How just is publicness? Assessing privatized urban spaces in Shanghai, China

Privatized urban spaces are often assessed by their degrees of publicness, although how governance shapes socially just publicness remains insufficiently understood. This study recalibrates the OMAI Model (ownership, management, accessibility, inclusiveness) through a social justice lens, asking what configurations of publicness are produced, through what governance, and with what justice consequences. Applied to three Shanghai sites through interpretive scoring, the model revealed that, despite being physically open, well-maintained, and animated, the sites featured intensive control, limited participation and information, and restricted non-commercial use. The study transforms a descriptive publicness model into a justice-oriented diagnostic tool for identifying constrained publicness.