Multi-stakeholder collaboration in providing and managing public space has been widely reported both in existing literature and practice. On a continuum with gradual differences between the two extreme poles, i.e., fully public and fully private, there are public spaces with a hybrid character (Sylke, 2008). Examples include privately owned public spaces where private owners provide publicly accessible and usable spaces due to a legal arrangement with the public sector (Kayden et al., 2000; Lee & Scholten, 2022, 2024).
Publicly owned public spaces like conservancies (Murray, 2010) and business improvement districts (Houstoun, 2003; Hoyt & Gopal-Agge, 2007) involve non-municipal actors as well, since non-profit organizations take responsibility for their management. Similarly, a recent study by Lee (2023) reveals that a 14-hectare public park in Berlin engages over 60 actors from different sectors (i.e., the public, private and non-profit sectors) and levels (i.e., district, city and federal levels) for its management. These are not exceptional cases. Several concepts have been used to describe such a phenomenon, including co-production, co-creation and co-design of public space.
We compare these three co-concepts– co-production,co-creation, and co-design– to address the issue of“cobiquity– an apparent appetite for participatory research practice and increased emphasis on partnership working, in combination with the related emergence of a plethora of ‘co’ words, promoting a conflation of meanings and practices from different collaborative traditions” (Williams et al., 2020, 2).
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