The Making of Everyday Space of Publicness: Insights from a Mall in Beijing

The rise of malls in China raises questions about their roles as public spaces in Chinese cities. This article proposes the concept of everyday space of publicness to trace contextually sensitive ways that urban inhabitants make the mall a space for public life. The making of everyday space of publicness is evidenced using data from ethnographic fieldwork conducted in an inner-city open-air mall in Beijing. I demonstrate how the mall becomes an everyday space of publicness across three aspects: spontaneous social activities, cooperative practices of regulation, and users’ interpretations of their mall experiences. Centering on mall users’ everyday experiences and interpretations, these accounts offer nuanced insights into the dynamic relationship between urban spaces and publicness, and contribute to understanding the lived dimension of Chinese urbanism.