book about urban public space"! However, upon looking more closely you would recognize how it differs from its predecessors in several ways. It is tightly organized around five kinds of activities that take place in urban public space in different cities around the world. Both the content of the book and its organization into thematic sections encourage the reader to consider each chapter individually and in connection to other chapters. All the chapters are based on careful empirical research that employed a variety of methods. In the final chapter the editors, Karen A. Franck and Te-Sheng Huang compare two basic approaches to conducting research: one that is highly systematic and the other that is more open-ended. This chapter will encourage critical thinking about the best ways to conduct research.
The book considers the continually evolving nature of urban public space globally and does so in a thoughtful manner, providing a valuable contribution to the existing literature. The editors have created a new lens that can broaden our way of conceptualizing and critiquing urban public space. The book underscores our need to question the spatial imaginary of what "should" take place in urban public space -- where, when and by whom. It will be a valuable contribution to existing research and a helpful guide to novices and experienced researchers alike."
Lynn Paxson, University Professor and Professor of Architecture Emerita, College of Design, Iowa State University, Ames, IA, USA
"With wide ranging, original contributions based on empirical studies from eleven countries on five continents, this handbook emphatically demonstrates that urban public spaces are ‘alive and well’. By supporting many functions -- from commerce to celebration, recreation to protests -- urban public space not only enhances the healthy functioning of cities but, equally importantly, enhances the quality of our lives on the increasingly urbanizing planet.
People-centered urban design requires that we continuously improve our understanding of the changing needs and preferences of urban dwellers in different parts of the world. This handbook is both important and easily accessible. It will guide academia and practice in urban design by deepening our understanding and appreciation of the challenges experienced in urban public places across the world as continuing climate change impacts our cities and our lives."
Taner Oc, Editor, Journal of Urban Design (Routledge); Emeritus Professor, University of Nottingham, Nottingham, UK; Honorary Professor, University College London, London, UK
"The Routledge Handbook of Urban Public Space brings together a timely international collection of chapters that direct readers to a range of creative endeavors that city planners undertake to transform cities. The editors and contributors offer critical insights on how people adapt to, make, and utilize public city spaces."
Nicholas Wise, Arizona State University, for the Journal of Urban Affairs
"The book’s broad spectrum of empirical research on uses of public space nudged me to look anew at the uses and users of public space, take note of the voluntary stewards, and begin formulating research questions. I learned about interesting, important, and well-documented aspects of public space use and was motivated to contemplate uses I had overlooked – what more could one ask of such a handbook? This Handbook documents communities’ inventiveness in re-conceiving the boundaries and uses of public space, offering evidence that public space is ‘alive and well’ and continuing to evolve. It adds a valuable contribution to the public space literature including case studies of uses of public space, a nuanced argument about the scope of the term public space, and discussion of approaches to research."
Mark C. Childs, University of New Mexico, for the Journal of Urban Design
