Taking "use" into account in the production of public space in Lyon, Louvain-la-Neuve and Lisbon: contexts, methods and results

Abstract

Issues of public space use have become a paramount subject of research in the recent past. While research of an overtly operative outlook has convincingly put forward design and management recommendations for improving the use of public spaces, it has struggled in approaching the issue as the scope of urban policy and planning. This research project aims at contributing to re-placing the problem at an urban scope. It will do so by comparing three very different policy and planning processes which, at an urban scale, explicitly put forward use as a main objective of public space production, namely Lyon, Louvain-la-Neuve and Lisbon. This research adopts an inductive approach to the subject, framed by readings in the intersection of pragmatic sociology, policy and economics/management studies which suggest the explanation of policy outcomes by in-depth analyses of the processes leading to them. However, it maintains a geographical standpoint as it is concerned, as well, with the “spatialization of public policies”, i.e. the spaces that are actually produced by said processes and the dynamics of use taking place therein.