Empowering Public Spaces as Catalysers of Social Interactions in Urban Communities

Abstract

Abstract Improving public spaces is a strategy of great importance for the successful future of our cities and their communities. The potential of places for citizen communication is often underestimated as stimulus for growth and development of urban communities and therefore public spaces are underused. The article analyses socioeconomic and psychological effects of architectural arrangement of traditional public spaces in modern perspective as areas for social interaction between different neighbourhood and citizen groups in an urban community, based on case examples of two cities: Vilnius in Lithuania and Weimar in Germany. Analysis of changing spatial composition and principles of social functioning are directly dependent on socio-political system of each different historical period and represent the chronological evolution of the present architectural appearance of the presented urban squares. The importance of local urban territorial communities is underlined in the article as they are the most imp...