Taken as a group, these and other studies compose that which could be described as a truly regressive narrative on public spaces, which became known in the specialized bibliography as the thesis on the end of public spaces (Madden, 2010 Mitchell, 2017). Upon reading these two essential studies, however, the attentive reader will certainly perceive that these concepts were born under the banner of “retraction”, whereby ideas of “regression”, “decay”, and “crisis” of public life, public sphere, and public spaces, strongly present in these pioneering studies, had an outstanding influence on the reflections that appeared thereafter (Caldeira, 2000 Davis, 1993 Fyfe, 1998 Kohn, 2004 Light & Smith, 1998 Low & Smith, 2006 Mitchell, 2003 Sennett, 1989 Serpa, 2007 Sorkin, 1992 Staeheli & Mitchell, 2008 Zukin, 1995, 2010 among others). The authors of these two studies are widely recognized as the most responsible for the “conceptual architecture” of the notions of “public life”, “public sphere”, and “public space”, which are distinct concepts but are interpreted as constituent categories of the same political phenomenon. If there is a consensus among specialists on the theme of public spaces, it is related to two authors considered the first to systematically reflect on this object of scientific investigation-Hannah Arendt ( 2007) and Jürgen Habermas ( 1984). On the other hand, the second perspective, the optimistic, reaffirms the importance of public spaces in societies and contemporary cities. The first perspective, the pessimistic, which became hegemonic in the specialized literature, appeals to ideas of “regression”, “decay”, and “crisis” to describe the situation of public spaces in contemporary cities. In general, we can classify this extensive bibliography into two main perspectives: pessimistic viewpoints and optimistic viewpoints. Something has been happening in cities all over the world to awaken the interest of intellectuals and theorists from the most diverse areas of knowledge and epistemological, theoretical, and methodological nuances, transforming the theme of public spaces into one of the most popular among those studying cities. The specialized bibliography on the theme of public spaces has experienced fantastic growth in recent decades.
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