The ‘crisis’ in the urban public realm¹

Public space in cities has never been fully inclusive, and has always been infused with complex combinations of social, gender, ethnic and geographical exclusion and inclusion. To many authors, however, current urban trends threaten to undermine the very notion that an urban public realm exists supporting inclusive, face-to-face, collective discourses within cities (see for example Sennett 1994; Sorkin 1992; Davis 1990; Mitchell 1995; Boyer 1994). Such commentators attest to the creeping privatisation and commodification of urban public spaces, the rising fear of crime and the ‘other’ in the postmodern city, the erosion of urban social cohesion, and the social and spatial splintering of the contemporary metropolis.