ABSTRACT
Public space has come into focus during recent struggles where the restructuring of multiple interrelationships between civil society, state, and markets unfolds. As part of this restructuring, people see increased attention to the roles that cities play, as the the modern nation-state faces a crisis. Tensions in public space, in this sense, need to be understood as seismographs of an over-accelerated and fragile neoliberal political economic model. This model has undermined the long history of urban commoning and has rendered public space a highly competitive field. In this field, political parties dominate representational space and access to voters; companies strive for higher revenues or civic legitimization; and civil society seeks reorientation in a landscape of power in which “the political” has become increasingly absent. The use of public space as a site of mobilization and negotiation is one of the main processes that occurred in cases throughout, from the Global South to the Global North.
