Private and public: spatial or social innovation?

Abstract

The fate of traditional public space has been debated since the 60’s. Meanwhile a new kind of space in-between private and public grows and appears as the scene "par excellence" of urban life of familiar and professional events: malls, leisure rooms in private apartments, ballrooms, etc. Does it mean the privatization of public life? Or rather the publicization of private life? In this paper, the authors attempt to discuss this question based on observations of spaces such as those referred above in Natal, a town in the Northeast of Brazil. There, new sociabilities are emerging in a way similar to that stressed by contemporary authors (Huysen, Jamesson, Harvey) which reveals the growing narcissism and aestheticization of wide realms of current everyday life.