Mending Privately Owned Public Spaces

Works on Taste and Spatial Practice

Adriana Cobo Corey

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English

Routledge
02 December 2025

City & town planning - architectural aspects; Homelessness; Urban & municipal planning; Transport planning & policy; Civil engineering, surveying & building

This book is motivated by a simple observation: Privately Owned Public Spaces, or POPS, are overlooked sites when it comes to exploring the subject of taste in architecture and urban design. The book unpacks the intricate world that unfolds from this thought, while arguing that taste is a missing key in current spatial practice discourse. Successful POPS are often presented as desirable additions to urban redevelopment projects in cities across the world. This perception often overshadows, and sometimes dismisses, some of the more damaging impacts that the establishment of POPS has on the social tissue of specific localities and social groups, and more generally on the socio-political dynamics of cities. Within the fields of architecture and urban design, high regard for specific urban regeneration projects with POPS at their heart tends to ignore their inherently divisive social impact. This, in turn, strengthens an often-legitimised belief that analysing, questioning and re-aligning such impact falls outside the realm of these professions. This book explores how successful POPS are sustained through, among other maintenance practices, carefully managed aesthetic codes, largely dependent on showcasing the aesthetic value of highly controlled programmes of use. This specific practice turns POPS into revealing sites when it comes to exploring taste in the context of spatial practice. Why don’t we talk about taste in socially engaged practice today? Does a focus on aesthetics pose an ethical dilemma between superficiality and depth for practitioners in the face of persistent social inequity?

By: Adriana Cobo Corey
Imprint: Routledge
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions: Height: 234mm, Width: 156mm,
ISBN: 9781032877525
ISBN 10: 1032877529
Pages: 256
Publication Date: 02 December 2025
Audience: College/higher education , Professional and scholarly , Primary , Undergraduate
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Forthcoming

Acknowledgements Introduction Chapter 1. A Wider Context: POPS in NY, Hong Kong, Ahmedabad and Bogotá Chapter 2. A Deeper Insight: Granary Square in London and the Codes and Practices of Contemporary Public Space Chapter 3. Men of Taste: Habitus and Recodification in Design Practice Chapter 4. Taste Untold: The Spider, The Bird and Other Stories of Contemporary Public Space Conclusions Annex: Notes on Practice-Led Research & Methodology and Research Diagrams for Researchers

Adriana Cobo Corey is an architect and academic with a doctorate in spatial practice. Her research interests cut across performance, taste and class in architecture, urban design and education. She is a subject leader on ethical practice for BA Architecture at Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts London.

Reviews for Mending Privately Owned Public Spaces: Works on Taste and Spatial Practice

""Through the simple act of looking through a window, Adriana Cobo Corey invites us to reflect on the often-overlooked, everyday actions that shape the life of the city. Focusing on Granary Square as a case of privately owned public space, she examines cleaning routines not only as functional tasks but also as choreographed performances that reveal the deeper politics of maintenance, labour, visibility, and control involved in the production of contemporary urban space."" Carlos Mínguez Carrasco, Chief Curator at ArkDes and co-editor of Bodybuildings: Architecture and Performance ""Countering the invisibilization of privately owned public space in architectural practice, this important book critically unpacks the aesthetic norms of privatization."" Elke Krasny, Co-Editor of Critical Care: Architecture and Urbanism for a Broken Planet