Everyday Urban Public Space

This study examines the relational construction of everyday urban public spaces by Turkish immigrant women living in Enschede (the Netherlands). It presents an extensive analysis of the relational contexts, which in turn constrain, shape, and frame their spatial behavior and patterns of use and experience of public spaces, and at the same time, elaborates how different characteristics and kinds of urban public spaces condition the use and users spatial interactions. Publicness and privateness are interwoven in these contextual definitions in which Turkish immigrant women position themselves and others in a variety of public spaces in the city. Ycesoy argues that avoidance and participation, withdrawal and placement are articulated in relational frameworks in which boundaries of use and appropriation are continuously constructed, negotiated, reconstructed, and expressed.