Shedding new light on Privately Owned Public Spaces (POPS) to improve social inclusion: facilitating POPS for youths’ social activities

Project Information

POPS for Youth

Grant agreement ID: 101153953

DOI

10.3030/101153953

Project closed

EC signature date 16 May 2024

Start date 15 July 2024

End date 14 July 2026

Funded under

• Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA)

Total cost

No data

EU contribution

€ 187 624,32

Coordinated by

TECHNISCHE UNIVERSITEIT DELFT
Netherlands

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - POPS for Youth (Shedding new light on Privately Owned Public Spaces (POPS) to improve social inclusion: facilitating POPS for youths’ social activities)

Reporting period: 2024-07-15 to 2026-07-14

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

Privately owned public spaces (POPS) are publicly accessible spaces delivered or managed through private or hybrid arrangements. They can extend the public realm where public resources are limited, but formal access does not mean that all users are equally able to stay, meet, interact or use these spaces. This is particularly relevant for young people, whose social activities are often informal, group-based and non-commercial. POPS for Youth examined how the design, management and governance of these spaces shape young people’s social life. Its two connected objectives were to build empirical knowledge of youth social behaviour in POPS and to develop a stronger approach for evaluating whether public spaces support different forms of social involvement. The project integrated urban planning and design, environment–behaviour research, ecological psychology, microsociology and public-space governance. These perspectives were combined to examine what people do in public space, how social interaction is organised, and the spatial, social and institutional conditions associated with different forms of public social life. The pathway to impact was to move from evidence of actual use towards knowledge that can support planning, design and management. By making social interaction more visible and clarifying how access and use conditions are created and maintained, the project provides a stronger basis for assessing how publicly accessible spaces work socially in practice.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

The project progressed through conceptual development, method development, empirical fieldwork and comparative governance analysis.
A meta-narrative review of 119 publications identified six recurring, non-hierarchical modes of public interaction: withdrawal, co-presence, co-attention, co-exchange, co-action and assembly. It also identified four dimensions for interpreting conditions associated with interaction: spatial, normative, perceptual and political. This established the conceptual framework for the empirical research and resulted in a peer-reviewed publication in the Journal of Environmental Psychology.
The project then developed Interaction Mapping, shifting the focus from broad activity categories towards the interaction event as the main unit of analysis. An initial protocol translated the six modes into observable indicators and recorded spatial location, duration, composition and transitions. It was tested through paired observation with a trained research assistant. Differences between observers were used to refine event definitions, coding rules and recording procedures. The methodological work combined an interaction recording chart, targeted tracking and a linked user questionnaire.
Following ethics approval, the refined method was applied in three cases in Amsterdam and Rotterdam. The Dutch fieldwork combined systematic observation, spatial mapping and tracking with linked user questionnaires, providing the main setting for calibration and comparison between observed conduct and users’ own accounts. The empirical scope was then expanded to six cases across four Swiss cities and six cases across four UK cities. In total, the project applied the evolving approach across 15 public-space cases in 10 cities and three countries, allowing it to be examined across different spatial forms, management arrangements and planning contexts.
A research visit to ETH Zurich’s Centre for Research on Architecture, Society and the Built Environment (ETH Wohnforum – ETH CASE) supported Swiss data collection and interdisciplinary collaboration on analysis and methodological refinement. The international fieldwork also created opportunities for exchange with researchers and practitioners in the countries studied.
In parallel, comparative governance research examined how POPS are created, regulated, managed and overseen. It developed a lifecycle perspective covering the creation of public obligations, implementation and codification, everyday management and use control, and longer-term oversight and adaptation, and identified recurring governance model families across international cases. The action produced a published cross-disciplinary framework for public social interaction, a developed and field-tested Interaction Mapping approach, comparative evidence from Dutch, Swiss and UK public spaces, and a governance framework for understanding how planning and management arrangements shape public life. Further project manuscripts address Interaction Mapping, comparative youth social life and POPS governance. These outcomes substantially extended the empirical and methodological scope originally envisaged for the project.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

The project produced three main scientific advances. First, it showed that public social life cannot be adequately represented through activity counts or a simple progression from low to high interaction. The six identified modes capture different forms of social involvement, including withdrawal and low-demand co-presence as well as conversation, shared activity and collective participation.
Second, comparative fieldwork showed that the social performance of POPS depends on combinations of spatial and management conditions rather than individual features in isolation. Across the cases, accessible non-commercial places to sit and stay, shelter and weather protection, good lighting, connections to surrounding routes and uses, and opportunities for flexible or programmed activity supported different forms of youth presence and interaction. In contrast, spaces dominated by circulation or commercial consumption, limited opportunities for informal staying, restrictive access times or rigid behavioural controls provided fewer possibilities for sustained social use. The findings also challenge simple classifications of management features as either encouraging or discouraging. Security personnel, surveillance and active management were not necessarily experienced negatively by all users: in some settings they supported feelings of safety and comfortable use, while in others intensive control or a sense of being watched could discourage particular users or activities. Their effects therefore depended on how management was implemented, the spatial setting, time of use and the users involved.
Third, Interaction Mapping provides an event-based approach for relating these conditions to where, when and how social interaction occurs. The governance framework complements this by showing how planning instruments, management responsibilities and oversight affect whether publicly accessible spaces continue to support public use after development.