The Design of the Public Realm: Emerging Theories and Practices

This book explores how public spaces―such as streets, squares, parks, and shared urban environments―are designed and experienced and why they remain a vital but often overlooked part of urban design. Although the idea of the public realm has been central to cities for decades, there is still no clear or widely shared understanding of what it means or how it should be shaped in practice. Many of the key theories that continue to influence the field were developed between the 1960s and 1980s and no longer fully reflect today's social, environmental, and technological realities.

Cities are now changing rapidly due to factors such as climate change, digital technologies, migration, and increasing cultural diversity. These shifts are transforming how public spaces are planned, governed, and used, while also raising urgent questions about inclusion, resilience, and social justice. In response, this collection brings together new ideas, research, and practical approaches from a range of international contexts. The contributors examine innovative design strategies, the impact of crises on urban life, and new forms of social and institutional interaction, presenting the public realm as a dynamic, contested, and constantly evolving part of contemporary cities.

This book addresses broad subject areas including urban design and planning, architecture, geography, sociology, environmental studies, and public policy. It is essential reading for academics, researchers, and postgraduate students in these fields as well as urban planners, architects, policymakers, and practitioners engaged in shaping inclusive, resilient, and sustainable cities for the future.

The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of Journal of Urbanism: International Research on Placemaking and Urban Sustainability.

Patricia Aelbrecht is Associate Professor in Urban Design, Planning and Intercultural Studies and Co-Founding Director of the Public Space Observatory Research Centre at Cardiff University, UK. Her research explores the relationship between public space, social practices, and urban transformation, with particular expertise in social cohesion, intercultural dialogue, and the contested regeneration of contemporary cities.

Ceren Sezer is Urban Designer and Planner, and Research Group Leader of the Community Collaboration Laboratory for Just Transitions (CCLab) at RWTH Aachen University, Germany. Her current work focuses on spatial strategies for just energy transitions, with a particular emphasis on public space, community-centred approaches, participatory design, and the integration of digital and analogue tools to support inclusive and place-based transformation processes.