Privatization of public space : Apple Piazza Liberty

Sammanfattning: The subject of this thesis concerns the privatization of public space, examining the rapid provision of quasi-public space in our contemporary neoliberal influenced urbanization process. With the objective to examining the consequences of such development for public space and the public realm. Public space possesses an essential value for society by constitute a material, accessible and social site for the public to occur, a site where public activities and encounters with diversity, and unfamiliar perspectives can take place. The value of public space in society is therefore social and democratic through its everyday processes, constituting society in a self-organised manner, by people and between people. In contrast to this, quasi-public space is criticized to further turn the meaning of contemporary public space to subsidize individual and economic interests, instead of more collective and “common good” interests. This is studied primarily by investigating how the privatization of public space affects the public realm from the parameters that determine public space quality in relation to privatization: ownership, control, accessibility, usability, and management. These parameters are anchored in theories concerned with the privatization of public space and reflected in ’the right to the city’ approaches, which serve this thesis as an analytical framework. Piazza Liberty in Milan, owned by Apple, serves as an actual case to apply and investigate these parameters. The result of the thesis primarily highlights that the question of privatization is not dogmatic, and the importance to sustain a balance between public and private influence within our publicly accessible spaces, to avoid generating segregation between publicly accessible spaces, which risk to generating a form of quasi-public realm. It is therefore important to apply new policies that primarily secure quasi-public space functioning out from the values associated with public space.