After the public realm: Spaces of representation, transition and plurality

This essay questions the privileging of the design of public over domestic spaces and buildings in architecture and urban design, and their education, and the identification of public space with a public realm seen as the loc ation of democracy. It cites the case made by Doreen Massey that the divisi on of public and private realms is gendered, allowing men the freedom of pu blic affairs whilst confining women to domesticity; and argues that a duali sm of public and private space ignores a third area of transitional spaces which affect patterns of urban sociation. The case of redevelopment in El R aval, Barcelona, demonstrates that public space may be, today, part of an a nti-democratic strategy of gentrification. But, if public space constructs a gendered public realm as imposition, there remains, as Hannah Arendt cont ends, a need for locations of social mixing in which difference is visible. What, if not public space, enables this?