ABSTRACT
Urban and rural areas face major transitions such as circularity, energy transition, climate adaptation and digitalization. At the same time, many public assets are about to be modernized and refurbished or changed due to their lifecycles. This concurrence creates a window of opportunity to deal with these transitions, for after renewal, these assets will not be touched for a long time. In order to foster these transitions, a new approach for managing (as in management and maintenance) public space that goes beyond common, pragmatic and operational approaches is needed. There is a need for renewed insights and solutions for a comprehensive and integrated approach of managing public space. This paper discusses how an academic discipline on ‘Comprehensive and Integrated Managing Public Space’ needs to be developed in order to enlarge knowledge and education of a new generation of asset managers of public space that can face the major challenges and transitions of public space.
