Public spaces as infrastructures of care: mundane doings of/in ordinary places

Public spaces support and frame the economic, cultural, ecological and political lives of city dwellers. Much emphasis has been placed on how public spaces can be designed well to generate conviviality, as well as facilitate wellbeing and economic activity. At the same time, exclusion from public space can be ‘built in’ at the level of infrastructure. This article positions public spaces as infrastructures of care. Drawing on a series of vignettes reflecting on experiences of public space during and after the COVID-19 pandemic, we develop an expansive understanding of public space as relational and performed, and as supporting infrastructures of care (or, at times, creating barriers to access care). The paper demonstrates how thinking with and paying attention to care as a mundane doing of – and in – ordinary places, foregrounds the power of such infrastructures as scaffolds to social connection and interaction. We posit that scholarly and policy attention to public space as a care infrastructure is crucial in the face of recent challenges to both universal public access to public space and ongoing struggles to address unevenness in the public distribution of care.