International Journal of Multidisciplinary Research and Publications ISSN (Online): 2581-6187 41 Nisrina Aulia Rahma, Bambang Soemardiono, and Sarah Cahyadini, “The Role of The Quality of Public Space in Supporting the Improvement of External Evaluation in the Central Surabaya Area”, International Journal of Multidisciplinary Research and Publications (IJMRAP), Volume 5, Issue 2, pp. 41-45, 2022. The Role of the Quality of Public Space in Supporting the Improvement of External Evaluation in the Central Surabaya Area Nisrina Aulia Rahma 1 , Bambang Soemardiono 2* , Sarah Cahyadini 3 1,2,3 Architecture Department, Institut Teknologi Sepuluh Nopember (ITS), Surabaya, East Java, Indonesia-62 Email address: bamsoem03@yahoo.com * , nisrinaauliarhm5@gmail.com Abstract— Nowadays, many cities are competing in creating their own image and identity regarding the improvement of the sustainable tourism sector. In addition, city identity has become an important issue in nowadays’ urban planning and design sector. Many of these cities make their identity related to cultural heritage important for their city branding activities. This is done with the purposes of being able to increase sustainability for tourism, as well as driving and growing the local economy. This study discusses how the assessment of the public space’s quality in the Balai Pemuda Surabaya building plays a role in increasing the external evaluation or attractiveness of the Central Surabaya according to visitors. This study uses a combined strategy, namely qualitative in taking interpretations from respondents and correlational with quantitative to validate the qualitative results. The result obtained from this study is that the public space, especially community open space, in the Balai Pemuda Surabaya building is considered by the public or visitors to be able to become a sustainable attraction for the Central Surabaya area. This is because apart from having historical value, it can also be used for community activities, such as recreation, sight seeing as well as being a place for various cultural festivals in the city of Surabaya. Keywords— Public space, sustainability, external evaluation. I. INTRODUCTION Indonesia has many backgrounds related to the history of independence and relics related to the colonialism era. In this regard, every island in Indonesia has their own story and cultural heritage. This study mainly discusses about the second largest metropolitan cities after Jakarta, namely the Surabaya City, which is also known as The City of Heroes. Surabaya has a lot of heritage and cultural buildings that are still standing since the colonialism era. Each heritage building usually has a public space that can be utilized by the community to gather, both in the past and present. There are several aspects that can be used to assess the quality of public space, such as accessibility, marking, identity, sociability, and others. This because if a public space has a good quality, it can make the public or visitors feel enjoy to visit. This will also increase the sustainability of tourism achieve the local economic growth of Surabaya, as well as becoming the characteristic and competitiveness from the other big cities. II. LITERATURE REVIEW Public space in general can be interpreted as a space that used to accommodate certain activities of the community. Public space reflects the local culture, characters, personality of the community, fosters social interactions, and a sense of comfort or security. Public space has many types, according to (Carr et al., 1991), including street spaces, public parks, fields and plazas, memorial parks, markets, playgrounds, community open space, greenways, parkways, atriums, and waterfronts. In this study, the type of public space to be analyzed is the community open space in the Balai Pemuda Surabaya building. In addition, the assessment of public space is based on the following points (Kozlova, 2018): a. Accessibility, refers to the access and use of public space for all circles of society. b. Security and comfort, refers to the degree of security of a person in public space. c. Readability of physical attributes, refers to the convenience of being oriented in public spaces, for example having a simple network of routes and intersections with unambiguous city signs and features. d. Sustainability, in this case, is the landscape arrangement which refers to the degree of creation of a friendly environmental situation and the fulfillment of needs without damaging the environment. e. Identity, refers to what extent does the space reflect local character and has a combination of functions, developmental forms, characteristics, colors, and materials that form its own identity in the general character of the area. f. Parking area g. Sociability, refers to the level of community involvement in the active life of the city and in the processes that occur in public spaces. The assessment of public space’s quality is then linked to aspects of external evaluation or attractiveness. This is in the form of perceived uniqueness and the special character of the city (Prohansky, 1983) (Lalli, 1992), or in another words, optimizing the distinctiveness of an area (Breakwell, 2015). III. RESEARCH METHOD This research belongs to the intersubjective paradigm. According to (Groat & Wang, 2013), the intersubjective paradigm is an understanding of a socio-cultural relationship, which emphasizes value and meaning in framing research objectives and/or in interpreting the results. In architectural research, intersubjective paradigm is used to examine the