Holistic Democracy and Physical Public Space

extensions into virtual realms of media, the Internet, and discourse more generally matter more to political action than the old “bricks and mortar” accounts. Thus, “public space” is increasingly used as a metaphor that refers to the myriad ways in which citizens separated in time and space can participate in collective deliberation, decision making, and action such that “the literal meaning has almost been wiped out.”1 But while the pursuit of metaphorical conceptions of public space is doing much to broaden conceptions of democracy, I think it would be a pity to wipe out the literal meaning. I argue instead that physical public space matters to democracy, but that it matters in a variety of ways that are underappreciated by many urban theorists. Those oversights have the potential to undermine democratic public space, quite the opposite of what some of its defenders intend. My starting point for this discussion is a holistic, deliberative view of democratic societies and the various actions and roles that are expected of democratic citizens. It recognizes the importance of creative spaces for action in the “informal” public sphere and in the “formal” public sphere of representative institutions, with a range of mediating institutions in between.2 It is an action-oriented account to the extent that it asks what citizens should be expected to do in a democratic society. At the formal end of the public sphere, the majority of citizens have the task