Context, contribution and characteristics of public spaces for place making in contemporary knowledge and innovation spaces. Observations from Brisbane, Australia

The advanced era of knowledge-based urban development has led to an unprecedented increase in mobility of people and subsequent growth in new typologies of agglomerated enclaves of knowledge such as urban knowledge and innovation spaces. Within this context, a new role has been assigned to contemporary public spaces to attract and retain the mobile knowledge workforce by creating a sense of place. This paper investigates the context, characteristics and contribution of public spaces in facilitating place making in the globalised knowledge economy world. It takes an overall process-based approach to highlight the observations from Australia’s new world city Brisbane to outline the application of urban design as a tool to create and sustain multi-dimensional place making in urban knowledge and innovation spaces, which caters diverse range of social, cultural and democratic needs. The study derives multi-layered permeability as the key character that defines the modified typology of public spaces and which is vital for making them more viable and adaptive as per the changing needs of the contemporary globalised or in other words knowledge society.