Managing and navigating Manchester's Privately Owned Public Spaces: Understanding publicness
Place managers across the UK are increasingly dealing with Privately Owned Public Spaces (or POPS as they are becoming know as) from city squares and retail plazas to repurposed industrial sites. A new open access article by Dr Jenny Kanellopoulou, Dr Nikos Ntounis and Prof Steve Millington, explores how these spaces are managed on the ground and what that means for their ‘publicness’.
Managing and Navigating Manchester's Privately Owned Public Spaces: Understanding Publicness is available to read here.
This research offers a plural property perspective, recognising that managing public space is rarely black and white. By applying the tools of legal geography, the study highlights how day-to-day decisions - about signage, access, behaviour, and maintenance shape how inclusive, accessible, and truly ‘public’ these spaces feel in practice.
For place managers, this means rethinking how to work with private owners, developers, and communities to ensure POPS contribute to local quality of life and not just commercial performance.
Join the conversation this October
IPM will be holding an event in partnership with the Regional Studies Association to discuss practical challenges and solutions around POPS, ownership, and urban governance. You can register via the events page here. This session will explore:
- What POPS are and why they matter to place managers
- How legal geography helps us understand public/private boundaries
- Case study: Managing POPS in Manchester
- Practical insights for working with private owners and stakeholders
See for yourself in 2026
At the IPM Conference in June 2026, members will have the chance to take part in a walking visit to several of the sites featured in the article and discuss how we can better manage these spaces for public benefit.
About the author
Formed in 2006, the Institute of Place Management is the international professional body that supports people committed to developing, managing and making places better.