This book challenges current views that public life is in decline and that contemporary urban design trends reliant on privatisation, control, events, and thematic designs are to be blamed. Drawing on detailed and extensive analysis of a case study that illustrates well such urban design trends, it shows that informal social life and interaction occur more than its necessary in new master planned environments and new designed public settings, whether public or private owned and/or managed. Furthermore, it reveals the existence of a new category of informal public social settings which it calls fourth places because of their close relationship to Oldenburg¿s third places in terms of social and behavioural characteristics ¿ radical departure from the routines of home and work, inclusivity and social comfort ¿ but distinct in terms of activities, locations and spatial conditions ¿ being characterised by spatial, temporal and managerial in-betweenness, i.e. indeterminacy in form, function and times, and a great sense of publicness.

Includes new public space typologies; theories and methods to study the sociality and spatiality of the public realm

Introduction: Is public social life in decline and are contemporary masterplanning And public space design practices to be blamed?- Theorisation of informal public social life and interaction in urban public space.- The sociality and spatiality of social encounters among strangers.- Observations on the theorized conditions that support informal social interactions in new designed public spaces.- Observations on the under-theorized conditions that support informal social.- Interactions in new designed public spaces.- 'Fourth-places': The contemporary public settings for informal social life and Interaction.