Mending Privately Owned Public Spaces

Works on Taste and Spatial Practice
1. Auflage 2025
ISBN: 978-1-032-87752-5
Verlag: Taylor & Francis Ltd

Buch, Englisch, 300 Seiten, Format (B × H): 156 mm x 234 mm

This book is motivated by a simple observation: Privately Owned Public Spaces, or POPS, are overlooked sites when it comes to exploring the subject of taste in architecture and urban design. The book unpacks the intricate world that unfolds from this thought, while arguing that taste is a missing key in current spatial practice discourse.Successful POPS are often presented as desirable additions to urban redevelopment projects in cities across the world. This perception often overshadows, and sometimes dismisses, some of the more damaging impacts that the establishment of POPS has on the social tissue of specific localities and social groups, and more generally on the socio-political dynamics of cities. Within the fields of architecture and urban design, high regard for specific urban regeneration projects with POPS at their heart tends to ignore their inherently divisive social impact. This, in turn, strengthens an often-legitimised belief that analysing, questioning and re-aligning such impact falls outside the realm of these professions. This book explores how successful POPS are sustained through, amongst other maintenance practices, carefully managed aesthetic codes, largely dependent on showcasing the aesthetic value of highly controlled programs of use. This specific practice turns POPS into revealing sites when it comes to exploring taste in the context of spatial practice. Why don’t we talk about taste in socially engaged practice today? Does a focus on aesthetics pose an ethical dilemma between superficiality and depth for practitioners in the face of persistent social inequity?

Zielgruppe

Postgraduate, Professional Practice & Development, and Undergraduate Advanced

Autoren/Hrsg.

Cobo Corey, Adriana

Fachgebiete

• Sozialwissenschaften Politikwissenschaft Regierungspolitik
• Geisteswissenschaften Architektur Städtebau, Stadtplanung (Architektur)
• Geisteswissenschaften Architektur Garten- und Landschaftsarchitektur
• Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Spezielle Soziologie Stadt- und Regionalsoziologie
• Geowissenschaften Geographie | Raumplanung Regional- & Raumplanung Stadtplanung, Kommunale Planung

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Acknowledgements

Introduction

Chapter 1. A Wider Context: POPS in NY, Hong Kong, Ahmedabad and Bogotá

Chapter 2. A Deeper Insight: Granary Square in London and the Codes and Practices of Contemporary Public Space

Chapter 3. Men of Taste: Habitus and Recodification in Design Practice

Chapter 4. Taste Untold: The Spider, The Bird and Other Stories of Contemporary Public Space

Conclusions

Annex: Notes on Practice-Led Research & Methodology and Research Diagrams for Researchers

Über Autor(innen)

Adriana Cobo Corey is an architect and academic with a doctorate in spatial practice. Her research interests cut across performance, taste and class in architecture, urban design and education. She is a subject leader on ethical practice for BA Architecture at Central Saint Martin's, University of the Arts London.