City Publics: The (dis) Enchantments of Urban Economics (Questioning Cities) Book

Some cities have grown into mega cities and some into uncontrolled sprawl; others have seen their centres decline with populations moving to the suburbs. In such times, questions of the public realm and public space in cities warrant even greater attention than they have previously received. Investigating ordinary spaces in the city where power operates more subtly and differences are negotiated, Sophie Watson uses a number of different ethnographies of public spaces, materializing some of the theories of the urban public realm to see how difference is played out and negotiated in the everyday. Much of this book focuses on spaces where to outside observers tension is relatively absent or invisible, in order to elucidate processes of negotiation as well as antagonism, but Watson also reveals how the boundaries between the public and private are being negotiated and redrawn, and how public and private spaces are mutually constitutive. Through her investigation of the more ordinary and less dramatic forms of encounter and contestation in the city, Watson is able to conceive of an urban public realm and urban public space that is heterogeneous and potentially progressive.Read More