A New Index for Public Space

After Distancing

Tali Hatuka, Andrea Mubi Brighenti (University of Trento, Italy)

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Hardback

Forthcoming
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English

Routledge
25 June 2025

Architecture: professional practice; Landscape art & architecture; Urban communities; Sociology; Urban & municipal planning

A New Index for Public Space: After Distancing offers readers a re-evaluation of the notion of publicness as a lens to unpack the complexity of urban space. A ""new index"" is proposed to reconstitute the promises and the predicaments of public space to better prepare for the contemporary challenges of post-pandemic, conflict-ridden society. Part I provides a theoretical introduction to the idea of public space and publicness, laying out the book’s rationale; Part II offers a new index of terms, including affects, alignments, atmosphere, conviviality, diagrams, documenting, flow, and more; and Part III applies the proposed lexicon with a ""random walk"" approach, inviting the reader to use the lens of nonlinear evolutionary dynamics as a means for envisioning the future of publicness. This book is the outcome of a conversation across disciplines – specifically, urban design and social theory – revolving around the recognition that public space is inherently fragile, messy, conflicted, and evolving. This book will be of interest to urban planners, architects, and urban designers, as well as human geographers, sociologists, political theorists, and those working in community development.

By: Tali Hatuka, Andrea Mubi Brighenti (University of Trento, Italy)
Imprint: Routledge
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions: Height: 234mm, Width: 156mm,
ISBN: 9781032555829
ISBN 10: 1032555823
Pages: 200
Publication Date: 25 June 2025
Audience: College/higher education , Professional and scholarly , Primary , Undergraduate
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Forthcoming

Part I 1. Thinking through Indexes Part II – Sensing and Imagining the Public Domain 2. Affects 3. Alignments 4. Atmosphere 5. Conviviality 6. Diagrams 7. Documentation 8. Elements 9. Flow 10. Memories 11. Refuge 12. Statements 13. Syncs Part III 14. Walking through Indexes: On Expanding Publicness Research

Tali Hatuka is an architect, urban planner, and professor who founded and directs the Laboratory of Contemporary Urban Design in the School of Social and Policy Studies at Tel Aviv University in Israel. Andrea Mubi Brighenti is a social theorist and a professor at the Department of Sociology, University of Trento, in Italy.

Reviews for A New Index for Public Space: After Distancing

""This erudite and provocative book melds social and political theory with design thinking to produce a new set of terms to understand both the nature and the phenomenology of publicness. Inspired by the challenges of physical distancing that accompanied the global pandemic, the authors show the durability of the public realm while offering new ways to interpret and produce a range of disordered, agonistic, and spatially-situated interactions that will continue to make public spaces the lifeblood of cities."" Diane E. Davis, Charles Dyer Norton Professor of Regional Planning and Urbanism, Harvard Graduate School of Design