ABSTRACT
What does the “right to the city” mean with regard to everyday life in public space? The distinction between public and private space has long been framed as a continuum from the fully public to the fully private with various kinds of semi-private or semi-public space between but such categories are often confusing and vague. In this chapter we propose a typology of public spaces that locates differing conditions of privatization and publicness according to the criteria of accessibility and ownership or control. This typology generates six broad overlapping categories of publicness which are then mapped at streetscape scales for three contrasting urban neighbourhoods in Melbourne. This approach reveals a range of overlapping and intersecting types such as “ticketed space,” “invitation space” and “quasi-public space” that help to distinguish different rights of access and appropriation. Our purpose is to expose some of the ambiguities and dilemmas facing urban designers; not to mount further arguments against privatization but to create the conditions for a more focused critique. The goal is to move beyond the general call for the “right to the city” in order to map – in a more literal sense – what this means for the design of public space.
