This book explores spaces of participation beyond the invited and formal spaces of politics. From town halls to deliberative processes, it questions how democracy can be more systemically embedded in politics to ensure a healthy public sphere. By embracing a spatial perspective on democracy, this book explores citizen participation through the lens of public spaces, both physical and digital, and discusses several cases of everyday forms of engagement in public life, taking place in public libraries, art spaces, streets, civic tech platforms, community centres, and more.

The cases explore the transformation of neighbourhoods and cities through the lens of public spaces, highlighting how democracy and citizen participation can be conceptualised spatially. It contains contributions from a diverse set of scholars and practitioners from interdisciplinary social science and humanities perspectives, including urban studies, planning, urban and digital sociology, political anthropology, public arts, and political science. Each chapter focuses on different public spaces from the viewpoint of citizen participation, making it essential for planners and policy analysts, as well as academics and graduate students in planning, human geography, design, social sciences, public policy, and politics.

The Open Access version of this book, available at www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) 4.0 International license.

Anna Paola Quaglia is an independent researcher with a PhD in Urban Studies from the Polytechnic of Turin, with six years’ experience at the European Commission’s Competence Centre on Participatory and Deliberative Democracy. Her current research and work explore the interplay between grassroots democracy and institutional participation, ethics in research and policy, and theatre and arts‑based methods.

Ângela Guimarães Pereira works at the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre. She leads the Competence Centre on Participatory and Deliberative Democracy. Post‑normal science inspires her research, guiding her interest in diverse ways of understanding the environment and society, speculative “futuring”, and the methods, institutionalisation and embeddedness of citizen participation.