A myth has been woven about the concept of “public space”, which has long been regarded as synonymous with “urbanity”. Public space is ideally and typically seen as something multi-dimensional. In western Europe, it is regarded as the product of a holistic and extremely complex act of social design, created through a combination of architecture, urban and spatial planning, cultural and economic policies and, last but not least, through the unconstrained encounters and exchanges between urbane, cosmopolitan, multiculturally-minded city dwellers. In the past, a surveyor would have staked out a rough circle or rectangle to define a public urban place. Today, the designer of the product “public space” is confronted with?such a daunting catalogue of requirements that he can scarcely fail to founder on them. The professional world is more or less unanimous in its diagnosis that the public realm in its traditional form is a thing of the past and that it is necessary, therefore, to draw?up new criteria for urbanity and public space. But what criteria should they be? Obviously they should translate the ideal conceptual substance of public space to another sphere; for as soon as the concept acquires a different connotation from those we traditionally associate with it, the familiar images vanish – the citizen debating in the marketplace, or the flâneur, sauntering along the boulevard, engaged in conversation and observing life around him. Christian Marquart