“Privately owned public spaces”? A study on privately owned spaces that are open for collective usufruct in Curitiba, Brazil

Abstract

Given the difficulty for municipal administration departments to offer public spaces that can harbor the wide variety of society’s demands, private initiative has been increasingly provoked in order to meet this vital need for cities. “Privately owned public spaces” constitute private domains that are open to collective usufruct and are one of the possibilities for answering to this plea. These solutions can be identified in the Brazilian municipal law sphere, instigating the creation of new types of public spaces. The aim of this research is to promote a reflection on the relevance and sustainability of creating these spaces in the contemporary city. To do that, through a direct observation of users and their activities, we have compared a public space and three “privately owned public spaces open to collective usufruct” in the city of Curitiba, Paraná, Brazil. As a result, we have identified that the public space includes a wider variety of uses and user profiles, while the private space, when it is more controlled, provokes loss in access and its full and unrestricted use.