Limits of Public Space Evaluation under Overlapping Urban Priorities

Abstract

Public spaces emerge through the layering of interventions implemented over time in response to shifting urban priorities, regulatory frameworks, and moments of urgency. Concerns about climate change, security, and crime are increasingly shaping how these are adapted and managed. These efforts are rarely coordinated and arise from fragmented processes. Evaluation approaches within each domain tend to rely on standardised and quantitative indicators, which can miss perceived quality, while generalised quality evaluations rely on qualitative ones. Neither accounts at the same time for both how quality attributes are perceived and institutionally produced. These tools work best within separate domains and temporal isolation. The objective of this paper is to rethink evaluation by conceptualising public space as a site of negotiation, with a particular focus on the intersection of urban security and climate adaptation. Rather than assessing these agendas as separate performance domains, the paper explores how their interaction shapes the quality conditions of public space over time and challenges what evaluation can meaningfully capture. The paper combines a policy and planning document analysis with spatial observations to trace how security and climate adaptation measures are translated into built interventions, and to make the resulting trade-offs and synergies legible for evaluation. The analysis shows that public space quality cannot be adequately assessed through individual interventions alone, but depends on how measures are combined, sequenced, and implemented over time. This requires evaluation approaches that recognise quality attributes as institutionally produced conditions. The findings highlight the limitations of domain-specific evaluation in capturing the temporal and institutional character of public space quality. The paper does not propose a new evaluation method but identifies three reorientations for future evaluation practices: toward temporal sequencing, relational reading, and cross-domain interaction. This perspective contributes to more context-sensitive approaches to public space evaluation in cities facing overlapping demands.