A bench in a public park, a highway overpass, a road which becomes a protest route, a footpath which belongs to not just the pedestrians. At first glance, these seem like open, accessible public spaces. Yet, there is always a restriction—Who can use these spaces, when can someone access these spaces, and who permits the access to these spaces?
The answers to these questions are rarely straightforward. It is at once the city planner, the municipal government, the property developer, and the security guard—each operating within a layered system of permissions and prohibitions that are as much political as they are logistical. Accessibility is not simply a question of physical infrastructure; it is a question of governance: of who holds the authority to open or close a space, and to whom; it is a question of power: of how class, caste, gender, ethnicity, and other identities play in this idea of “public”, of policies: of how laws and legislatives may allow or prohibit access to people.
Closely tied to this is the question of belonging. To belong to a space is not merely to occupy it; it is to feel entitled to it, to move through it without the friction of surveillance, suspicion, or social exclusion. For many, whether defined by class, gender, caste, race, or ability, the public space has never truly been public. It has been a stage on which their presence is tolerated, monitored, or actively curtailed.
As cities evolve, so too do the rubrics by which we understand agency within them. The privatisation of formerly public land, the proliferation of surveillance technology, and the commercialisation of shared space have introduced new terms of engagement. While public lands are being privatised, private lands are also being used publicly. Agency is increasingly mediated by digital access, by the unspoken dress codes of gentrified neighbourhoods, and by the architectural design of spaces that deliberately discourage lingering. To navigate public space today is to constantly negotiate one’s presence within systems that were often not designed with you in mind.
The power to define “publicness” itself is perhaps the most fundamental question of all. A space declared public by law may function as deeply exclusive in practice. Conversely, a space claimed informally, a community garden on an abandoned lot, a protest that takes over a certain street, can embody the democratic spirit of the public far more authentically than its designated counterparts. Are these enclosures physical or notional?
Finally, there is the tension between the individual and the collective. From an individualistic perspective, public space is a site of personal freedom and expression. From a collective standpoint, it is a commons—a shared resource that must be negotiated, protected, and distributed equitably. These perspectives are not always in conflict, but the friction between them often reveals who is being centred in our imagination of the public, and who is not.
Through our editorial theme, we interrogate the very idea of “public” in the public space. We examine the architectures of exclusion, ownership, and power that govern these public spaces. This series presents the tensions probed by the writers from various professions navigating and imagining/reimagining what it means for a space to be truly public.
Stories that provoke enquiry into built environment
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