Public Space Research Group

The Public Space Research Group (PSRG) was founded in 1995 by Distinguished Professor Setha Low and doctoral students at The Graduate Center of The City University of New York (CUNY). The objective was to create a center for ethnographic research, theory, and policy that focuses on the relationship of public space to people and communities within the context of historical, social, political, and economic forces. The PSRG offers an integrated framework for examining the processes that transform spaces into places, the conflicts that emerge over access and control of space, and the values and meanings people attach to places. We address local cultural and spatial resource problems and their evaluation, remediation, and revitalization through social policy, urban planning, management strategies, and environmentally-sensitive design. Since its founding, PSRG has rapidly grown in size and scope as faculty, graduate students and community associates have researched city parks, urban national parks, plazas, beaches, market areas, tourist areas, gated communities, co-operative housing, and historic preservation sites. We offer a critical perspective on practices that consider the human cost of inequalities and social exclusion in public space.