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City events are increasingly staged outside purpose-built venues in urban public spaces. Parks, streets, and squares have always been used for civic events, but there is now pressure to use them for a wider range of occasions including large-scale, ticketedevents. This article identifies why this trend is occurring and outlines the implications for public spaces. The use of London's park as venues for music festival, elite sport events, and trade exhibitions is the main focus of the article. These events challenge the established functions and meaning of public parks. Noted positive effects include challenging the rather stiff character of Victorian parks and encouraging different users/uses. However, ticketed events restricts acces to parks and various processes currently afflicting urban public spaces-privatization, commercialization, and securitization- are exacerbated when parks are used as event venues. These effects are often dismissed as inherently temporary, but staging events can have enduring effects on the provision and accessibility of public space. The article concludes that staging events in public spaces is increasingly driven by a neoliberal agenda, with place marketing and revenue generation key priorities. This needs to be more fully acknowledged in analyses of the eventful city.
