We come across the term ‘public space’ multiple times in our daily life but we never really focus on its actual meaning. Recently I read an article related to public spaces on social media, and as I was super bored I randomly researched what are the actual features of public spaces. Some important features that I found are it is accessible to all, encourages everyone’s participation, should provide a sense of security to the audience, should grant freedom of expression, etc.
This made me realized that most of those places which we consider to be public are not, and so, in reality, there are very limited options of public spaces that we have in our surroundings. An example of this is the very popular ‘Dolmen Mall Clifton’, which I thought of a public space until now, but it does not qualify to be a public space as it doesn't meet the required criteria. There, weekends are family days which means that a group of male friends or even a family that does not have a female member cannot enter; hence, it has limited accessibility. It also has certain timings and does not encourage everyone’s participation in a lot of different ways.
I observed we can sometimes become selfish in this regard. It is us who restrict it from being a Public Space. Sometimes, due to our fears and stigmas, we ourselves want this exclusion of certain people such as the extremely lower class people due to the risk of pick pocketing, or only male visitors due to the risk of harassment.
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