Regeneration of public squares in Fribourg, Switzerland: process and results

This paper is taken from an MA thesis written in the Joint Centre for Urban Design at Oxford Brookes University. The aim is to encourage and pursue what has become, in recent years, a common goal for many European and North American town centres: a city revival movement trying to counteract a long period of exodus to suburbia, the revitalization and democratization of public space in favour of the citizen being the first step in that direction. Far from giving dogmatic answers to the complex and combined fields of public square regeneration, this paper recounts a process, elaborated for the specific case of Fribourg in Switzerland, as well as the results it has engendered.