ABSTRACT
Public spaces are the backbone of cities and the way we experience urbanity. Given this closeness to everyday experience, conceptualizing public space has been challenging and, still today, we are faced with different discourses and competing ideas. This chapter proposes a taxonomic understanding of public space by first providing a short review of the most prominent schools of thoughts and discussing the recent advancements in defining public space. Building on the work of Németh and Schmidt, the current state of the literature is extended by a taxonomy of four categories of each ten variables that may enable more comprehensive research on the nature and impact of public space and its ongoing transformations, in particular the public–private hybridization. The taxonomy is tested in São Paulo, which is first situated in a specific national academic debate as well as historical urban development pattern. Two cases are chosen to illustrate the range of the public space continuum and point at similarities and differences in providing freedom or exerting control on the level of design–image, access–territoriality, surveillance–protection, and use–activity. The proposed taxonomy is one possible analytical answer to the challenge of public space hybridization across the world.
