The idea of the “public sphere” as an arena of political deliberation and participation, and therefore as fundamental to democratic governance, has a long and distinguished history. The imagery of the Athenian agora as the physical space wherein that democratic ideal might be attained has also had a powerful hold upon the political imagination. As a result some kind of association or even identity has been forged between the proper shaping of urban public space and the proper functioning of democratic governance in the public sphere. The status of this association is, perhaps for good reason, often left extremely vague.

For some it seems to function merely as a convenient metaphor and with the arrival of the internet and the construction of “virtual communities” the physicality of spatial organization seems scarcely to matter any more. Others will ask more pointedly how it might be possible to encourage political participation in an urban world constructed out of segregated suburbs, gated communities, privatized spaces and tightly surveilled shopping malls and downtown streets monitored (thanks, these days, to some shadowy form of governance called a “business partnership”) with a video-camera at every corner.