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 …

Concept Art Association Co-Founder Nicole Hendrix | Zocalo Public Square • Arizona State University • Smithsonian

Concept Art Association Co-Founder Nicole Hendrix

If Someone Wants to Do Something, I’m Generally Down

Nicole Hendrix is a producer, creative director, and the co-founder and executive director of BRIC Foundation, an organization that focuses on increasing representation for women and people from historically excluded …

Scientists Don’t Have to Be Heroes | Zocalo Public Square • Arizona State University • Smithsonian

Scientists Don’t Have to Be Heroes

How NASA and ASU Astronomer Lindy Elkins-Tanton Is Dismantling the Personality-Driven Culture of the Research Laboratory

Two decades ago, NASA’s Psyche mission principal investigator and ASU Interplanetary Initiative vice president Lindy Elkins-Tanton was working toward her PhD at MIT. It was a place she loved, but …