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Introducing this special issue on public transport as public space, we discuss challenges in approaching public transport as public space and outline how incorporating approaches from different disciplines associated with urban studies is essential for this ambition. We offer an account of the multi-dimensional aspects of public transport as public space, including concepts of public space, questions of encounters and conviviality, linkages between micro- and macro-practices, regulations, discrepancies, conflicts and associated negative encounters, historicised experiences and political perspectives. We stress the need to expand existing perspectives on public space by embracing mobile spaces such as public transport. This entails scrutinising spaces inside public transport vehicles and stations as well as analysing the various ways across the sometimes physical and sometimes invisible barriers defined in written rules, separating public transport space from the remainder of the city's public spaces, notably that of the street. Thus, the special issue: explores questions about the spatiality of publicness; attends to public space as a normative ideal; considers critical aspects of passengering as related to conviviality and contested encounters; and, addresses how the publicness of public transport is affected by modernisation, post-colonialism and urban politics. As we strongly feel that these questions require learning from across disciplines, the special issue includes contributions from diverse fields across the realm of urban studies and humanities alike. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Developing thoughts on exposure in cultural geography, literary studies, and mobilities research, this article aims to provide a more comprehensive account towards the publicness of public space. What would happen if we assessed publicness not by degrees of openness and inclusion, but through the nexus of vulnerability and complicity that is fundamental to the notion of exposure? To grasp such an intrinsic dualism, our perspective goes towards public transport, where experiences of exposure are intensified by its specific conditions of encapsulation and movement. We illustrate this perspective drawing from the autobiographical chronicles of the Chilean writer Pedro Lemebel, in order to then propose a 'learning from' the case of public transport for a rethinking of publicness. Specifically, we argue that exposure provides new insights on agency, power and vulnerability as part of a more processual notion of public space. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Infrastructures from different time periods, installed for different purposes in often discordant political and economic systems, function alongside one another in contemporary cities. While infrastructures attracted a great deal of attention in geographical research, the "East" of Europe has still largely been left out, as the studies mostly focused on the global North and the global South. This paper, thus, takes on two challenges by intersecting an infrastructural lens with the re‐conceptualisation of post‐socialism. First, following calls from comparative urbanism and the postcolonial turn in urban studies and geography to work beyond usual suspects, the paper expands the territorial scope of infrastructure research. Second, the paper takes the critical edge of the aforementioned calls by offering new ways of attending to infrastructures through relations to the (socialist) past. Taking a threefold approach of expanding, learning, and challenging from a more‐than‐North/South perspective, this paper analyses post‐socialist infrastructuring by highlighting inequalities, such as the introduction of individual measuring of heat, using green spaces as boosterist urban governing, and turning transport to a consumer good. Instead of centralising the present or the "Western" best practice, the paper investigates to what extent it is possible to take elements of the (socialist) past and develop them into forward‐looking measures. The paper shows the need to incorporate questions of social justice and equity – perspectives which were more central for infrastructural provision under socialism – into the ways in which infrastructures are planned, made, and used today. While infrastructures have attracted a great deal of attention in geographical research, the "East" of Europe has still largely been left out, as studies have mostly focused on the global North and the global South. This paper intersects an infrastructural lens with the re‐conceptualisation of post‐socialism. Taking a threefold approach of expanding, learning, and challenging from a more‐than‐North/South perspective, this paper analyses post‐socialist infrastructuring by highlighting inequalities, such as the introduction of individual measuring of heat, using green spaces as boosterist urban governing, and turning transport to a consumer good. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article addresses reconfigurations of urban space in Central Asia through the lens of marshrutka mobility. Marshrutka-based transport is – together with the bazaar trade – a major sector of Central Asian economy. Although precise data are not available, estimates propose that one family in ten gains its income through it. In spite of its economic and social importance, there has barely been any research on marshrutka mobility so far. The marshrutka mobility phenomenon appears at once wide-ranging and elusive. In order to grasp its complexity, we propose a theory framework based on John Law's concept of fluidity and assemblage. Providing empirical insights from Khujand, in northern Tajikistan, the article addresses marshrutka mobility from a local perspective, notably with regard to regulatory processes of marshrutka-based transport. It also covers the trans-local perspective, with particular attention to global flows of ideas, vehicles, and people. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to identify, describe and critically assess public space in the Central Asian republic of Tajikistan, recurring to Henri Lefebvre’s concept of rhythmanalysis. Design/Methodology/Approach – The empirical findings are based on ethnographic fieldwork on a courtyard in a housing estate in Khujand in northern Tajikistan. Findings – The paper argues that an analytic dichotomy between the private and the public realm conceals more than it reveals, for the Central Asian case at least. The rhythmanalysis framework is presented as a possible solution to the deficiencies of dichotomic categories. Originality/value – Even if we find a series of scholarly works dealing with (post-)Soviet and/or Central Asian public spaces, they very scarcely provide a critical assessment of the roots and the usefulness of this concept for the regional setting they work in. The paper strives to close this gap and to present Henri Lefebvre’s rhythmanalysis framework as a possible solution for overcoming dichotomic categories. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]