Variations on Variations: placing public space in context

The year that frames this special issue, 2020, was a year of enormous aspiration and tragic repression, both enacted and represented in the commonly accessible places where our most significant collectivities are formed. It was a year of euphoria and denial, peaceful protest and violence, ingenious celebrations of participatory civic rituals and terrifying mobilizations of near-fascist state power. It was also when a previously unknown corona virus struck down millions of people in a global pandemic. But 2020 was not the year when public space "died." It was more alive, more deeply desired, and more varied in form than ever. Sadly, the year also marked the death, from the Covid-19 virus, of Michael Sorkin, an architect, writer, and public intellectual whose concern about the end of public space inspires this collection.