The Dictionary of Human Geography

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territorial influences. For example, politicking

by local government, regional voluntary

agencies, nation-states and transnational

corporationsmight produce a particular geo-

graphical configuration of public service provi-

sion. Current concern with the process ofneo-

liberalism, and what this process means for the

qualitative restructuring ofthestate apparatus,

lies behind recent work on public service provi-

sion and consumption (Peck, 2001). As we wit-

ness a variety of provision arrangements

emergingindifferentcountries,betweengovern-

mentsandprivate-sectorcompanies,sotensions

over the defining and the use of terms such as

‘equity’ and ‘efficiency’ take on extra import-

ance. What is meant by a ‘public service’? Who

has access to it and at what cost? These are

questions that currently unite those working on

the geographies of public services and those

working on issues of state restructuring, in dif-

ferent regions of the world and in different areas

of policy. kwa

Suggested reading

Peck (2001a); Pinch (1997).

public space Space to which all citizens have

a right of access. Public space must be juxta-

posed with private space, or space over which

private property rules are in operation.

Central to those rules is the right of owners

to exclude others from the use and enjoyment

of a space. Public space, conversely, is pre-

sumptively open to all. The archetypical pub-

lic space is the plaza, street or park, the

‘traditional public forum’ characterized by

the US Supreme Court as those places that

have immemorially been used for public

assembly, debate and informed dissent. An

array of ‘semi-public’ spaces can also be iden-

tified, such as the airport or university.

To speak of public space is necessarily to

speak of the public sphere, the realm of collect-

ive opinion and action that mediates between

societyandstate. Most famously, Ju ̈rgen

Habermas characterized the public sphere as

the site of deliberative and rational communi-

cation,withinwhichfree,rationaldiscoursecan

occur between citizens (Habermas, 1989

[1962]; see alsocitizenship), distanced from

the particularities of thestate, theeconomy

andtheprivatedomain(seeprivate and public

spheres). While membership in the public has

long been constrained by exclusions ofgender,

classandrace, it still holds normative appeal.

Signalling a site of inclusion and acceptance,

outsiders have long struggled for membership

in the public sphere.

While the public sphere and public space

are not necessarily interchangeable – publics

can form in private space, as some feminist

geographers (Staeheli, 1996: see alsofeminist

geographies) have noted with reference to

the privatehome– in general, it is in public

space that the conversations and encounters

of public life become physical and real. For

Young (1990a, p. 240): ‘[p]olitics, the critical

activity of raising issues and deciding how

institutional and social relations should be

organized, crucially depends on the existence

of space and forums to which everyone has

access’. These spaces serve several valuable

political ends. The occupation of public

space, for Mitchell (2003a), is a crucial means

by which the boundaries of the public can be

remade. Street protests, for example, can

make visible the socially invisible. The phys-

ical designation and design of public space

itself can also become avenues for the negoti-

ation of politics (Low, 2000) and forms of

publicmemory, as well as collective forgetting

(Burk, 2003). The encounters withdiffer-

encethat occur in public space can also foster

the formation of an inclusionary ethos, as we

learn to accommodate those people and inter-

ests beyond our own familiar contacts and

ways of life.

For one constituency, however, the very

diversity and unpredictability of public space

undercuts the value of publicness. The rising

homeless population (see homelessness),

combined with alawand order ethos, has

prompted regulation targeted at ‘disorder’ in

public space (such as panhandling). The

exclusionary logic of such intervention has

prompted some to posit the end of public

space. Scholars have also traced the privatiza-

tion of public space in the Western city, worry-

ing at its effects on political activity and social

life (Kohn, 2004). nkb

Gregory / The Dictionary of Human Geography 9781405132879_4_P Final Proof page 602 1.4.2009 3:20pm

PUBLIC SPACE