Public spaces of the city and its role in the formation of civil society

Authors

University of Tehran.

Abstract

Public space is a space that citizens of any class, age, race and profession have the right to enter and attend without any restrictions. So far, urban planning experts have not paid enough attention to the value and importance of these spaces in shaping the urban society. Of course, research has been done, which was mostly about the definitions and characteristics of public spaces from the point of view of urban design. Therefore, the importance of public spaces in the formation of civil society has been less discussed, on the contrary, it has been mostly sociologists and economists who have paid attention to this matter. The main purpose of this article is to investigate the role of public spaces in the formation of civil society from the point of view of urban planning.
When we talk about public space in cities and its relationship with civil society, two types of concepts of space are formed in a person's mind. First is the public space in its physical sense, which includes parks, streets, squares, markets and other public places. The second is actually a mental space that goes back to the extent of political freedoms and the existing space for the formation of civil organizations independent of the government. Despite the mutual relationship that these two have in the formation of civil society, in this article, public space means space in its first sense. The research method in this article is descriptive-analytical: firstly, the literature related to the public space and its importance in the city, as well as the characteristics of the civil society, are reviewed first, and then the relationship between the two is examined from the perspective of urban planning. . According to the research results, public spaces in the city have a close and strong relationship with the formation of the concept of citizenship. In the same way, public spaces are the main platform for the development of civil society in cities.