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This article aims to contribute to the discussion on the publicness of public spaces by focusing on the uses of free access areas in urban mobility infrastructures such as subway stations, especially those uses not associated with mobility, transit and passenger flow – I call them 'non-transit uses'. I also focus specifically on people at the station whose behaviour differs from a 'typical passenger'. Instead of entering the station and heading to platforms, the ones I call 'non-passengers' do not ride the subway, do not arrive there by subway and remain at the station for long periods. To study the uses of space, I suggest an investigation framework that allows a focus on how these free access areas and their publicness are a product of these specific uses. The paper is based on Lefebvre's dialectic assumption on space, particularly his analytical triad of 'perceived', 'conceived' and 'lived' spaces, and Frehse's specific definition of uses (patterns of bodily behaviour and social interactions). I then investigate what the non-transit uses of non-passengers can reveal about the Sé subway station in downtown São Paulo by studying them in every aspect of Lefebvre's triad, thus revealing conceived, perceived and lived uses of the station. Finally, I conclude that the 'non-passengers' use the station in similar ways to a public square and that the 'publicness' of this station lies in the relation of its non-transit uses with the Sé square placed above the station. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents an innovative comparison that works creatively with the entangled spatialities of policy mobilities, drawing on a city-to-city cooperation between São Paulo (Brazil) and eThekwini (South Africa) municipalities for the exchange of slum upgrading expertise. The proposed comparative tactic entails tracing the establishment of this connection in order to disassemble the constituent flows and localities merged within it. Subsequently, by posing questions to one another, a relational comparison of the trajectory of slum upgrading policy in each locality is composed, unearthing the political and institutional conditions that preceded the existence of the connection per se. In that sense, both eThekwini and São Paulo are considered equivalent starting points from which local actors engaged in circulating ideas and mobilised slum upgrading policies. This paper not only brings a fresh approach to comparative methods – incorporating political contexts and their extensive overlapping networks of relations alongside a focus on particular policy trajectories – but also contributes to furthering global urban studies in two other ways. First, it provides insight into the processes by which policies are put on the move and localised (or not). Second, it demonstrates how repeated instances of urban practice may be unravelled by allowing each context of policy formation, with its distinctive trajectory of slum upgrading, to speak to one another. In this regard, the comparative analysis identified how, in both São Paulo and eThekwini, the consolidation of democracy was followed by the development of more technocratic approaches to the detriment of earlier slum upgrading initiatives focussed on community empowerment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]