One of the earliest examples of public spaces are commons. For example, no fees or paid tickets are required for entry. Non-government-owned malls are examples of 'private space' with the appearance of being 'public space'.

A public space is a social space such as a town square that is generally open and accessible. Public space has also become something of a touchstone for critical theory in relation to philosophy, (urban) geography, visual art, cultural studies, social studies and urban design. The term 'public space' is also often misconstrued to mean other things such as 'gathering place', which is an element of the larger concept of social space.

Most streets, including the pavement, are considered public space, as are town squares or parks. Government buildings which are open to the public, such as public libraries are public space. Although not considered public space, privately owned buildings or property visible from sidewalks and public thoroughfares may affect the public visual landscape, for example, by outdoor advertising.

Fred Kent is the founder and president of the non profit organization Project for Public Spaces. The organization is dedicated to creating public places that foster communities.

He studied with Margaret Mead and worked with William H. Whyte on the Street Life Project, assisting in observations and film analysis of corporate plazas, urban streets, parks and other open spaces in New York City.

In 1968, Fred founded the Academy for Black and Latin Education (ABLE), a street academy for high school dropouts. He was Program Director for the Mayor's Council on the Environment in New York City under Mayor John Lindsay. In 1970, and again in 1990, Fred was the coordinator and chairman of New York City's Earth Day.

Fred is also an avid photographer, shooting thousands photographs of public spaces and their users.

He attended Columbia University where he studied Geography, Economics, Transportation, Planning, and Anthropology.

"Some exciting new solutions to bad city planning and urban design are being discussed this week in Regina. It's called "Building Our Communities: A National Conference on Community Sustainability." One of the speakers is Fred Kent. His company, the New York-based Project For Public Spaces, teaches cities how to create a sense of place within their bleaker blocks. For instance he's responsible for the redesign of Bryant Park in front of the New York Public Library. It used to be a haven for drug dealers and thieves and now it's a hugely popular public gathering spot."

Adam Greenfield is an American writer and designer, and is the founder and managing director of urban-systems design practice Urbanscale, based in New York. From 2008 to 2010 he was Nokia's head of design direction for user interface and services. He was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 1968.

Greenfield graduated from New York University in 1989, earning a Bachelor of Arts degree in Cultural Studies. In 1995, he enlisted in the United States Army's reserve component Special Operations Command as a Psychological Operations specialist, holding MOS 37F and eventually achieving the grade of Sergeant.

After leaving the Army, Greenfield took up work in the then-nascent field of information architecture for the World Wide Web, holding a succession of prominent positions culminating in employment at the Tokyo office of Razorfish, where he was head of the information architecture department.

He co-taught a class in the 2006 and 2007 academic years called Urban Computing at New York University's Interactive Telecommunications Program with Kevin Slavin of New York design practice area/code.

Richard Meier (born October 12, 1934) is an American architect, whose rationalist buildings make prominent use of the color white.

Meier is Jewish and was born in Newark, New Jersey. He earned a Bachelor of Architecture degree from Cornell University in 1957, worked for Skidmore, Owings and Merrill briefly in 1959, and then for Marcel Breuer for three years, prior to starting his own practice in New York in 1963. Identified as one of The New York Five in 1972, his commission of the Getty Center in Los Angeles, California catapulted his popularity into the mainstream. Richard Meier & Partners Architects has offices in New York and Los Angeles with current projects ranging from China and Tel Aviv to Paris and Hamburg.

Much of Meier's work builds on the work of architects of the early to mid-20th century, especially that of Le Corbusier and, in particular, Le Corbusier's early phase. Meier has built more using Corbusier's ideas than anyone, including Le Corbusier himself^{[citation needed]}. Meier expanded many ideas evident in Le Corbusier's work, particularly the Villa Savoye and the Swiss Pavilion.

Michael Kimmelman is an author, critic, columnist and pianist. He is the architecture critic for The New York Times and has written on issues of public housing, public space, infrastructure, community development and social responsibility. He was the paper's longtime chief art critic and, in 2007, created the Abroad column, as a foreign correspondent covering culture, political and social affairs across Europe and elsewhere. He returned to New York from Europe in autumn, 2011, as the paper's senior critic and architecture critic and his articles since then have helped to reshape the public debate about urbanism, architecture and architectural criticism.

A fellow at the Lomdon School of Economics, he was born and raised in Greenwich Village, the son of a physician and civil rights activist. He attended Friends Seminary in Manhattan, graduated summa cum laude from Yale College and received his graduate degree in art history from Harvard University. A pianist, who still regularly performs as a soloist and with chamber groups on concert series in New York and around Europe, he started as a music critic at the paper, then moved into art. A former editor at ID Magazine and architecture critic for New England Monthly, he has written at length about, among others, the artists Richard Serra, Michael Heizer, Lucian Freud, Raymond Pettibon and Matthew Barney along with the architects Shigeru Ban, Peter Zumthor and Oscar Niemeyer. Author of The Accidental Masterpiece, he has hosted various television features, appearing in the 2007 documentary film My Kid Could Paint That.