Publicness in the Privatised City

As cities increasingly rely on privately owned and managed spaces to provide public amenities, the boundary between public and private urban space becomes less clear.

This research asks how publicness can be understood and measured when a space may be publicly accessible but privately controlled.

The study develops a quantitative framework that treats publicness as a socio-ecological condition rather than simply a legal or spatial category. It applies the framework to privately owned public spaces in Canary Wharf and Yeouido, examining how governance, spatial conditions and environmental performance interact across two different regulatory contexts.

The research identifies distinct institutional constraints on publicness in each case, highlighting the importance of looking beyond formal access to understand who can benefit from privately controlled urban space.

The project was developed as an MPlan dissertation at University College London and is currently being prepared for journal submission.