**1. Introduction**

### *1.1. Sustainable Urban Regeneration of Open Public Spaces*

Urban regeneration is a dynamic process that involves strategies, activities, and collective e fforts to develop sustainable solutions. These solutions are adapted, transformed, and modified over time to adequately respond to economic, sociological, environmental, political, and other challenges, in line with Sustainable Development Goals [1–4]. The successful regeneration of urban spaces requires the commitment of local communities, developers, financiers, funds, and the public sector [5]. Social activation, economic strength, and a strategic vision of urban space managemen<sup>t</sup> are all necessary. The process of physical urban regeneration requires much more input than traditional patterns of urban element reconstruction.

In contemporary urban practice, the process of regenerating public spaces, or planning and forming new ones, is expected to promote social life, collective interest, and generate values of spaces that are appropriate for all users, as well as to contribute to creating a sense of place [6,7]. Physical structures cannot be viewed separately from urban life, so the urban regeneration of public spaces, based on sociological research, forms the foundation of the city planning process [8]. Socio-physical regeneration occurs as a logical method of reactivating public spaces, establishing a dialogue between the inherited development fund, new architectural language, and sociological specificities without jeopardizing cultural identity, and with a balance between local needs and global requirements. Urban regeneration involves the promotion of traditional values [9] in the inherited types of public spaces and at the same time adapting those spaces to the needs of modern-day users, in the context of the sustainable development of society. Regenerated public spaces should o ffer a higher form of communication that corresponds to the relation between local processes and global requirements—that is, to the relation between real, material, and virtual needs.
