Capital Spaces: The Multiple Complex Public Spaces of a Global City

by Matthew Carmona, Filipa Wunderlich

In recent years it has become common-place to hear claims that public space in cities across the globe has become the exclusive preserve of the wealthy and privileged, at the expense of the needs of wider society. Whether it is the privatization of public space through commerical developments like shopping malls and business parks, the gentrification of existing spaces by campaigns against perceived anti-social behaviour or the increasing domination of public areas by private transport in the form of the car, the urban public space is seen as under threat. But are things really that bad? Has the market really become the sole factor that influences the treatment of public space? Have the financial and personal interests of the few really come to dominate those of the many? To answer these questions Matthew Carmona and Filipa Wunderlich have carried out a detailed investigation of the modern public spaces of London, that most global of cities. They have developed a new typology of public spaces applicable to all cities, a typology that demonstrates that to properly assess contemporary urban places means challenging the over-simplification of current critiques. Global cities are made up of many overlapping public spaces, good and bad; this book shows how to analyze this complexity, and to understand it.

320 pages, Paperback

First published October 16, 2012

About the author

Matthew Carmona is an architect, planner and researcher based in the United Kingdom. His research focuses on the process of design governance and management of Public Space. He has taught at the University of Nottingham and The Bartlett, the latter since 1998.
Carmona serves as the chair of the Place Alliance, a collaborative alliance for place quality that he helped in founding in 2014. He regularly works as an advisor to governments in the UK as well as in other countries. He was the Specialist Advisor to the House of Lords Select Committee on the Built Environment in 2015.
In 2015, Carmona received the RTPI Academic Award for Research Excellence and in 2016 (for the Place Alliance) the RTPI Sir Peter Hall Award for Wider Engagement. In 2018, Carmona received the AESOP Best Published Paper Award for his work on the governance of design. In 2021 he was awarded the Athena City Accolade and in 2022 he received the RTPI Sir Peter Hall Award for Excellence in Research and Engagement for work on the treatment of design in English planning appeals. He is the European Associate Editor for the Journal of Urban Design and since 2003 has written a quarterly column for Town and Country Planning as well as his own blog Urban Design Matters. Carmona has published thirteen books and has written numerous articles.