Public Spaces and the Politics of Citizen Participation

This book explores citizen participation through the lens of public spaces, both physical and digital, and discusses several cases of everyday forms of engagement in public life, taking place in public libraries, art spaces, streets, civic tech platforms, community centres, and more.

This book explores spaces of participation beyond the invited and formal spaces of politics. From townhalls to deliberative processes, it questions how democracy can be more systemically embedded in politics to ensure a healthy public sphere. By embracing a spatial perspective to democracy, the book explores citizen participation through the lens of public spaces, both physical and digital, and discusses several cases of everyday forms of engagement in public life, taking place in public libraries, art spaces, streets, civic tech platforms, community centres, and more. Cases explore the transformation of neighbourhoods and cities through the lens of public spaces, highlighting how democracy and citizen participation can be conceptualized spatially. It contains contributions from a diverse set of scholars and practitioners from interdisciplinary social science and humanities perspectives, including urban studies, planning, urban and digital sociology, political anthropology, public arts, and political science. Each chapter focuses on different public spaces from the viewpoint of citizen participation, making it essential for planners and policy analysts, as well as academics and graduate students of planning, human geography, design, social sciences, public policy, and politics. The Open Access version of this book, available at www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) 4.0 International license.