ABSTRACT
This chapter comprises an overview of some of the most important social scientific literature on urban public space. It considers the public space as a site for ethnographic enquiry and discusses the research projects in which the analysis of social relations out in public is a primary focus. However, with respect to the role ascribed to the field-site, what differs here to, say, W. F. Whyte's study or Bourgeois' ethnography of crack dealers in East Harlem, is that Greenwich Village is not taken first. In particular, the effects that a strongly articulated, and increasingly implemented, to realise particular functions for open space at South Bank have had and may have on various spatial appropriations observed in the field is a key concern of mine. However, as social relations formerly associated with the private realm gain ascendancy, Richard Sennett proposes that increasingly public space is only a means of passage to the interior.
