Shaping the Public Space Discourse with the Global South

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Cover image: A public space in Johannesburg. Credit: GIZ VCP, Inclusive violence and crime prevention programme.
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Published: Dec 31, 2022
DOI: https://doi.org/10.32891/jps.v7i1.1806
Keywords:
African cities public space discourse Global South

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Luisa Bravo
City Space Architecture
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4911-8002

Abstract

When I presented The Journal of Public Space at Habitat III, the United Nations Conference on Housing and Sustainable Urban Development, in Quito (2016), during an event at the Urban Library, I made it very clear that the partnership that City Space Architecture had established with UN-Habitat inspired our mission to give voice to unheard countries in order to include them in the discourse on public space.
At the beginning of 2022 The Journal of Public Space launched a call for papers inviting scholars, designers, planners, city practitioners, historians and writers to offer critical and innovative contributions to understanding meanings and practices in plural and diverse African spaces, contexts, climates, regional and local scales, and histories. The issue was intended to contribute to the establishment of the Centre on African Public Spaces (CAPS), a project initiated by the City of Johannesburg (South Africa) in collaboration with other African cities, universities and community advocacy groups. As a Pan-African urban lab for public space, CAPS was designed to be a home and resource to a community of urban practitioners and thinkers, students, scholars and civil society activists dedicated to connect, exchange experiences, advance knowledge, share resources, grow expertise and mobilize on a wide range of relevant local, regional and global issues. 
In response to the call for papers we received 70 submissions. We shortlisted 27 papers for this issue and we invited African scholars to serve as peer reviewers and to support the production of quality contents. The peer review process involved more than 60 African scholars and two African guest editors, for more than one year.

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How to Cite
Bravo, L. (2022) “Shaping the Public Space Discourse with the Global South”, The Journal of Public Space, 7(1), pp. 1–2. doi: 10.32891/jps.v7i1.1806.
Issue
Vol. 7 No. 1 (2022): Public Space and Placemaking in African Cities
Section
Editorial
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Author Biography

Luisa Bravo, City Space Architecture

Dr Luisa Bravo is a public space scholar and passionate activist, a cultural entrepreneur and an academic. After completing her PhD (2008), she has taught, researched and lectured in Europe, the United States, Middle East, Asia and Australia. She is Adjunct Professor in Urban Design at the University of Florence in Italy and has 20+ years experience in the professional field with a specific focus on public space.
Luisa holds a strong record of academic publications, she has been the recipient of grants and awards, such as the Australia Endeavour Executive Award, and she served as keynote speaker in major international conferences in 30+ countries. She has actively participated in key United Nations summits, such as the Habitat III conference (Quito, 2016), the World Urban Forum (Kuala Lumpur, 2018; Abu Dhabi, 2020; Katowice, 2022) the first UN-Habitat Assembly (Nairobi, 2019) and two High Level Meetings at the UN headquarters in New York (2017, 2022). With her non-profit organization City Space Architecture, that she founded in 2013, she organized and curated conferences, seminars, workshops and exhibitions internationally aimed at promoting public space culture. Under her leadership, City Space Architecture became partner of UN-Habitat and was engaged in the General Assembly of Partners (GAP), Research and Academia Partner Constituent Group.
Luisa initiated and is currently leading several public space projects, such as: The Journal of Public Space, the first, interdisciplinary, academic, open access journal entirely dedicated to public space; the Public Space Academy, the first, free, interdisciplinary educational program on public space; the Public Space Museum, a collaborative and transdisciplinary practice on public space; the web-magazine Mastering Public Space, an online and free resource with a curated collection of news on public space from influential and reliable sources.
She is Member of AESOP Thematic group Public Spaces and Urban Cultures, Member of the Board of Experts for the European Prize for Urban Public Space, Expert to the European Commission for the research project 'Public Spaces as Spaces for Citizen Engagement', promoted by the JRC Competence Centre on Participatory and Deliberative Democracy. She is also an expert evaluator for the European COST project and for the Fulbright Commission (USA), and a consultant for the Global Platform for the Right to the City for which she wrote the thematic paper 'Cities and Human Settlements with Quality Public Spaces'.

References

Bravo, L. and Guaralda, M. (2016) “An open access forum for the discussion and advancement of research about public space”, The Journal of Public Space, 1(1), pp. 1–4. doi: 10.5204/jps.v1i1.3