Abstract :
This essay questions the privileging of the design
of public over domestic spaces and buildings in
architecture and urban design, and their education,
and the identification of public space with a
public realm seen as the location of democracy.
It cites the case made by Doreen Massey that
the division of public and private realms is
gendered, allowing men the freedom of public
affairs whilst confining women to domesticity;
and argues that a dualism of public and private
space ignores a third area of transitional spaces
which affect patterns of urban sociation. The
case of redevelopment in El Raval, Barcelona,
demonstrates that public space may be, today,
part of an anti-democratic strategy of gentrification.
But, if public space constructs a gendered
public realm as imposition, there remains, as
Hannah Arendt contends, a need for locations of
social mixing in which difference is visible. What,
if not public space, enables this?
