TY - BOOK ID - 13001851 TI - City publics: the (dis)enchantments of urban encounters PY - 2006 SN - 0415312272 0415312280 9780415312288 9780415312271 9780203962954 9781134383221 9781134383177 9781134383214 PB - London Routledge DB - UniCat KW - Cities and towns KW - Public spaces. KW - Sociology, Urban. KW - #SBIB:39A4 KW - #SBIB:316.334.5U20 KW - Public places KW - Social areas KW - Urban public spaces KW - Urban spaces KW - Urban sociology KW - Toegepaste antropologie KW - Sociologie van stad (buurt, wijk, community, stadsvernieuwing) KW - Public spaces KW - Sociology, Urban UR - https://www.unicat.be/uniCat?func=search&query=sysid:13001851 AB - Some cities have grown into mega cities and some into uncontrolled sprawl; others have seen their centres decline with populations moving to the suburbs. In such times, questions of the public realm and public space in cities warrant even greater attention than they have previously received. Investigating ordinary spaces in the city where power operates more subtly and differences are negotiated, Sophie Watson uses a number of different ethnographies of public spaces, materializing some of the theories of the urban public realm to see how difference is played out and negotiated in the everyday. Much of this book focuses on spaces where to outside observers tension is relatively absent or invisible, in order to elucidate processes of negotiation as well as antagonism, but Watson also reveals how the boundaries between the public and private are being negotiated and redrawn, and how public and private spaces are mutually constitutive. Through her investigation of the more ordinary and less dramatic forms of encounter and contestation in the city, Watson is able to conceive of an urban public realm and urban public space that is heterogeneous and potentially progressive. ER -