Public Space is a Civic Lifeline, not a Nice-to-Have

Public space is a stage

From the United States to Iran, public space is a platform for contesting and grappling with our social and political realities. At their best, streets, public buildings, and campuses reflect civic participation and care for neighbors. Disturbingly, they are also settings for state-led violence. We at Gehl stand with people in Minneapolis, Tehran, and elsewhere who are exercising their right to collective action in public space.

The collective action we are witnessing is a result of design, governance, and people interacting in real time. Indeed, what happens in public space is never isolated: it reflects the conditions of our political systems just as clearly as it reflects our social ones. Because public spaces are everywhere, for everyone, they are unique stages for questioning those in power, for reimagining collective life, and for engaging political ideologies at all scales. They make a society’s values — and debates over its values — visible.

Public space is a tool for democracy and solidarity

Long before a protest occurs, suppression and surveillance shape what public space allows—or forbids—particularly for minority communities who have long lived with fear of those holding power. Even where democratic rights formally exist, escalating force, hostile design choices, and regulatory decisions are transforming ordinary public places into landscapes of intimidation, affecting children, residents, and taxpayers whose own public infrastructure is being used to police, suppress, or harm them.

Precisely because public space makes civic life visible, it remains one of the most important platforms for democratic action. Public space is where democracy is most tangible and most practiced. The simple act of taking up space—walking together down a street, standing in a square, or gathering in shared expressions of joy, anger, grief, or hope—asserts collective identity and political voice, turning streets into tools for solidarity and accountability.

Political leaders understand this. In the wake of a large federal law-enforcement surge in Minneapolis and multiple fatal shootings by federal agents, local leaders urged residents to remain visible in public: work in local cafés, document what they see, and witness unfolding events. In moments like these, public space does much more than host protests—it allows people to bear witness and to show up for one another. Safety, in this sense, is not merely a technical matter of lighting, sightlines, or cameras; it is inseparable from the freedom to assemble, dissent, and exist in public without fear.

These very qualities that make public space a democratic tool are in jeopardy. We are witnessing the growing restriction and criminalization of public assembly, the erosion of local rule of law, and the treatment of streets as sites of control and “authoritarian machinery,” as Rip Rapson, president of the Kresge Foundation, said, rather than everyday civic life. Many communities around the world, especially those in the majority world, understand this lived reality well. What we are witnessing in the United States echoes a history many recognize, even as it unfolds in a country that prides itself on being a leader of democracy.

Why design must stand up

As public space designers who celebrate cities for people, we cannot accept the gradual fortification of the commons or the normalization of fear. We must resist retreat into neutrality. It is not naïve to affirm the need for spaces designed and governed for everyday life — from commuting safely, to playing outside, to connecting with neighbors. Well-designed, programmed, and governed spaces are where our values as a society take shape. They are also fertile ground for connecting people across their differences. By supporting everyday interactions between neighbors, public spaces play a key role in minimizing the forces of exclusion and segregation, and strengthening solidarity and bridging across divides.

For those of us who design and advocate for these spaces, this moment demands that we speak plainly: the health of public life depends on whether those with authority choose control or care. Elected leaders, public agencies, place managers, police, as well as everyday people, play a decisive role in whether public space can hold disagreement, expression, and collective action without violence.