ATS2778 - Public spaces and city life

Public spaces lie at heart of city life. They are the sites where communal values such as good citizenship, civic responsibilities, and social cohesion are enacted and challenged. The unit examines the changing role of urban public space and its role in the political and social life of democratic societies. In recent decades, traditional public spaces such as streets, parks and civic squares have been under threat in various ways, from being usurped by restricted private forms of communal space - in shopping malls, corporate plazas, arcades, and gallerias - that exclude some social groups and restrict democratic practice, to various forms of surveillance that control collective action. The unit will provide students with new understandings of how contemporary urban design and development seek to redefine the meaning of citizenship, civic rights, and the scope of the urban public realm.