Art Space & the City Public Art & Urban Futures

Public art - the making, management and mediation of art outside its conventional location in museums and galleries, and the livable city - a concept involving user-centred strategies for urban planning and design, are both socially produced but have emerged from different fields and tend to be discussed in isolation.

This book applies a range of critical perspectives which have emerged from different disciplines - art criticism, urban design, urban sociology, geography and critical theory - to examine the practice of art for urban public spaces, seeing public art from positions outside those of the art world to ask how it might contribute to possible urban futures. Exploring the diversity of urban politics, the functions of public space and its relation to the structures of power, the roles of professionals and users in the construction of the city, the gendering of space and the ways in which space and citizen are represented, the book explains how these issues are as relevant to architecture, urban design and urban planning as they are to public art. Drawing on a wealth of images from across the UK and Europe and the USA, in particular, the author questions the effectiveness of public art in achieving more convivial urban environments, whilst retaining the idea that imagining possible futures is as much part of a democratic society as using public space.

Because public art suffers from falling between the realms of art and urban planning, it has been neglected in debates both on contemporary art and the future of cities. Art, Space and the City focuses on two roles for art: as decoration within revisioned urban design and as a social process of criticism.

Malcolm Miles applies a range of critical perspectives which have emerged from art criticism, urban design, urban sociology, geography and critical theory--to examine the practice of art for urban public spaces, and asks the artworld how it might contribute to the urban future. Drawing on a wealth of images and examples, including New York, Seattle, London and Tokyo, the author questions the effectiveness of public art in achieving more convivial urban environments, while retaining the idea that imagining the urban future is as much part of a democratic society as using public space.

Exploring the diversity of the roles of professionals and users in the construction of the city, the gendering of space and the ways in which space and citizen are represented, Miles explains how these issues are as relevant to architecture, urban design and planning as they are to public art. After three decades of public art as an often marginalized area within the practice of art, this is the only book to take stock of what it has become and what the future holds for it in the urban setting.

Includes bibliographical references (p. [239]-258) and index.