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The paper investigates Shanghai spatial publicness through the theoretical reflection on the essence of public space, empirical surveys of Shanghai s social spaces, and architectural suggestions. When facing urban reality s complexity, fluidness and polysemy, the pivotal concept "spatial publicness" inclining to indeterminacy, instability and temporariness can perform better than the conventional one "public space". The new notion can facilitate disclosing the vibrant but long-overlooked spatial potential in Shanghai and developing strategies and tactics for improving the local spatial publicness. Actually the paper seeks to answer the following questions: what is public space/spatial publicness? What is it in Shanghai? What can architectural and urban design contribute to it?

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The paper investigates Shanghai spatial publicness through the theoretical reflection on the essence of public space, empirical surveys of Shanghai´s social spaces, and architectural suggestions. When facing urban reality´s complexity, fluidness and polysemy, the pivotal concept "spatial publicness" inclining to indeterminacy, instability and temporariness can perform better than the conventional one "public space". The new notion can facilitate disclosing the vibrant but long-overlooked spatial potential in Shanghai and developing strategies and tactics for improving the local spatial publicness. Actually the paper seeks to answer the following questions: what is public space/spatial publicness? What is it in Shanghai? What can architectural and urban design contribute to it?

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Yang, Shan
Dr. Shan Yang, born in 1976, is Associate Researcher for Urban Planning and Design at the School of Architecture and Urban Planning at Nanjing University. He holds a Doctor in Architecture from the Technical University of Munich (Ph.d. thesis: "Investigation into Shanghai Spatial Publicness"), a Master of Architecture from Tongji University and a Bachelor from Wuhan Univeristy. From 1997 to 1999 he taught design studios and theory classes at Hubei University of Technology. He worked as a project architect for Pan-Pacific Design Group (Canada) in Shanghai and Institute of Architectural Design & Research of Country Garden in Guangzhou. His research combines urban and architectural design theory.

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