Coda: reflections on public and private space in a post-Covid world

The decline of public life was among the biggest casualties of Covid-19, as public discourse shrank to encompass the virus and daily life retreated into the private sphere of the domestic. Hannah Arendt discussed how the distinction between the private and public sphere corresponds to the household and the political realm and located freedom in the political realm; the privation of privacy is the absence of the others, private man does not appear and therefore does not exist. In the post-industrial, privatized and securitized city public life is limited, specified individuals are excluded from privatized public places and a range of activities are restricted. Privately owned public spaces (POPS), driven by public-private partnerships, produce “ageographic” innovation districts and “googleplexi” which remove diversity, political activity and protest from public space. These undemocratic spaces undermine conceptions of citizenship and public life. Post-pandemic, the control of public space witnessed within POPS is being extended into the democratic public realm under the aegis of legislative change.