Urban public spaces: understanding through the prism of foreign discourse

Abstract

The modern city focuses the crossing of complicated, ambiguous, multidimensional social processes.They are manifested in multiple aspects of it functioning from different sides, such as population (person, community, and dwellers), politics, economics, and have got space-time peculiarities.To some extent public space is a unique element in terms of city functioning and urban development, where simultaneously accumulated results of all processes of urban transformation.In 1990s, urban public spaces as relatively new field of study attracted the attention of sociologists, urbanists and architects.Since, in foreign publications were presented considerable diversity of theoretical, methodological and applied approaches to understanding and exploring public spaces, their transformation.Studies have confirmed that public spaces are not placelessness phenomenon, but their development is drived by local traditions and culture, available resources, forms of regulation.However, all of them are characterized by some common functions, features, transformations and their consequences.Therefore, to understand the nature of public spaces and to determine directions of their investigation from human geographer's point of view we need analyze contemporary conceptualization in foreign discourse, acquaint the results of their research in post-socialist countries, where functions of public space during long time were largely controlled and restricted.This article provides an overview of the foreign concepts of urban public space in order to highlight the main approaches, trends and tasks of studying of urban public spaces in Ukraine based on human geography vision.

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