1.3.1. Open Public Spaces

Public open spaces, primarily streets and squares, are the basic elements that define the structure of urban spaces. According to Woolley, the power of open public spaces can be channelled through the social, economic, and environmental benefits of the city [22]. The role of public space in the initial development of cities is clearly defined: From a social perspective, they represent primary sites of social processes; public spaces are also informative sites of the city and areas of communication and information exchange. From an economic viewpoint, public spaces are defined by their main trade flows, so their blocks are formed at the cross sections of important routes [35]. From an aesthetic point of view, public spaces imply an attractive setting, a highly aestheticized space, even a work of art, which, on a daily and continual basis, has a guiding influence on large masses of the population [36]. Public spaces, with their morphologies, define the "framework" of public life and form the scenery for the performance of everyday dialogue between the users of space [28,34,37]; often authors put these spaces in the context of mental, cognitive shows [25,27,38,39]. In addition to representing the city in a physical, morphological sense, public spaces are essential, cultural and identity interpreters of the social community. The physical framework of a city's public space and the social activities that take place within it function in a cause-effect relationship.

Some authors sugges<sup>t</sup> that public spaces have always been subject to numerous changes that have taken place in society under human influence. Globalization and transition processes have accelerated their transformation [40]. Capitalistic production has uniformed spaces, breaking down the barriers between society and spaces, thereby intensifying the processes of homogenization of spaces. Creating an abstract space that strives for immobile monotony has led to the unification of public spaces, and this process has weakened the identities of cities. Capital has taken control over spaces [41], and even over the creators of urban image, since, under the influence of capital, stakeholders create spaces to meet their needs. Public space has become the setting for a spectacle that is its own goal, equating itself to what it "has" i.e., pride in its appearance (spectacle spaces) [42] and spaces of "urban glamor." The postmodern aesthetics of public spaces that nourish and magnify the transience, spectacle, and commodification of cultural forms [10] require the transformation of cultural activities into cultural industries, merchandise, forms of consumption, and cultural pleasures. The space "is not only produced by the forces and relations of production and property, it is also a political product, a product of administrative and repressive control, a product of the relations of domination and strategies of state leadership" [41].

In cities accompanied by a long period of transition and stagnation, such as in the case of Podgorica, the public spaces in the physical structures of cities have become sensitive to changes

in society. Cultural patterns created in one temporal, political, economic, or social system need to be transformed and adapted to meet new demands. However, the transformations of public spaces over time have been much less frequent and slower than those of all other urban elements. This is largely reflected in their sustainability. In the contemporary circumstances of a global and information-based society, public open spaces, traditionally recognizable places of identity and cultural meaning and social interaction, in the 21st century will need to take on a new communicative role in the relationship between "local processes" and "global flows." However, in the current process of regeneration, traditional public spaces, instead of becoming generators and interpreters of global interaction [43], are frequently losing their identity values, thereby becoming inactive; they have become a field of social conflict or transformed into new forms, such as pseudo-public spaces [5,44–47].

### 1.3.2. Streets as the Social Space of the City

In addition to being the basic functional element of an urban space, and defining the planning foundations of a city according to their position and layout direction, streets also represent a spatial phenomenon that is inseparable from the categories of users of the space. The street, as a form of public space, should represent a democratic space in the city, a space of communication and user interaction, through all stages of the city's development. The energy in social interaction and the physical framework of public spaces determines the specificity of a place and contributes to positioning its local identity on the map of its global values. By considering the street as a field of social interaction and by applying this phenomenon, it is possible to improve urban life and the state of social relations in user-place and place-city systems, as well as local process-global flows. In this respect, sustainable street regeneration plays an important role in the competitiveness of cities in the 21st century.

### *1.4. Aims and Significance of the Study*

The first aim of this study was to identify, through a theoretical background, the role of traditional public open spaces in the context of the socio-spatial sustainability of a city. Another aim was to point out the inadequate treatment of historically recognizable public open spaces through time with a specific case study in Podgorica. The final aim of this study was to propose the specific physical regeneration of streets, with a creative urban design, in order to preserve the authentic values of sites, improve the content-based and visual usability of spaces and, at the same time, strengthen the role of public open spaces as primary interpreters of global processes.

The basic relevance of this study relates to the identification of the socio-spatial and identity roles of public open spaces in Podgorica, followed by detecting the inadequate treatment of these areas during the transition period; finally, this study o ffers a proposal for the physical street regeneration of twelve streets in the city centre in order to improve the global competitiveness of the modern city.
