PUBLIC SPACE: PHYSICAL RECONFIGURATIONS AND USER PERCEPTIONS IN LONG TERM PERSPECTIVES

Abstract

Cities have sought to position themselves as, for example, urban cultural spaces, creative, intelligent, and global in relation to their macrofunctions, which has reflected in the design and implementation of their public policies to adjust their microspaces in relation to such concepts. However, there is relatively little attention to understand and evaluate how such microsystems, which form the city itself, are structured and developed over time. The purpose of this article is to evaluate, based on users' perceptions, the changes in the open urban space represented by the pedestrian section of Rua XV de Novembro, in Curitiba, at different times defined historically. Methodologically, the evaluation of the perception is quantitative and focused on attributes experienced in loco and from photographic images that reflect past moments of such landscape, using a sample of 216 users, 95% confidence coefficient, and precision of 4%. The results show that the intensive presence of people transiting in the public space was perceived as an indicator of insecurity, problems of cleaning the place, and difficulty for the mobility of people with physical limitations. The conclusion is that new possibilities of production and reproduction of open urban public spaces are emerging due to changes in behavior and perceptions over time, which are consequences of new ways of interaction and changes in social dynamics.

Keywords: Open urban public spaces, public policy, urban interventions, perception