Space is a core research thread in urban sociology. The pioneer of urban sociology in the modern sense, the American "Chicago School," proposed urban spatial structures or concepts such as concentric circles, sectors, and multicore, which dominated urban spatial research until after World War II. In the 1960s and 1970s, French scholar Lefebvre borrowed Marxist analysis methods and raised space to a new theoretical height. He proposed that capital should move from the first cycle of production to the second cycle of space, and that production should shift from "production in space" to "production in space itself". Under the laws of capitalist operation, there must be three sets of contradictions between the quality and quantity of space, the use value and exchange value of space, and the global standards and local meanings of space. But these views did not receive much attention until the 1980s and 1990s, which later sparked a widespread "spatial shift" in the Western social science community. The "New Urban Sociology" formed since the 1990s has pointed out the limitations of urban ecology, absorbed the urban critical theories of Western Marxist scholars such as Lefebvre and Harvey, and emphasized global capitalism, political economy, and socio-cultural space. Overall, Western urban spaces are mainly dominated by capital, and public spaces are threatened by commodification and privatization. Chinese urban public spaces are also an important research topic in the domestic academic community. From the perspective of historical evolution, although there have been trends from authoritarian politics to commercial society, from control to detachment, from closure to openness, or from closure (block market system) to openness (street market system) to closure (unit system) to openness (street residential system), state power has always been the core that dominates the fate of public spaces such as streets. After the introduction of market economy after the reform and opening up, capital began to become another major factor determining urban space. Scholars have pointed out that public spaces in Chinese cities are more constrained by the logic of power and capital, and need to pay more attention to the logic of life in order to achieve a balance among the three. Although Western urban critical theory calls for "socialist spatial production" and domestic urban spatial research emphasizes "social logic", they all remain at the theoretical level and have not fully paid attention to an important phenomenon in China's new era, especially since the 13th and 14th Five Year Plans, namely the large-scale construction of urban public spaces. After General Secretary Xi Jinping proposed the important concept of "People's City, People's Construction, People's City for the People" during his inspection of Shanghai in 2019, many of the people's projects implemented in Shanghai were public space construction projects. At present, Shanghai has formed a multi-level public space system of city district street town block community. The typical representative of municipal public space is the public space on both sides of a river. District level public spaces have formed distinctive brands, such as the Citizen Station in Hongkou District, the Neighborhood Center in Yangpu District, the Neighborhood Center in Xuhui District, the Neighborhood Center in Minhang District, Zero Distance in Huangpu District, and the Home Front Service Station in Pudong New Area. At the levels of streets, towns, blocks, and communities, a preliminary matrix of public spaces has been formed, and the typical public space that connects each level is the Party and Mass Service Center. It can be said that public space is the most intuitive and comprehensive manifestation of people's cities. Studying people's cities through public spaces and elevating them from practice to theory is of great significance for engaging in dialogue with Western urban spatial research and focusing on building the discourse power of Chinese socialist urban sociology. Guided by the concept of people's cities, urban public spaces should always adhere to and highlight the "people-oriented" nature, including publicness, diversity, participation, and sensitivity. One is to prioritize publicness. General Secretary Xi Jinping proposed the concept of people's cities in Yangpu Binjiang, which represents Shanghai's urban public space and embodies the public nature of people's cities. The People's Livelihood Project in Shanghai is also the first to seize the bull's nose of public space in the construction of a people's city, leaving the best public resources to the people, responding to public needs to the greatest extent possible, and safeguarding public interests to the greatest extent possible. While continuing to construct and maintain public spaces at multiple levels from the city to the district to the grassroots level, attention should also be paid to the use of space, especially in cultivating a public cultural spirit guided by socialist core values through space as a carrier. The second is to focus on diversity. The people are a whole in political terms, but they have diversity in social terms. Most of the popular projects in Shanghai clearly target key social groups such as "old, small, old, and far", but social groups not only have life cycle divisions such as "old" and "small", but also have differences in living spaces such as "old" and "far", as well as diversity in material interests and demand levels. To better reflect the full coverage of beneficiary groups and comprehensive response to their needs, and continue to focus on those social groups facing difficulties or lagging behind in economic life, in order to effectively promote common prosperity for all people. The third is to enhance participation. From 'People's City, People's Construction' to 'Building an Urban Governance Community with Everyone's Participation, Responsibility, Dedication, and Sharing', people's participation is the soul of people's city construction. We need to further strengthen people's full process participation from both the source and the process, implement long-term mechanisms for the construction and operation of public spaces and people's projects, and demonstrate people's democracy throughout the entire process. The fourth is to enhance sensitivity. The effectiveness of public space and people's city construction ultimately depends on how the people feel. We need to strengthen the evaluation of public sensitivity, which includes not only a sense of gain, happiness, and security, but also a sense of identity, belonging, and achievement in terms of content; In terms of methods, we can rely on the satisfaction evaluation of practical projects by government departments, as well as the research of livelihood public opinion surveys by professional institutions. We can also leverage real-time interactive big data platforms such as the "12345 Citizen Hotline", "One Network Service", and "One Network Management". Research has found that there are still problems in the construction and operation of urban public spaces, such as waste of space resources and low utilization efficiency, excessive self construction and self operation, weak cost awareness, rigid functional regulations and insufficient refined management, limited types of activities, and limited attraction to people. To enhance the level and potential of creating high-quality urban life through public spaces, we can strengthen supply side reform by improving public space governance. Firstly, the spatial goal is to lead the public spirit. Public space carries the spirit of public and community consciousness, emphasizing the concept of 'sharing'. The spiritual 'co' needs to be strengthened by visual 'co', and the chaotic situation of space names and images needs to be changed. Like community party building service centers and community affairs acceptance centers, appropriate unified identification standards should be established. The "Communist Party" in spirit needs to be led by the "Communist Party" in politics. The leadership of party building should not be limited to the party masses service center, but should cover more community public space, so that people can know at a glance that this is the public space provided by the CPC, and a sense of affinity, trust, and identity to the CPC will emerge once they enter. Secondly, spatial functions should highlight public governance. In the spatial function classification table, the service and activity space is only the table, while the discussion and governance space is the table. It is necessary to integrate the table and the interior, and avoid having a table without an interior. The visible function of space is to change from "entering" to "inviting in" in the new situation where it is difficult for the masses to come to work, and to provide services and carry out activities in the space. The implicit function of space is to transform "strangers" into "semi familiar people", making space a platform for community discussions and public governance, and enabling grassroots democracy to truly operate. Specific life and political issues such as garbage classification, civilized pet raising, and elevator installation can be discussed in public spaces, which is beneficial and harmless to social governance. Again, spatial planning needs to improve its level of refinement. The 15 minute community living circle should coordinate various public space construction plans as much as possible, with a focus not on too small neighborhood committees or too large streets, but on intermediate level blocks. In terms of spatial layout, it is necessary to fully consider the conditions of existing commercial, government, and public facilities. In terms of spatial mode, it can make up for the shortcomings of commerce, compete with commercial services, integrate with commercial space, and cooperate with government affairs. In terms of spatial location selection, it is necessary to conduct a scientific, detailed, and comprehensive analysis of the population, economy, and social composition of surrounding residents, just like commercial location selection. In spatial design, emphasis should be placed on specialized full space design and socialized full process participation. At the starting point, it is necessary to integrate the three forces of administration, profession, and society. Finally, space operations must promote successful experiences. For example, integrated operation. Try to operate all spaces in a block or even a street together to solve the problem of institutional barriers and spatial disconnection. Integration can also bring about scale, as only with scale can there be a break even point and diminishing marginal costs, resulting in economic benefits. Another example is specialized operation. To entrust the operation of the space to third-party social organizations or enterprises, they have a specialized set of knowledge, processes, and methods that can effectively solve the problems of limited activity types and attracting a small number of people. Another example is socialized operation. Integrated and specialized operation should not be limited to within streets and regions, and should be carried out by localized social organizations. On the contrary, it is necessary to break down the boundaries of streets and regions and promote social operation of space. Also pay attention to "Internet plus operation". Large scale, more people, more activities, more regions and more space will inevitably bring management, coordination, distribution and other problems. We must promote online applications, carry out "Internet plus operations", and achieve seamless connection between online and offline. Author: Li Jun (Director and Researcher of the Institute of Sociology, Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences)