A Multidimensional Frame for Analyzing Urban Public Spaces Policies and Politics

Abstract

This introductory chapter proposes a new reading of everyday politics as exercised by citizens in their Urban Public Spaces appropriations in face of governmental policies for such spaces. It takes on a model with four non-exhaustive dimensions—socio-environmental, socioeconomic, sociocultural, and political–administrative—and their relations with the external dimension, considering their interscalar and intersectorial character. Departing from Milton Santos’ new geography, it also considers other contributions, especially regarding place and identity, the public sphere, and capital, labor and their forms and fractions. The concept of Urban Public Spaces (UPS) is itself still under construction, being structured within landscape studies, social sciences, environmental and land use practices, social practice, and a wishful trans-disciplinarity. In this chapter, the operating UPS concept that emerges means spaces accessible to the people that lie, most times, in open areas free of buildings, but are not restricted to them; they will be more environmentally relevant when forested, economically relevant when superposing infrastructure or located at prime real estate plots, culturally relevant when associated to citizens’ identities , and socially relevant when they help to create or maintain a public sphere.