Abstract
Formal planning documents record parks and squares, but much of the everyday sociability of dense residential districts occurs in spaces with no planning designation: courtyards, stairwell thresholds, the shaded strip beside a shop. Through eighteen months of observation and participatory mapping with residents, this paper catalogues such spaces in one district and traces how three of them were lost to infill construction. We argue that planning instruments require a category for incidental public space if densification is not to erode it by default.