Managing and navigating Manchester’s Privately Owned Public Spaces: Understanding publicness

Kanellopoulou, Evgenia ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1905-0836, Ntounis, Nikolaos ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2517-3031 and Millington, Steven ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5143-3074 (2025) Managing and navigating Manchester’s Privately Owned Public Spaces: Understanding publicness. Journal of Urban Management. ISSN 2226-5856 (In Press)

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Abstract

This paper explores the processes of understanding publicness in the management of Privately Owned Public Spaces (POPS), in the context of a rapidly developing city in the UK (Manchester). By adopting a pluralistic approach that applies legal geography in place management literature in the context of POPS, we explore the intricacies of managing these spaces from the perspective of estate managers. Taking an ‘outside-in’ perspective to the complex question of publicness, we highlight how estate managers navigate such complexity through their day-to-day operations and present their important role in foregrounding the everyday and mundane in the regulatory, lived, managerial, and experiential dimensions of POPS.