Contests over 'public space' have come to assume increasing centrality in deliberations over urban policy in post-industrial nations such as Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States. In this innovative book, Kurt Iveson addresses the relationship between publicness and the city, considering how the production, management and regulation of 'public spaces' has emerged as a problem for urban politics and urban theory.

Drawing on original, empirical research, the author presents a series of detailed case studies that explore the struggle for space in different forms of publicness, from political protesters seeking to use the grounds around Parliament House in Canberra, to young people hanging out on the streets of inner city Perth, to writing graffiti in Sydney. Publics and the City is a timely and critical examination of the relationship between urbanism, publicness and democracy.

Kurt Iveson is Lecturer in Urban Geography at the University of Sydney, Australia.