Public space is often seen as problem space in the modern city: it is now as it has always been a space of contention. It is the visible and accessible venue wherein the public – comprising institutions and citizens acting in concert – enact rituals and make claims designed to win recognition. This article discusses two theses which regard the public realm in the modern city from very different perspectives. It then seeks to understand the strikingly contrary conclusions about the public sphere by exploring several of the issues which proponents of the two viewpoints interpret differently.
Baker, P.1984: The domestication of politics: women and American Political Society, 1780–1920. American Historical Review89, 620–647.
2.
Barth, G.1980: City people. New York: Oxford University Press.
3.
Berman, M.1988: All that is solid melts into air. Toronto: Penguin Books.
4.
Boyer, M.C.1993: The city of illusion: New York's public places. In Knox, P., editor, The restless urban landscape, Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 111–126.
5.
Boyer, M.C.1996: The city of collective memory. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Bulmer, M.1984: The Chicago school of sociology. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
8.
Celik, Z., Favro, D. and Ingersoll, R.1994: Streets. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
9.
Chauncey, G.1994: Gay New York. New York: Basic Books.
10.
Clark, A.1995: The struggle for the breeches. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
11.
Coleman, A.1990: Utopia on trial (revised edn). London: Hilary Shipman.
12.
Cresswell, T.1992: The crucial ‘where’ of graffiti: a geographical analysis of reactions to graffiti in New York. Society and Space10, 329–344.
13.
Cresswell, T.1996: In place/out of place. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.
14.
Davidoff, L. and Hall, C.1987: Family fortunes. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
15.
Davis, M.1990: City of quartz. London: Verso.
16.
de Certeau, M.1984: The practice of everyday life (trans. S. Rendall). Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
17.
Deutsch, S.1992: Learning to talk more like a man: Boston women's class-bridging organizations, 1870–1940. American Historical Review97, 379–404.
18.
The Economist1995: American survey. Voices in the land. The Economist 21 October, 29 and 31.
19.
Eley, G.1992: Nations, publics, and political cultures: placing Habermas in the nineteenth century. In Calhoun, C., editor, Habermas and the public sphere, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 289–339.
20.
Ethington, P.J.1992a: Hypothesis from Habermas: notes on reconstructing American political and social history, 1890–1920. Intellectual History Newsletter16, 21–40.
21.
Ethington, P.J.1992b: Recasting urban political history: gender, the public, the household, and political participation in Boston and San Francisco during the progressive era. Social Science History16, 301–333.
22.
Ethington, P.J.1994: The public city. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
23.
Fischer, C.S.1981: The public and private worlds of city life. American Sociological Review46, 306–316.
24.
Fraser, N.1991: What's critical about theory? The case of Habermas and gender. In Shanley, M.M. and Pateman, C., editors, Feminist interpretations and political theory, Cambridge: Polity Press, 253–276.
25.
Fraser, N.1992: Rethinking the public sphere: a contribution to the critique of actually existing democracy. In Calhoun, C., editor, Habermas and the public sphere, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 109–142.
26.
Goheen, P.G.1994: Negotiating access to public space in mid-nineteenth century Toronto. Journal of Historical Geography20, 430–449.
27.
Habermas, J.1989: The structural transformation of the public sphere (trans. T. Burger with the assistance of F. Lawrence). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
28.
Habermas, J.1992: Further reflections on the public sphere. In Calhoun, C., editor, Habermas and the public sphere, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 421–461.
29.
Harris, N.1990: Cultural excursions. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
30.
Harrison, M.1988: Crowds and history. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
31.
Hayden, D.1995: The power of place. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
32.
Herbert, S.1997: Policing space. Territoriality and the Los Angeles Police Department. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.
33.
Hobsbawm, E. and Ranger, T., editors, 1983: The invention of tradition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
34.
Jackson, K.T.1985: Crabgrass frontier. New York: Oxford University Press.
35.
Johnston, R.J.1982: Voice as a strategy in locational conflict: the fourteenth Amendment and residential separation in the United States. In Cox, K.R. and Johnston, R.J., editors, Conflict, politics and the urban scene, New York: St Martin's Press, 111–126.
36.
Johnston, R.J.1984: Residential segregation, the state and constitutional conflict in American urban areas. Institute of British Geographers, Special Publication 17. London: Academic Press.
37.
Kaplan, T.1992: Red city, blue period. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
38.
Kostoff, S.1992: The city assembled. London: Thames & Hudson.
39.
Lees, L.H.1993–94: Urban public space and imagined communities in the 1980s and 1990s. Journal of Urban History20, 443–465.
40.
Levitas, G.1978: Anthropology and sociology of streets. In Anderson, S., editor, On streets, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 225–240.
41.
Matthews, G.1992: The rise of public woman.New York: Oxford University Press.
42.
Mitchell, D.1995: The end of public space? People's Park, definitions of the public, and democracy. Annals of the Association of American Geographers85, 108–133.
43.
Newman, P.1973: Defensible space. New York: Collier.
44.
Park, R.E.1972: The crowd and the public and other essays. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
45.
Pateman, C.1989: The disorder of women. Cambridge: Polity Press.
46.
Peterson, M.J.1984: No angels in the house: the Victorian myth and the Paget women. American Historical Review89, 677–708.
47.
Pinckney, D.1995: Slouching toward Washington. New York Review of Books42, 73–82.
48.
Reiss, A.J., editor, 1964: Louis Wirth on cities and social life. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
49.
Robson, B.T.1982: The Bodley barricade: social space and social conflict. In Cox, K.R. and Johnston, R.J., editors, Conflict, politics and the urban scene, New York: St Martin's Press, 45–61.
50.
Rose, G.1993: Feminism and geography. Cambridge: Polity Press.
51.
Rosenzweig, R. and Blackmar, E.1992: The park and the people. A history of Central Park. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
52.
Ross, K.1988: The emergence of social space: Rimbaud and the Paris Commune. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.
53.
Ryan, M.1989: The American parade: representations of nineteenth-century social order. In Hunt, L., editor, The new cultural history, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 131–153.
54.
Ryan, M.1990: Women in public. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.
55.
Ryan, M.1992: Gender and public access: women's politics in nineteenth-century America. In Calhoun, C., editor, Habermas and the public sphere, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 259–288.
56.
Sack, R.D.1986: Human territoriality. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
57.
Sack, R.D.1992: Place, modernity and the consumer's world. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.
58.
Sennett, R.1970a: The uses of disorder. New York: Knopf.
59.
Sennett, R.1970b: Families against the city. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
60.
Sennett, R.1990: The conscience of the eye. New York: Knopf.
61.
Sennett, R.1992 (1976): The fall of public man. New York: Norton.
62.
Sennett, R.1994: Flesh and stone. The body and the city in western civilization. New York: Norton.
63.
Smith, N.1992: New city, new frontier: the lower East Side as wild, wild west. In Sorkin, M., editor, Variations on a theme park, New York: Hill and Wang, 61–93.
64.
Smith, N.1996: After Tompkins Square Park: degentrification and the revanchist city. In King, A.D., editor, Re-presenting the city, London: Macmillan, 93–107.
65.
Sorkin, M.1992: See you in Disneyland. In Sorkin, M., editor, Variations on a theme park, New York: Hill and Wang, 205–232.
66.
Stilgoe, J.R.1988: Borderland. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
67.
Thompson, E.P.1993: Customs in common.New York: New Press.
68.
Vernon, J.1993: Politics and the people. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
69.
Vickery, A.1993: Golden age to separate spheres? A review and chronology of English women's history. Historical Journal36, 383–414.
70.
Young, I.M.1995: City life and difference. In Kasinitz, P., editor, Metropolis, New York: New York University Press, 250–270.
71.
Zukin, S.1991: Lanscapes of power. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
72.
Zukin, S.1995: The cultures of cities. Cambridge, MA: Blackwell.
