Lived and Planned Public Space

Sammanfattning: What is ‘bad’ public space? Public spaces have been conceptualized as integral to urban realities. It is virtually impossible to imagine a city, town, village, or any other concentrated settlement without them. It can thus be argued that public spaces are an intrinsic part of cities to the point that a city is not really a city without its public spaces. It is argued that cities need high-quality public spaces however, what is meant by good/bad is not apparent. The aim is thus to understand what is meant by ‘bad’ and how people in urban realities relate to public spaces by problematizing the concept pair good/bad public spaces. Two methods were applied: semi-structured observation and reading the landscape. The findings were that there is little explicit treatment of ‘bad’ public spaces and consensus within cultural geography. People can devise five strategies to re-negotiate public spaces in order to make them usable from the perspective of the city dweller. In accordance with the findings, both practical and theoretical implications were concluded. These findings indicate that cultural geography might need to rethink the conceptualisation of good/bad public space and that planning needs to be privy to a reconceptualization as this affects urban living.