ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to argue for the transcendental quality of public spaces that have gained attention on social media platforms and now serve as prominent destinations in city tourist portfolios. As an unplanned destination, these public spaces achieved public prominence through accidental discovery resulting from the actions of city consumers (both online and offline) rather than via efforts of designers to plan a public attraction. Due to their bottom-up discovery, such public spaces can best be described as vernacular, while their qualities are self-proclaimed as authentic. What sets them apart as authentic is determined by the consumer – an audience of tourists who now seek spaces as experiences to enhance their self-promotional digital portfolio. The primary question behind such research has in the past been based on the initial assumption that social production in these popular public spaces, driven by social media, is homogeneous, as they tend to attract a similar audience – tourists and influencers. However, this chapter will argue for a more diverse approach to understanding the authentic quality they perform, advocating for the co-production of spatial qualities, which are entangled in conflicts rather than being understood solely as affirmative.
