The Concept of Public Space and Its Democratic Manifestations

Abstract

The term public space has multiple meanings depending on the scholarly discipline. One aim ofthis article is to develop a unified concept of public space that draws on varied pertinent literatures, while at the same time expanding the idea’s coverage to incorporate the impacts oftele vision and information technology. A second objective is to utilize the concept to explore empirically the practical possibilities for making public space more democratic, using for this purpose several photographs of actual public spaces.