The space that the public values: ‘space to which it attributes symbolic significance and asserts claims. Citizens create meaningful public space by expressing their attitudes, asserting their claims, and using it for their own purposes’ (Goheen (1998) PHG, 22, 4). These purposes include getting drunk and urinating/vomiting; see Jayne, Holloway, and Valentine (2006) PHG 30, 4, 451. At a more elevated level, see Springer (2011) Antipode 43, 2, 525, and Ramadan (2013) Eur. Urb. & Reg. Studs 20: 145 on Tahrir Square, Cairo.

Public spaces, including parks, squares, and markets, are ‘co-produced’, and the key principles for their development include leaving room for self-organization, diversifying activities to encourage diverse people to participate, and maintaining access and availability (M. Mean and C. Tims 2005). K. Worpole and K. Knox (2007) conclude that strategies intended to ‘design out crime’, such as cutting down bushes, installing vandal-proof street furniture, and closing public toilets, affected their attractiveness and damaged the usefulness of public spaces; see also Klauser (2007) Eur. Urb. & Reg. Studs, on using CCTV to regenerate public space. Veronis (2006) Env. & Plan. A 38, 10 finds that the use of public space is central to the cultural politics of migrants in Toronto; Ortiz et al. (2004) GeoJournal 61, 3, report on women’s use of public space in Barcelona; and Mackintosh (2007) J. Hist. Sociol. 20, 1–2 writes on the engagingly titled bourgeois geography of bicycling.