Public Spaces and the Politics of Citizen Participation

Anna Paola Quaglia is an independent researcher with a PhD in Urban Studies from the Polytechnic of Turin, with six years' experience at the European Commission’s Competence Centre on Participatory and Deliberative Democracy. Her current research and work explores the interplay between grassroots democracy and institutional participation, ethics in research and policy, theatre and arts-based methods.Ângela Guimarães Pereira works at the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre. She leads the Competence Centre on Participatory and Deliberative Democracy. Post-normal science inspires her research and interests on different ways of knowing about environment and society, speculative “futuring” and citizen participation methods and institutionalisation(s) and embeddedness.

• Foreword: What democracy, what world, do we want to live in together?PrefaceChapter 1. Introduction. Situating democracy: Public spaces and citizen participation “down to earth”Chapter 2. Everyday places as sites of civic engagement innovations: Learning from Taipei’s Nanji Rice and IMMAPART I ON THE POLITICS OF URBAN PUBLIC SPACES Chapter 3. The lake that fights back: Co-governance as a persisting form of deliberative democracy in the case of Lago Bullicante in RomeChapter 4. Palaces for the homeless: Reassessing the social function of grand public interiors in 2020s CaliforniaChapter 5. Public-private-people partnerships: The making of Museo Spazio Pubblico in BolognaPART II DEMOCRATISING THE PUBLIC SPHERE: STREET THEATRE, ART SPACES AND THE MAKING OF NEW PUBLICSChapter 6. Art and irreverence: Democratising public space through street theatreChapter 7. ‘Living Rooms’ of the city – How artists build public spaceChapter 8. The Queens Museum and the making of Corona Plaza, QueensPART III RECLAIMING THE DIGITAL: HACKERSPACES, CIVIC PLATFORMS AND PUBLIC INSTITUTIONSChapter 9. Public values in digital public spacesChapter 10. "Public” and “civic” spaces online: Design, participation and governanceChapter 11. Exploratory sandboxes for science and technology engagements: Hackerspaces and citizen labs as “quasi-public” R&D infrastructuresChapter 12. Epilogue. Theatre as public space: Towards a socially engaged art.Conclusion