Understanding Urban Public Space in a Leisure Context

Abstract

For many people, the city is a landscape of everyday life. In cities, public spaces serve as venues for social interaction, sociability, conviviality, and the enactment of community. Despite their relevance to community life, however, urban spaces remain underexamined in the leisure literature. If researchers seek to understand leisure in the context of everyday experiences, they must also consider the spatial perspective in which leisure activities are pursued. In this research reflection, we argue that urban public spaces and some private spaces are fundamentally leisure settings that warrant greater research attention. We propose to broaden the conceptual understanding of what constitutes urban public space by outlining four categories of urban space based on ownership and accessibility.

Keywords:

• access
• built environment
• club space
• common space
• ownership
• private-public space

Acknowledgments

Portions of this research were presented at the 2009 Leisure Research Symposium, Salt Lake City, Utah. The authors would like to acknowledge the anonymous reviewers for their valuable feedback.