ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on key cases of contemporary public spaces serving as symbolic global signposts of social protest, trying to outline the new trends in public-realm development. The point of departure is the presumption that the public sphere today is undergoing major restructuring, similar to its transformation in France and England in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, revealed in the seminal work The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere by Jurgen Habermas. According to this understanding, public space can fulfil its functions as a node of critical discourse and societal integration only when a balance of mutual control between state, private sphere and society is established without the superdomination of any of these three. The process of transnationalization of public space has been preconditioned by the globally universalized poverty and the new growing class of educated precariats, and technically facilitated by the internet and social media allowing coordination and synchronization of their actions.
