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Overview
Funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC)
Professor Matthew Carmona and Dr Filipa Wunderlich's ESRC-funded project investigates the phenomenon of the 'new' London square. 'Global Place, Contested Space? The Case of the 'New' London Squares' intends to achieve a better understanding of the dominant critiques of public space in a Northern-European context by gauging if and how they relate to the design, development and subsequent use and management of new public spaces in London.
The project emerged from a joint interest in the ways in which urban policy instruments often emphasise the potential of public spaces as weapons in the arsenal of global and local inter-city competition, as catalysts for urban renewal, and as arenas for community revitalisation and participatory local democracy. Yet academic literature is replete with criticism of public space as being privatised, corporate, commercialised, exclusionary and, simply, cheap.
On the face of it, this evaluation is damning of contemporary public space. London embodies the ideal context in which to consider these critiques, and the resurgence of the urban square as a distinctive morphological type offers a valuable focus for a study as to whether or not the increasing emphasis on public space design and management is likely to deliver the benefits envisaged for it in public policy.
The study will assess how key stakeholders engage in - and benefit from - the processes of space creation, what resources they use, which partnerships they engage with, and ultimately to what ends.
- People
Professor Matthew Carmona
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Send Matthew an emailDr Filipa Wunderlich
View Filipa's profile
Send Filipa an email- Outputs
This project led to the following publications:
Matthew Carmona, 'Contemporary Public Space: Part One, Critique', in Journal of Urban Design, Vol. 15, No. 1, 2010, pp. 123-148
Matthew Carmona, 'Contemporary Public Space: Part Two, Classification', in Journal of Urban Design, Vol. 15, No. 2, 2010, pp. 157-173
Matthew Carmona, 'Shaping Local London', in Urban Design, Issue 118, Spring, 2011, pp. 32-35
Matthew Carmona, 'Shaping Local London', in Town and Country Planning, Vol. 80, No.2, 2011, pp. 96-99
- Impact
In a report commissioned by the Mayor's Design Advisory Panel, this work has been used not only to inform a review of public space management in London undertaken by the London Assembly, but also as a feed into discussions on London design governance.