Suburban development – a search for public domains in Danish suburban neighbourhoods

These years some of the post-war Danish suburbs are facing great challenges – social segregation, demographic changes and challenges in building technology. In particular, segregation prevents social life from unfolding across social, economic and cultural borders. Therefore, in this paper, potentials for bridge-building across the enclaves of the suburb are looked for through a combined architectural-anthropological mapping of public spaces in a specific suburb in Denmark, the analyses being carried out in the light of Hajer & Reijndorp’s definition of public domains and the term exchange. The results so far show that suburban spaces with a potential for creating bridge-building across the segregated enclaves do exist but that, among other things, focus on spatial design is needed before actual public domains creating the basis for exchange are achieved.