Kamusal Mekânların Toplumsal Boyutları Üzerine Bir Değerlendirme

Abstract

Public spaces are defined as places for recreation and sociability, and considered according to spatial characteristics in both urban planning and urban design literatures. Public spaces are accepted as the essence of cities referring such qualities as plurality, diversity and coexistence. Private sector started to provide public sector services in last decades which in turn affected both public spaces and society. Consequently, there is a growing concern about loss of publicness of public spaces and some criteria have been developed to understand the degree of publicness of spaces open to public. These criteria mainly depend on physical attributes of spaces. Studies in social sciences, consider the publicness in cities according to activity dimension based on free speech, related to public sphere. The concept of public sphere is a sphere of discussion where all citizens could express their ideas to a wider public. Hence, public sphere does not necessarily need actual spaces, all real and virtual (media, newspapers, Internet) mediums provide a base to constitute public sphere. Social sciences, consider public spaces as all mediums of free speech and representation. The approach of social sciences to publicness of cities generates new opportunities to consider public spaces beyond their spatial characteristics for both urban planning and urban design disciplines.