This chapter explores the potential of Privately-Owned Public Spaces (POPSs) to fill gaps in delivering accessible public spaces and discusses their role in the reactivation of cities in post-pandemic times. It examines the spatial features and potential of POPSs for contributing to the UN Sustainable Development Goals (UN SDGs). Based on field observation of four POPSs in Melbourne, this chapter identifies how various design and management practices can either encourage or discourage social uses and activities in these spaces.
The research results show the potential of POPSs to contribute to the City of Melbourne’s Reactivation Plan and the UN SDGs. POPSs provide opportunities for innovative uses that can bring life back to cities and also help businesses impacted by the absence of office workers during COVID-19 lockdowns.

From the 1970s, a type of public space has been formed based on government and private sector partnership named as privately-owned public space initiated from the United States. Over the last five decades, the aims and regulations of this kind of public space have been developed, but they still have ambiguous design and management practices as policy-made public spaces. The idea of the increasing privatization of public spaces has been discussed as a concerning issue rather than a positive approach toward public space improvement.
Concerns about ‘reduction in diversity and freedom of forms of public life and the undermining of democracy have been debated by researchers and advocates in public space (Boddy 1992; Davis 1992; Kayden 2000; Banerjee 2001). Many authors declare it as the ‘decline of public space and ‘the end of public space’(Jacobs 1961; Sorkin 1992; Mitchell 1995). On the other side, recent researchers believe that public spaces have not experienced such extreme situations and have more optimistic viewpoints toward POPSs. However, they agree that changes in forms, functions, and appearance have happened in privatized public spaces (Németh 2009; Németh & Schmidt 2011; Huang & Franck 2018;).