The Public Space Hub

Public spaces are a subject of growing interest within civil society as well as in academia. The Public Space Hub fosters scientific exchanges within the galaxy of research on public spaces to facilitate multiple forms of collaborative research. The very heart of the project is to highlight the contribution of public spaces to urban societies, showing that they do matter for urban change. They cut across borders between design and (inter)individual experience as well as between aesthetic and political and social issues in an encompassing way. Thinking public spaces at large means also moving beyond idealized spaces of city centres to acknowledge the profound heterogeneity of forms, uses, status, representations, and sensitive experiences of public spaces. The changing, even fleeting dimension, of such complex assemblages need to be taken seriously as they turn out to be sites where new forms of relationships, control, politicization, and embodiments are tested and invented.