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This exploratory study, a Ph.D. dissertation completed at the University of Western Ontario in 2013, examines the materially embedded relations of power between library users and staff in public libraries and how building design regulates spatial behavior according to organizational objectives. It considers three public library buildings as organization spaces (Dale & Burrell, 2008) and determines the extent to which their spatial organizations reproduce the relations of power between the library and its public that originated with the modern public library building type ca. 1900. Adopting a multicase study design, I conducted site visits to three, purposefully selected public library buildings of similar size but various ages. Site visits included: blueprint analysis; organizational document analysis; in-depth, semi-structured interviews with library users and library staff; cognitive mapping exercises; observations; and photography.

Despite newer approaches to designing public library buildings, the use of newer information technologies, and the emergence of newer paradigms of library service delivery (e.g., the user-centered model), findings strongly suggest that the library as an organization still relies on many of the same socio-spatial models of control as it did one century ago when public library design first became standardized. The three public libraries examined show spatial organizations that were designed primarily with the librarian, library materials, and library operations in mind far more than the library user or the user’s many needs. This not only calls into question the public library’s progressiveness over the last century but also hints at its ability to survive in the new century.

Buildings alone do not matter, it is only the ensemble of streets, squares, and buildings and the way they fit together that comprises the true principles of good urbanism and place making. One of the main rules of good urban design is the quality of the public space. This paper analyzes the importance of creating & maintaining a true public square in contemporary urban condition, as one of the built environments' pillars for sustaining social and cultural identity.

Criticism has been posed towards the (neo) romanticizing the importance of European squares (as some critics would call it “Postcard Squares”) in everyday life and contemporary town planning. Movements such as New Urbanism, which promote good urban design have not put squares that high on their urban design agendas. Also the usage of the historic European city's public realm model - the square - as the important ingredient for all urban places has not been forthcoming. To investigate this phenomena, and facilitate the discourse, The Square of the St. Blaise Church (Luza Square) and the Gunduliceva Poljana Square in the Old City of Dubrovnik, are analyzed and reflected upon through various data collection, theory reflections and urban design evaluation methods, such as Garham's Sense of Place Typology-Taxonomy.

If cities have livable and vibrant social spaces, do residents tend to have a stronger sense of community and sense of place? If such places are lacking, does the opposite happen?. This paper seeks out to answer these questions. Finally the paper also looks at how the phenomenon of creating good social spaces through creating ‘third places’ is achieved and confirmed in the squares of Dubrovnik.

Research into the library as place investigates the role of public library buildings as destinations, physical places where people go for various reasons ranging from making use of the library's resources and services or seeking to fulfill an information or reading need to less easily identified reasons that may include using the library's building as a place to make social or business contacts, to build or reinforce community or political ties, or to create or reinforce a personal identity. This study asks: How are one rural US public library system's newly constructed buildings functioning as places? The answer is derived from answers to sub-questions about adult library users, user, and staff perceptions of library use, and observed use of library facilities. The findings are contextualized using a framework built of theories from human geography, sociology, and information studies.

This case study replicates a mixed-methods case study conducted at the main public libraries in Toronto and Vancouver in the late1990s and first reproduced in Halifax, Nova Scotia in 2006. It tests methods used in large urban settings in a rural, small-town environment. This study also expands on its antecedents by using thematic analysis to determine which conceptualizations of the role of the public library as place are most relevant to the community under investigation.

The study relies on quantitative and qualitative data collected via surveys and interviews of adult library users, interviews of library public service staff members, structured observations of people using the libraries, and analysis of selected administrative documents. The five sets of data are triangulated to answer the research sub-questions.

Thematic analysis grounded in the conceptual framework finds that public realm theory best contextualizes the relationships that develop between library staff members and adult library users over time. The study finds that the libraries serve their communities as informational places and as familiarized locales rather than as third places, and that the libraries facilitate the generation of social capital for their users.

The purpose of the paper is to develop an improved conceptual framework for researching and discussing the public library's role as a meeting‐place in a multicultural and digital society.

The development of today's Western societies from societies dominated by one cultural canon, and where the role of the public library is to give the public access to that canon, into societies where a multitude of cultural expressions and values are tolerated and appraised, is summarized. This development is linked to the digital revolution, which opens up for increased communication but might increase a development where people live in segregated cultural niches without being exposed to other values and interests. The general challenge of creating meeting‐places with a potential of promoting that degree of cross‐cultural communication which a community presupposes is presented. Theory and research on meeting‐places and arenas for community communication are presented.

The concepts of high‐intensive versus low‐intensive meeting‐places are developed. High‐intensive meeting‐places are those arenas where people invest their primary engagement, whereas low‐intensive meeting‐places are arenas where one is exposed to the values and interests of others. The role of low‐intensive meeting‐places in promoting tolerance and community is discussed, and the public library's potential as a low‐intensive meeting‐place is analyzed.

Empirical research based on the concept of high‐intensive and low intensive meeting‐places should be undertaken.

The concept of low‐intensive meeting‐places has practical consequences for public librarianship. Some of these are specified in the paper.

The paper develops a new concept that might prove fruitful for research as well as for practical librarianship.

A public space is a place of significance when it fulfils the human need for social interaction and attachment. However, the scarcity of public spaces poses a challenge to support socialisation for people within a defined social and cultural group. The purpose of this paper is to explore the association between place attachment and social interaction within public spaces in the city centre of Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

Face-to-face interviews with urban users were conducted to examine the users’ engagement in three main public spaces in the city and the significance of these spaces to everyday social interaction. Field observations were carried out to examine patterns of users’ activities and interactions.

The authors uncover a lack of multi-functional spaces to support diverse forms of interactions in the city. A street has an important function to generate activities. However, spaces for people to sit and stay remain scarce, and are in most cases consumed by extended commercial use and thus considered private. Opportunities for social interaction are very limited. The significance of the places relates strongly to commercial and tourism functions, and hence place attachment evolves around those activities. Participants associated their familiarity and engagement with interaction between familiar people, close ethnic relationships and business acquaintances.

The authors argue that more robust and socially responsive public spaces should be reclaimed for the culturally diverse users.

Development of attachment through meaningful spaces for people to stay and interact could enhance the role of public spaces in the city.

By understanding the social meanings of places, particularly in a multi-cultural setting, a stronger basis for designing and managing urban places towards resiliency and social sustainability can be provided.

Crime in public places is an increasing concern for the police, users of public places and the general public at large. Significantly, users of public transport facilities consistently perceive their risks from crime to be considerably higher, hurting levels of patronage. The aim of this study is to examine concerns for personal safety and measures that could improve sense of personal safety in a Nigerian public transport facility. This study further examines whether respondents’ perceptions determine frequent use of this public place. Explanatory factors are personal safety and place improvements concerns ratings.

The study adopted a case study. The selection of this was accomplished using carefully defined criteria in previous studies. The research process consists of three steps the on-site assessment, objective insecurity assessment and subjective insecurity survey. Both quantitative and qualitative data were collected. Quantitative data were explored using mean ranking, percentages and correlation, whereas qualitative information was analysed using narrative techniques of reporting. To define the major determinants of the frequent use of this public place, a multiple ordinary least squares regression was constructed for variables in the correlation model.

Results show that places within the site are not designed to meet crime prevention through environmental design strategies, as 625 crimes were documented with thefts well above other listed crimes. Respondents exhibited a significant level of concern for their safety across all the factors enumerated while the most important improvements concern was enhancements to lighting. Generally, findings suggest that there is still much to be done to improve elements of surveillance, access control, territoriality, image management and activity support on the site. Regression model shows that efforts to enhance perceived safety of users would have major significance on the frequent use of this facility.

Policies on public place developments should be mainly in terms of tackling the environmental design of car parks and the effects of darkness at night time. This should involve improvement of lighting and the installation of CCTV, security camera as well as constant maintenance of bushes, vegetation, plants, trees and other elements of the landscape. Furthermore, the aesthetics of the site has to be attractive to users. The site and its closest surroundings have to be well-maintained and cared for. Besides, place lines and private areas must be defined with plants, pavement treatments, short walls or fences.

Previous studies on safety and security of public transport places, particularly rail facility, have mainly concentrated on the relations between fear of crime, perceived safety and place improvement concerns. To the best of authors’ knowledge, no study till date has explored how they correlate to the patronage of the transport facility, particularly in the sub-Saharan nations. This study contributes to existing literature having revealed perceived personal safety and transport place improvements concerns to be another important dimension of rail transport patronage in the Nigerian context.

The purpose of this study is to demonstrate the roles of public spaces in promoting community relations and sense of place in a coastal community, which are both important elements of sustainable community development. This study investigated how activities in public spaces can foster community relations, thereby affecting sense of place, and described how public spaces are used by local residents.

The Ban-Chaytalae community in the coastal area of Samutsakorn province, Thailand, was selected as a case study. This community has plentiful wetland resources, which provide various benefits for local people, and several areas in the community are used as public spaces for various activities, such as social interactions, recreation, sports, learning activities and cultural and traditional practices. In-depth interviews with residents in the community were conducted, and a questionnaire was administered in the Ban-Chaytalae community during August-December 2017.

The results of content analysis revealed that several places in the community are utilised as public spaces, including shrines, commercial shops, transportation routes, the coast and spaces between homes. Moreover, the results of path analysis revealed that engaging in cultural, traditional, community development and socialising activities had direct effects on residents’ sense of place and indirect effects on sense of place through community relations.

The study findings implied that land development policy should avoid the deterioration of public places, and furthermore, public spaces should be developed to facilitate activities that can strengthen the active roles of citizens in sustainable community development.

This study provided empirical evidence on the role of public activities and spaces in promoting community relations and sense of place. The study results imply that the quality and quantity of public spaces where cultural, socialising and community development activities are performed should be conserved. Any development that might change these public spaces has the potential to affect people’s ways of living, which, in turn, influences social relationships and sense of place.

Canada's aging population is expected to have an impact on all public institutions; for public libraries, the emergence of a large, multi‐generational user group of older adults challenges the current paradigm of services to seniors. The purpose of this paper is to report on the reflections of a small sample of baby boomers and how the public library‐as place contributes to their caring relationships with their elders.

This study examined a subset of baby boomer library patrons who are in caring relationships with elders. The study is theoretically framed by the ethic of care and emerging theories of library‐as‐place grounded in human geography and sociology. An instrumental case study of seven carers in an urban Canadian city was conducted, using long form interviews.

Findings suggest that while these baby boomer respondents value their libraries deeply, there is potential to create services and practices more attuned to the needs of older adults who are in relationships with elders.

As a single case of a small sample of baby boomers, this study is limited by its size, scope and geography. The direct voices of the elders could not practically be incorporated into this study and should be considered in future research.

This study offers an alternate framework to library‐as‐place studies based on a specific profile of “older adult” library users. It examines the library needs and uses of a small but rapidly growing sector of many public library communities. Older adults can be seen by libraries as two distinct demographic groups – the very old (elders) and their younger peers (baby boomers).

The purpose of this paper is to foreground place as a critical and central concern for public leadership research, development and practice.

This invited essay draws on the author’s own research and development work engaging in collaborative place-based interventions with academics, policy makers and practitioners.

Place is one of six heuristic lenses in a Leadership Hexad that has been developed to interrogate and better understand leadership in a multi-dimensional manner. Place can provide an important theoretical and practical fulcrum for bridging both collaborative governance and collective leadership and public and political leadership as well as facilitating cross-sectoral leadership.

This essay argues that more time and effort should be invested into researching and developing place leadership to complement the already extensive efforts to promote collaborative governance and place-based policy initiatives. Place leadership development should be genuinely cross-sectoral in its ambition and should focus on developing emerging and established leaders from the public, private, not-for-profit and indigenous sectors to tackle place-based problems and opportunities.

This essay draws on experience undertaking academic research and conducting leadership development that draws from and feeds into policy and practice. It utilises research from geography, leadership studies, public management, public policy and political science to gain a more sophisticated understanding of the relationship between place and public leadership and how this can be harnessed to improve economic and social impact.

Describes a problem‐oriented policing program in Jersey City that seeks to identify, analyze, and target drug, disorder, and violent crime problems in public housing. Describes the problem scanning and identification processes that were used to detect hot spot locations within six public housing sites in the study. Begins the research with a premise that public housing sites differ from one site to the next and that, even within some public housing sites, some common area places will have problems, while others will not. Research findings support this premise. Concludes that there is a distribution of crime problems both across and within public housing sites challenging the hot spot label universalistically applied to public housing sites. The problem identification process has implications for the way problem‐solving teams approach policing public housing sites.