What Makes an Inclusive Public Square?

A Space With the Right Infrastructure Can Support, Welcome, and Empower Everyone

The public square is the meeting ground where people make society happen. In these spaces, physical or metaphorical or digital, we work through our shared dramas and map our collective hopes. Ideally, the public square provides room to solve the problems we face. It is also where new, thorny issues often arise.

This “Up for Discussion” is part of Zócalo’s editorial and events series spotlighting the ideas, places, and questions that have shaped the public square Zócalo has created over the past 20 years.

For this fourth installment, our contributors think about how we …

How Do We Find Connection in the Public Square?

On Forming Bonds Over Bars, Benches, Books, and Breakfast

The public square is the meeting ground where people make society happen. In these spaces, physical or metaphorical or digital, we work through our shared dramas and map our collective …

What Should Your Local Public Square Look Like?

People With Deep Community Ties Share What Keeps Them—And Their Neighbors—Rooted to Place and One Another

The public square is the meeting ground where people make society happen. In these spaces, physical or metaphorical or digital, we work through our shared dramas and map our collective …

A Funeral Oration for the California Parking Lot | Zocalo Public Square • Arizona State University • Smithsonian

A Funeral Oration for the California Parking Lot

There’s Honor in Anti-Parking Policies—But Killing Off-Street Spaces Also Means Losing Local Revenue, Gathering Spaces, and More

Friends, Californians, fellow drivers, stop honking your horns and lend me your ears.

I come to bury California’s parking lots, not to praise them.

The evil that abundant parking spaces do lives …

A Park for Everyone Offers a ‘Vision of What California Might Be’  | Zocalo Public Square • Arizona State University • Smithsonian

A Park for Everyone Offers a ‘Vision of What California Might Be’ 

In Praise of Whittier Narrows Recreation Area, an L.A. Gem That Contains Multitudes

It was tricky to get out of the house while the state was under the latest stay-at-home order, much less to find public places that offered both ample social distance …

In Search of ‘the Commons’ in Modern America | Zocalo Public Square • Arizona State University • Smithsonian

In Search of ‘the Commons’ in Modern America

My Rhode Island Town Has Had a Communal Green Since 1694, but Today’s Public Spaces Are Complicated and Splintered

Zócalo’s editors are diving into our archives and throwing it back to some of our favorite pieces. This week: Historian Steven Lubar searches for …