This issue identifies the critical role played by public bodies in carving out public space and celebrates new public spaces around the world shortlisted in the second edition of the AR Public awards. Five public spaces are revisited in the issue, to ask how their original designers envisaged their use and how their role in public life has changed with time and shifting incentives. Some are success stories: Copacabana beach in Rio de Janeiro ‘attracts the richest and the poorest‘, while in Paris’s Le Cent Quatre, artists rehearse in a convivial, open atmosphere. In New York, the High Line’s ‘successes and shortcomings are as much a product of the neoliberal economy as of its designers’, while entrance to Meskel Square in Addis Ababa has become subject to an entrance fee.
