Full Circle Associates

Looks very interesting and for me, has implications for online interaction design:

Demos - Catalogue - People Make Places: "The rise of corporately owned malls... private CCTV security systems... radical demographic and cultural diversity... The dominant urban story of the past 20 years has been of creeping privatisation and social fragmentation resulting in the loss of space for shared experiences between people.

The challenge now is to find a new story that reconnects public, private and civic spaces alike, and can provide the impetus for growing the shared life of our towns and cities. This agenda applies as much to an out-of-town shopping centre as it does to a neighbourhood park.

Based on in-depth studies of three British towns and cities Cardiff, Preston and Swindon, People Make Places explores how the best public spaces are created by people and communities themselves. The book sets out the forms of governance, design principles and everyday uses that can help boost people’s participation in public space and the wider public life of their town or city."