Right to the City and Urban Public Spaces

Right to the city is composed of appropriation and participation in urban affairs. Appropriation is realized through movement in the city, presence in it, comfort feeling, and having proper spaces. While urban participation is possible through being involved in urban policy-making, decision-making for physical and spatial issues, urban economy, ownership and control of urban spaces. The present paper with the use of Henri Lefevbre seeks to explain how the urban everyday life is affected by not being able to use the public spaces. An important part of urban spaces is the public space. Public spaces are those spaces which public have access to them, and their purpose is to pave the way for social interactions and make people comfort. The present study analyzed the current trends of public spaces in order to assess the right to city. During the last few years, the privatization of urban public spaces has occurred. In other words, due to some socio-economic change, both the production of space and control of space have come to the hand of private corporations. Commodification of space has caused the privatization of public spaces. Given the multi-dimensional nature of challenges facing cities, reasonable management of urban public spaces requires paying attention to four inter-related aspects which are: regulation of land use and its conflict management, definition and implementation of maintenance of these spaces, investment in public spaces, and co-ordination of interventions of different sectors in public spaces.