‘Clubification’ of urban public spaces? The withdrawal or the re-definition of the role of local government in the management of public spaces

This paper reports on a case study on the forms of urban public spaces governance that are emerging in the UK out of a rearrangement of governance responsibilities between local government, communities and private interests. Based on cases of public spaces in London under a variety of different governance arrangements, the paper critiques the dominant explanations of those processes, and suggests a far more complex picture in which empowerment and disempowerment of stakeholders of various types happen at the same time, along complex lines defined by geography, strength of stake and representation of that stake in a formalized governance transfer contract. As the paper suggests, the resulting ‘localization’ of governance, the devolution of governance responsibilities to those local actors with the stronger stake in them, does not intrinsically reduce the publicness dimension of public space, but it reshapes that notion towards one with a variety of ‘publicnesses’, with their own governance dynamics and positive and negative consequences.