By closely examining its public spaces, we can decipher the social, cultural and political life of a city. Public space is the arena for individual and group expression; a forum for dialogue, debate, and contestation; a space for conviviality, leisure, performance, and display; a place for economic survival and refuge; a site for the exchange of information and ideas; and a setting for nature. Public space has concerned philosophers, political thinkers, social scientists, legal scholars, planners, and architects and has also intrigued writers, painters, musicians, film-makers, and other artists.

In this new four-volume collection from Routledge, Vikas Mehta brings together the key literature that encompasses the social and political issues in the making and experience of public space. It addresses the complete ecology of public space and the many interrelated issues. The set journeys the vast territory of public space to compile a multidisciplinary selection of materials that offer new as well as traditionally recognized principles of understanding and the making of public space.

Public Space is fully indexed and includes comprehensive introductions, newly written by the editor, which place the collected materials in their historical and intellectual context. It is an essential reference collection and is destined to be valued by scholars and students—as well as policy-makers and practitioners—as a vital one-stop research and pedagogic resource.