Reclaiming, Repurposing, and Re-creating Public Spaces: An exploration of groups and individuals who are creating alternative, counter and subaltern public spaces to meet needs and resist consumer capitalism.

Public space is a highly contested and subjectively defined area. Its discourse involves issues of power, inequality, access, ownership and marginalization, especially when the boundaries and demarcations of private and public space become blurred.

Individuals or groups reclaim, repurpose or re-create public space in ways that are alternative, subaltern, or counter to established uses. They do so for various reasons, including to meet real or perceived needs, to inscribe a desired aesthetic, to resist real or perceived injustices, to affirm or celebrate identities, and/or to feel a sense of belonging.

The process of reclaiming, repurposing or re-creating public space is often messy or non-linear, causing tensions or paradoxes, but may also provide an avenue through which dominant power structures may be challenged. Resisting such tensions or paradoxes is challenged by consumer capitalism, which works to homogenize, control and commodify space, culture or values wherever possible, co-opting social relationships and experiences of urban life into an impersonal system and perpetuating inequality.