The cultural life of public spaces

Within a UK context of radical policy reform and broader global economic shifts, the homogenisation of public space and the decimation of cultural life are leading-edge issues of contemporary concern. Drawing on empirics from a broader research project, this paper reports on the (ongoing) production of public spaces and extracts some pointers for practice pertaining to planning for their cultural life. Underutilisation, temporal dimensions and perceptions of urban quality are analysed, before tentatively considering future directions. Multi-stakeholder coproduction is put forward as a potentially fruitful mode of working