Although the public-private distinction has long served as a fundamental analytical category within Western social and spatial thought, its applicability beyond Euro-American contexts requires careful critical reflection. This issue of «Storia urbana» explores how public and private spaces were configured, negotiated, and transformed in Edo-Tokyo across early modern, modern, and contemporary periods. Treating space as a product of social practices as well as institutional and regulatory frameworks, the contributions examine the interrelations among physical environments, everyday uses of space, socio-economic relations, and forms of urban governance. Edo-Tokyo offers a particularly valuable case study due to its historical continuity as an urban site, despite profound political, social, and material transformations from the feudal capital Edo to the imperial centre and global metropolis renamed Tokyo. Here, inherited spatial patterns persisted alongside imported Western models, generating moments of conflict, hybridisation, and innovation. By foregrounding both continuity and change, the active role of communities and cultural practices in shaping urban space is emphasised, and Edo-Tokyo is presented as a particularly revealing lens for analysing how the boundaries between public and private space have been historically defined, regulated, and contested.
