ABSTRACT
This chapter intends to illustrate two categories of public/collective space that are especially transformative of the metropolitan dynamics in which they are framed, although they are very different in their forms of appropriation, in the space and time of use, in the way in which they were planned, in the motivation that generates them, and in the degrees of freedom of its users. The first category is the one of large, peripheral shopping centres, connected to large infrastructures and motorway junctions, organised according to regional polarisation logics. The second category is the one of micro artefacts with countless articulations: street vendors, alternative bars on wheels, ‘underground’ restaurants, garage sales, performativity interventions, improvised art galleries in anonymous spaces, etc. This chapter aims to discuss the complexity of two (apparently?) antagonistic logics in the construction of the contemporary city: it explores how the appropriation, redesign, and re-signification of public space in a metropolitan scale can be challenged and influenced by the presence of these two categories of commercial spaces. The discussion aims to highlight how these logics can be perceived as pivotal instruments in urban planning, particularly in the (re)organisation of the public space network, acting as potent catalysts for transformation.
