[...] Another interesting thing about de Certeau's views is that he has a faith in collective creativity of subjects, in their tendency to invent ways to use the spaces that are given to them. You could argue that the traditional notion of public space is a kind of top-down argument whereby public space is 'given' to the public. I would turn that equation around to say: how does the collective create public space with the spaces that are given/found? This means that the role of the architect is to make a space for that public – to create the conditions where the public can freely exercise its collective creativity. It's for this reason that I've always been suspicious of the attempt to overscript the use of public space. For me, a successful public space is precisely a space where something unanticipated happens.

Stan Allen: "Architecture and Dispersal" from Cities of Dispersal