Reconciling the public, the private and the people - An inquiry into the publicness of retail urban spaces in Bengaluru

Urban public spaces are integral to cities. They are the loci of socio - cultural interactions and commerce. The term “Public” intuitively conveys a sense of a common asset that is inclusive and easily accessible. This is because, historically, the ownership (agency) of urban public spaces were vested with the local authorities. The perception that public space was, indeed the property of the public, ensured a higher level of inclusion, creating stronger bonds between the people and the place. The dimensions of an urban public space are now changing. The lines between the public and the private realm are getting blurred. With an increasing role of private agencies, the perception of “public” is also changing, altering its nature and collective perceptions. The manifestation of this trend can be seen all around the world – be it privately owned public spaces or privately operated public spaces. The paper examines this phenomenon in retail urban spaces of Bengaluru city, India, where there is a high degree of economic activity. Currently, in Bengaluru, due to revenue deficits, the local authorities, have turned to the private sector, transitioning “public spaces” to Public Private Partnership (PPP) spaces. Publicly owned shopping complexes - situated in civic amenity sites ear marked to cater to the needs of the neighbourhood - are being converted to shopping malls under the PPP model. Shopping malls are a hybrid; privately owned spaces that encompass characteristics of an urban public space within its architecture. Involving the Private Sector has breathed life into the cash-strapped public sector projects. However, with an increasing role of private agencies in shaping the public realm, there is a visible change in the character and usage of these spaces. Hence, this inquiry is an attempt to explore the influence of agency on the “publicness” of retail urban spaces and consequently, its effect on socio – economic inclusion and the built form. The scope of the paper is four-fold. The first section of the paper delves into understanding the changing nature of retail urban spaces in the city with a focus on its agency, function, form and inclusiveness. The second section examines the parameters that define the retail urban public realm in Bengaluru. The third section employs these parameters to evaluate three retail urban spaces with differing agencies – publicly owned, privately owned, public private partnership – to determine their degree of “publicness”. The fourth section utilizes the key findings to examine inclusive design that integrate architectural, urban design and urban planning framework with policies. The research is limited to examining shopping and retail related urban spaces in Bengaluru city. The aim of the paper is to develop an empirical assessment framework that can be used to develop design codes and policies, sensitive to context, for the new age hybrid urban spaces. This will enable a design approach that reconciles the “Public” and the “Private” space with its people and facilitates a new “Public Private People Space (PPPS)” that is vibrant, safe, inclusive, sustainable and healthy for its community. The primary references for this paper are the works of Kohn (2004) -Brave new neighbourhoods: the privatization of public space; Carmona (2019)- Principles for public space design, planning to do better and Verna et al (2010)-Assessing the publicness of public space: the star model of publicness. Key words: urban design, urban planning, inclusive design, public space.