Contemporary Spatial Publicness: Its New Characteristics and Democratic Possibilities

In this study, we explore the recognition of publicness as understood by everyday users of public space. By analyzing news articles in South Korea selected from 1 January 2010, to 31 December 2018, this study examines a discourse which is largely missing in the existing studies—the subjective experience and framing of contemporary spatial publicness by its end-users. After analyzing the contents from a total of 583 articles in the KINDS database, we develop a general typology of how contemporary spatial publicness is represented in South Korea. Although the scope and background of questions surrounding South Korea’s recognition of contemporary spatial publicness are different from that of Western countries, a similar debate has emerged about what publicness means in the context of the architecture and urban space around the globe. By developing different thematic dimensions in the representations of contemporary spatial publicness, we further discuss the implications for future research to examine the pragmatic sensibilities of individuals and utility of semi-public/private space.