ABSTRACT
This chapter brings an insight into the historical nature of publicness, the other side of the coin. Each public place is created as part of a larger urban fabric. The chapter presents the historical evolution of urban public space has shown that many of the characteristics of public places change across time and are largely influenced by the broader paradigm that governs a society's way of life, in a certain time period. It discusses the concept of power and shows how this plays a pivotal role in the production of the built environment in general and public places in particular. The urban environment can be read as a succession of landscapes of power where the different actors who hold these different kinds of power use it for achieving their own personal goals and interests, often divergent. The chapter focuses on the particularities of public space creation and we show how publicness is a social construct.
