Public Space Privatization: A Catalyst for Urban Spaces Gentrification

The initiatives adopted by the government to enhance the urban areas and quality of life may catalyze the gentrification phenomenon, which results in significant changes in the economic and demographic activities within a public space, and the replacement of one societal group with another. Involving the private sector in the development processes is one of the strategies the government proposed to satisfy the population’s needs and demands for leisure urban facilities. While initially encouraging diversity, privatization of public spaces eventually manifests as a form of segregation that excludes a particular socioeconomic group, affecting the publicness, accessibility, and usability of these spaces. This paper aims to uncover how privatization of public spaces contributes to the gentrification of the public space itself by proposing a model to measure the level of publicness and gentrification of the public spaces. A comprehensive literature review was conducted to identify the common variables of gentrification and privatization, followed by an analysis of international case studies using these variables to test the model. The results revealed that privatization is a silent gentrifying force that first transforms the public space before influencing the surrounding urban areas.