The delivery of high-quality public spaces is a fundamental consideration when thinking about urban futures. This thesis aims to progress conceptual understandings of ‘quality’ as a fundamental aspect of public space delivery by identifying and interpreting the ways in which it is manifest and made meaningful within the situated and embodied context of a small British city, Portsmouth. To this aim, it focuses on existing public space narratives, exploring the factors that mediate how public space quality is understood and the inherent complexities in its attainment. From this exploration, it draws out implications for progress towards more sustainable urban futures. The research follows an interpretive phenomenological philosophy and comprises three studies: a) a series of five focus groups and follow-up interviews with members of Portsmouth’s local community in which participants constructed collaborative public space ideals; b) an interpretive content analysis of a proposed planning policy for examination of Portsmouth City Council’s approach to high-quality public space delivery; and, c) mixed-methods ethnographic fieldwork in the recently, regenerated, acclaimed ‘People’s Park’ of Portsmouth. Each study provides insight on the existing narratives on public space quality and the influential factors to these narratives from different perspectives within the same socio-spatial context of Portsmouth. Dialogic interpretation of the findings from the three studies suggest that there is a need to reconceptualise quality as a process rather that an endpoint. The thesis concludes by making the case that this process can be considered a negotiation between two core rationalities through which we can understand wicked problems of planning, and that this negotiation must promote accessibility and inclusivity to deliver ‘the best possible approach’ for a community.