Public Space Reader

Recent global appropriations of public spaces through urban activism, public uprising,
and political protest have brought back democratic values, beliefs, and practices that have
been historically associated with cities. Given the aggressive commodification of public re-
sources, public space is critically important due to its capacity to enable forms of public dis-
course and social practice which are fundamental for the well-being of democratic societies.
Public Space Reader brings together public space scholarship by a cross-disciplinary group
of academics and specialists whose essays consider fundamental questions: What is public
space and how does it manifest larger cultural, social, and political processes? How are pub-
lic spaces designed, socially and materially produced, and managed? How does this impact
the nature and character of public experience? What roles does it play in the struggles for
the just city, and the Right to The City? What critical participatory approaches can be em-
ployed to create inclusive public spaces that respond to the diverse needs, desires, and aspi-
rations of individuals and communities alike? What are the critical global and comparative
perspectives on public space that can enable further scholarly and professional work? And,
what are the futures of public space in the face of global pandemics, such as COVID-19?
The readers of this volume will be rewarded with an impressive array of perspectives that
are bound to expand critical understanding of public space.

Miodrag Mitrašinović is a Professor of Urbanism and Architecture at Parsons School of

Design. His scholarly work focuses on the role design plays as an agent of social and polit-
ical change, and as a catalyst for critical urban transformations. His research argues for the
centrality of designing in the conceptualization, socio-spatial production, and representa-
tion of democratic and participatory urban space. His work also focuses on the generative
capacity and infrastructural dimensions of public space, specifically at the intersections of
urban and public design, social justice, and public policy. Miodrag is the co-editor of The
Emerging Public Realm of the Greater Bay Area: Approaches to Public Space in a Chinese ­Megaregion
(­Routledge 2021); Cooperative Cities (2018); editor of Concurrent Urbanities: Designing Infra-
structures of Inclusion (Routledge 2016); co-editor of Travel, Space, Architecture (Routledge
2009); and author of Total Landscape, Theme Parks, Public Space (Routledge 2006).

Vikas Mehta is a Professor of Urbanism at the School of Planning at the University of

Cincinnati. His research explores the various dimensions of urbanity through the explora-
tion of place as a social and ecological setting and as a sensorial art. Mehta is the co-editor
of Companion to Public Space (Routledge 2020); editor of Public Space (Routledge 2015), an
anthology of 98 chapters; co-author of 101 Things I Learned in Urban Design School (2018);
and author of The Street: A Quintessential Social Public Space (Routledge 2013) that received
the 2014 Book Award from the Environmental Design Research Association.
Public Space Reader

Edited by Miodrag Mitrašinović and

Vikas Mehta
First published 2021
by Routledge
605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158
and by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2021 Taylor & Francis
The right of Miodrag Mitrašinović and Vikas Mehta to be identified as the authors of the
editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in
accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any
form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented,
including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system,
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Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks,
and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Mitrašinović, Miodrag, 1965- editor. | Mehta, Vikas, 1966– editor.
Title: Public space reader / edited by Miodrag Mitrašinović and Vikas Mehta.
Identifiers: LCCN 2020042448 (print) | LCCN 2020042449 (ebook) |
ISBN 9780815385035 (hardback) | ISBN 9780815385042 (paperback) |
ISBN 9781351202558 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Public spaces—Design. | Sociology, Urban. | City planning.
Classification: LCC HT185 .P834 2021 (print) |
LCC HT185 (ebook) | DDC 307.76—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020042448
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020042449

ISBN: 9780815385035 (hbk)

ISBN: 9780815385042 (pbk)
ISBN: 9781351202558 (ebk)
Typeset in Bembo
by codeMantra
Contents

Acknowledgments ix

Introduction 1

SECTION 1
Public Space: State of the Question 15

1.1 The Public Realm: The Common 20

H A NNA H A R EN DT

1.2 Blurring the Boundaries: Public Space and Private Life 26

M A RG A R E T C R AW F O R D

1.3 Rethinking the Public Sphere: A Contribution to the Critique of

Actually Existing Democracy 34
NA NCY FR ASER

1.4 Masters of Chancery: The Gift of Public Space 42

M A R K K INGW ELL

1.5 The Imperative of Public Space 50

N E I L S M I T H A N D S E T H A L OW

SECTION 2
Diversity and Inclusion in Public Space 59

2.1 From Gender Mainstreaming to Intersectionality: Advances in

Achieving Inclusive and Safe Cities 64
A N I TA L AC E Y, R E B E C C A M I L L E R , D O RY R E E V E S A N D YA R D E N A TA N K E

2.2 Feminist Approaches to Urban Design 72

K R I S T E N DAY

2.3 Constructing Differences in Public Spaces: Race,

Class and Gender as Interlocking Systems 80
S U S A N RU D D I C K
vi Contents
2.4 Just Walk on By: A Black Man Ponders His Power
to Alter Public Space 90
B R E N T S TA P L E S

2.5 Spaces of Everyday Diversity: The Patchwork Ecosystem of Local

Shopping Streets 96
S H A RO N Z U K I N , P H I L I P K A S I N I T Z A N D X I A N G M I N G C H E N

SECTION 3
From the Just City to the Right to Public Space 105

3.1 Brave New Neighborhoods: The Privatization of Public Space 112

M A RG A R E T KO H N

3.2 Propositions for More Just Urban Public Spaces 120

S E T H A L OW A N D K U RT I V E S O N

3.3 Parks and People: An Environmental Justice Inquiry in Baltimore,

Maryland 128
C H R I S T O P H E R G . B O O N E , G E O F F R E Y L . B U C K L E Y, J . M O RG A N G ROV E
A N D CHONA SIST E R

3.4 Public Space Versus Tableau: The Right-to-The-City Paradox in

Neoliberal Bogotá, Colombia 138
R AC H E L B E R N E Y

3.5 To Go Again to Hyde Park: Public Space, Rights and Social Justice 148
DON MITCH ELL

SECTION 4
Public Space as Site of Activism, Protest and Dissent 157

4.1 City Unsilenced: Spatial Grounds of Radical Democratization 164

SA BIN E K N I ER BEIN A N D J EFF R EY HOU

4.2 Taken Square: On the Hybrid Infrastructures of the #15M Movement 174
JOSÉ LU IS DE V ICEN T E

4.3 Occupying Public Space, 2011: From Tahrir Square

to Zuccotti Park 182
K A R E N A . F R A N C K A N D T E - S H E N G H UA N G

4.4 Choosing a Place 190

TA L I H AT U K A

4.5 Claiming the Public Space: The Mothers of Plaza de Mayo 198
SUZA N NA TOR R E

4.6 Hacking Urban Space 204

M A RC E L L A D E L S I G N O R E A N D G E R N O T R I E T H E R
 Contents  vii
SECTION 5
Governance and Management of Public Space 211

5.1 A Tale of Two Public Spaces: Line 7 and the Future of Public Space
in New York City 216
M I O D R AG M I T R A Š I N OV I Ć

5.2 Union Square and the Paradox of Public Space 226

S H A RO N Z U K I N

5.3 Using and Misusing Zoning Law to Design Cities 236

J E RO L D K AY D E N

5.4 Building Paranoia 244

STEV EN FLUST Y

5.5 Freehouse: Radicalizing the Local 250

J E A N N E VA N H E E S W I J K

5.6 Public Space: The Management Dimension 264

M AT T H E W C A R M O N A , C L AU D I O D E M AG A L H Ã E S A N D L E O H A M M O N D

SECTION 6
Public Art and Public Culture in/of Public Space 275

6.1 The Question of “Public Space” 280

RO S A LY N D E U T S C H E

6.2 Art or Lunch? Redesigning a Public for Federal Plaza 290

K R I S T I N E F. M I L L E R

6.3 The Soweto Project 300

M A R J E T I C A P O T RČ

6.4 Return to Parrhesia: Recovering the Capacity to Speak 306

K R Z Y S Z T O F WO D I C Z KO

6.5 Agonistic Politics and Artistic Practices: Agonistic Public Spaces 312
C H A N TA L M O U F F E

SECTION 7
Public Space Infrastructures 319

7.1 Spatial Practices: Walking in the City 324

M I C H E L D E C E RT E AU

7.2 The Social, Economic and Political Life of Sidewalks 332

A N A S TA S I A L O U K A I T O U - S I D E R I S A N D R E N I A E H R E N F E U C H T

7.3 The Public Realm: A Public Responsibility 340

T H E U R B A N TA S K F O RC E
viii Contents
7.4 Public Space, Infrastructure, Landscape: An Interdisciplinary Matrix
for Urban Spatial Continuity 346
A N A B R A N DÃO A N D P E D RO B R A N DÃO

7.5 Elastic Landscape: Seeding Ecology in Public Space and Urban

Infrastructure 356
SUSA N NA H C. DR A K E

SECTION 8
Experiential Dimensions and Evaluation of Public Space 363

8.1 The Impossible Project of Public Space 368

M A N U E L D E S O L À - M O R A L E S I RU B I Ó

8.2 Inhabiting Cities, Domesticating Public Space: Observing Change

in the Public Life of Contemporary London 374
R E G A N KO C H A N D A L A N L AT H A M

8.3 The Social Life of Wireless Urban Spaces: Internet Use, Social
Networks, and the Public Realm 384
K E I T H N . H A M P T O N , O R E N L I V I O A N D L AU R E N S E S S I O N S G O U L E T

8.4 Assessing the Publicness of Public Space: The Star Model

of Publicness 392
G E O RG I A N A VA R N A A N D S T E V E T I E S D E L L

8.5 Evaluating Public Space 404

V I K A S M E H TA

SECTION 9
Global and Comparative Perspectives on Public Space 415

9.1 Public Space and the New Urban Agenda 420

CECI LI A A N DER SSON

9.2 Citizenship, Democracy and Public Space in Latin America 426

CLA R A I R A Z Á BA L

9.3 Whose Public Space? International Case Studies in Urban Design

and Development 436
A L I M A DA N I P O U R

9.4 Degrees of Care 444

S H I Q I AO L I

9.5 The Culture of the Indian Street 452

TI M EDENSOR

Further Reading 457

Index 463
Acknowledgments

The making of this book was supported by many individuals and institutions. First of
­foremost, we would like to wholeheartedly thank our families for their love and uncondi-
tional support through this scholarly pursuit.
We would like to acknowledge the important contribution of Maanasa Sivashankar, who
kindly helped in all stages of the preparation of this manuscript and to Garrett Stone for
preparing the index. We would also like to express our gratitude to Anže Zadel, who took
care of the logistics in the early stages of work on this book and to Maya Mitrašinović for
her work on illustrations in Section 8.
We would like to thank our universities for their generous support. The New School and
the School of Design Strategies at Parsons School of Design provided financial support for
this book not only through multiple Provost’s Office Graduate Student Research Assistant
funding but also through school-based research grants. The School of Planning and College
of Design, Architecture, Art, and Planning (DAAP) at the University of Cincinnati helped
with funding in the final stages of the manuscript.
We would like to express our gratitude and sincere appreciation for the editorial team at
Routledge—Kate Schell, Sean Speers, and Nicole Solano—who provided kind professional
support and considerable patience in the four years it took to bring this book to completion.
Last but not least, we would like to thank our students, particularly those who joined
Miodrag’s “Public Space Lab” at The New School and Vikas’ “Public Space: possibilities
and potentialities” at the University of Cincinnati. This Reader in many ways presents a
reworking of our syllabi and readings lists, and is seriously inspired by always intellectually
provoking and passionate debates about public space. It is with all of you in mind that we
have prepared this book, hoping that its content will continue to hold relevance as you em-
bark on professional and continued academic endeavors.
Introduction

On 2 April 2020, Reuters photographers around the world captured the still silence that had
descended on some of the world’s busiest public spaces, on the same day, at noon—New York’s
Grand Central station; Tahrir Square in Cairo; Istanbul’s Eminönü ferry docks; Brandenburg
Gate in Berlin; street market leading to the Imam Ali shrine in Najaf; Shibuya Crossing in
Tokyo—in a seemingly post-apocalyptic world, stricken by the global pandemic caused by
an invisible pathogen 900 times thinner than human hair.1 Other news coverage around the
world reported instances where wild animals roamed streets and squares spaces—monkeys,
wild boars, deer, horses, hawks, owls, coyotes, and raccoons—all becoming increasingly ag-
gressive in search for food.2 National Geographic’s cover story for the same day—“Rats come
out of hiding as lockdowns eliminate urban trash”—reported that massive rat populations are
invading public spaces around the world, in broad daylight, in a desperate search for food.3
Just two weeks prior, Charles McGrath of the Washington Post wrote,

Those could be the opening shots of a pretty good horror movie. In fact, it’s a gloomy
but not completely unreasonable picture of what life could be like a few weeks from
now if the coronavirus spreads unchecked and we abandon all our public spaces—or,
worse, the authorities decide the only solution is to close them. It’s already happening
elsewhere.4

In the weeks that followed, as we write, over ten million people across the world have been
infected by COVID-19 and nearly half a million have died.5 Public squares, parks, and
playgrounds are closed and street traffic has been reduced to a near standstill. Gathering
of more than ten individuals in public has been sanctioned in many cities across the world
as massive, global lockdowns kept all but the essential workers outside. Over four billion
people around the world, nearly half of all living humans, have been under strict lock-
down orders.6 The pandemic successfully unearthed the astonishing degrees of inequality
and injustice. In the United States, the overall number of African Americans and Latinos
infected and killed by the coronavirus is disproportionally higher than that of other Amer-
icans.7 Structural injustice at work over a long period of time has been obvious through
cross-generational economic poverty, housing shortage and overcrowding, limited access to
healthcare and poor public health, severely limited access to fresh food, and also an overall
lack of access to public space and public resources. The pandemic has made such systemic
inequalities palpable and has caused a profound social and political awakening.

Figure 0.1  Vinmont Veteran Park Playground, The Bronx, New York City, 13 June 2020. Photo ©
Miodrag Mitrašinović.
2 Introduction
The tracking of cell phone location-data conducted in the United States by Cuebiq and
The New York Times calculated median distance traveled by individuals in each census tract,
and compared the data between the top ten percent and the bottom ten percent of house-
hold incomes for each metropolitan area which are based on median household income data
from the U.S. Census Bureau.8 They concluded that staying at home during the Corona-
virus pandemic “is a luxury.” Namely, individuals in the bottom ten percent tend to be
classified as “essential employees” and have to report to work on a daily basis: food industry
workers, firefighters, first responders and healthcare industry workers, delivery businesses,
security, maintenance personnel, and more. Most have no health insurance, live paycheck
to paycheck, work multiple jobs, and must continue to report to work despite the risks. As a
result, although overall ridership on New York’s MTA subway system has plummeted by 90
percent compared with March and April 2019, stations in poorer neighborhoods remained
crowded.9 While ridership in Manhattan has dropped by over 70 percent, in the Bronx
and Queens, it has dropped by around 50 percent. Subway lines which connect poor and
predominantly immigrant neighborhoods in the outer boroughs with wealthy areas of the
city where jobs are—2, 4, 7, A, B, D, L, Q—remain crowded: social media posts from late
March documented crowded platforms during the morning commute, and only some of
the commuters were adequately protected.10
On 25 May 2020, the world was shaken by the brutal murder of George Floyd in
­Minneapolis, Minnesota, by police officers who intervened after Mr. Floyd allegedly used a
counterfeit $20 bill in a neighborhood store.11 In the massive protests that followed Mr. Floyd’s
death, across the United States and then the world, hundreds of thousands of protesters took
to the streets. Despite the ongoing pandemic, police curfews, and riot-police brutality, pro-
testers have persisted in occupying and appropriating streets and squares in pursuit of social
justice and economic equality.
As an act of defiance and resistance to the rhetoric and policies of the current Federal ad-
ministration and the President, the Mayor of Washington D.C. Muriel E. Bowser renamed
16th Street NW to “Black Lives Matter Plaza NW.”12 On June 5, she ordered that “Black
Lives Matter Plaza” sign be painted on the asphalt: protesters, community members, and
local artists painted it in large yellow letters along 16th Street NW and tangentially to the
White House. The newly named plaza has been the site of massive protests against police
brutality. Numerous cities across the United States followed the example and painted their
own signs on the streets and squares where protest took place.13
In Seattle, protesters and local activists occupied a six-block area including a park in the
city’s Capitol Hill neighborhood on June 8, and called it the Capitol Hill Autonomous
Zone (CHAZ), later renamed into Capitol Hill Organized Protest (CHOP).14 This neigh-
borhood was previously the focal point of the 1999 Seattle WTO protests and of the 2011
Occupy Seattle protests. The autonomous zone is police-free and organized around the
encampment principles employed in many of the sustained, global protests since 2008. It re-
configures urban public space by combining the essential elements of community organiza-
tion with urban pedagogy and cultural programs: urban gardening, communal healthcare,
collective cooking and eating, meditation and yoga classes, speeches and lectures, hands-on
activist workshops, and teach-ins. Among other signs, “Black Lives Matter” is prominently
painted on the asphalt. While conservative media outlets in the United States called on
President Trump to stop the “madness” and “chaos” on the streets and re-establish “law
and order,”15 public spaces were in fact sites of the performance of true democracy. In other
words, public space did its work.
In the wake of another police murder of an African American man, Rayshard Brooks,
in Atlanta, Georgia, on 12 June 2020, the United Nation’s Human Rights Council held
an urgent debate on racism and police brutality in the United States on 17 June 2020.16
 Introduction  3
The meeting was called upon the request from African member-countries, and intended
to condemn the systemic violence against people of color and peaceful protesters. This has
indeed become a different world.
It is in the above context that we are writing the introduction to Public Space Reader. In the
last two decades—specifically after the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2000—planning and
design consideration vis-à-vis public space have radically changed. First, as a consequence of
a global threat related to the frequency and severity of terrorist attacks, and later also due to
the imminent “threat” of massive protests, occupations, and appropriations. Important for the
planning against real and anticipated urban threats has been the buildup of an enormous security
apparatus, which includes massive public investment in police force, anti-terrorist units and
surveillance technology. Needless to point out, public space has been the main object of fo-
cus and its material aspects have been reconfiguration in relation to public safety and security
considerations. As such, public space has worked as a laboratory not only for testing of both the
impositions of all kinds of restrictions on public life and limitations of civil liberties, but also for
testing new strategies and tactics of resistance, dissent, occupation, as well as of authentic new
ways of institutionalizing the emergence of multiple publics.
Scholars and critics have long argued that urban density, uneven concentrations of wealth,
and the radicalization of ideological differences have been major factors for the escalation of
social conflicts which always employ public space as a medium for and the ‘site’ of struggle.
At the same time, the evidence suggests that hundreds of billions of US dollars invested in
rendering public spaces “defensible” risks eliminating the possibility of having a truly dem-
ocratic space (Davis 1990, Sorkin 2007). Planning against tangible and imagined ‘threats,’
others argued, had initiated a debate over whether the “American experience” has been ul-
timately tied to urban public spaces, and if a strong desire to build “defensible spaces” would
indeed radically transform the American city as Americans know it (Mitchell 2003, Vidler
2001). In his tour-de-force response to the proposed securitization measures, published in
The New York Times 12 days after the September 11 terrorist attacks, Anthony Vidler argued
that streets and street corners, public plazas and parks, define an urban culture that resists
being “secured” out of existence:

This is why it is urgent that planners explore new urban designs that learn from the dif-
ficulties of past utopias as well as avoid the nostalgia of anti-city programs. We should
search for design alternatives that retain the dense and vital mix of uses critical to urban
life, rethinking the exclusions stemming from outdated zoning, real estate values and
private ownership, to provide vital incentives for building public spaces equal to our
present needs for community.
(Vidler 2001)

Instead of planning against and spending billions on securitization, argued Vidler, we should
plan for cities in which public space will be the vehicle through which we rebuild trust, forge
the creation of stronger communities, and enable new ‘publics’ to be formed. In extending
this approach further, Public Space Reader focuses on the ethos of planning and designing for/
with, dedicated to exploring ways in which scholars and practitioners from multiple academic

Figure 0.2  “Black Lives Matter” After it was freshly painted in front of the Staten Island Borough Hall,
the police closed the street off. Staten Island, NY, 20 June 2020. Photo © William R. Morrish.
Courtesy of William R. Morrish.
6 Introduction
fields and professional disciplines explore the generative potential of public space. The current
conditions we find ourselves in further solidify the idea that public space is a manifestation of
the public sphere and a visible ethical compass of society. For urbanists, planners, designers,
scholars, and citizens invested in the relationships between public space and public life, to
truly fathom and respond with the making of public space, the understanding of the potential
of public space must emerge from numerous perspectives and disciplines.
One of the primary goals of the Public Space Reader is to decompartmentalize ‘public
space.’ Placing public space within different “frames of reference” demanded that the organ-
izational structure of the reader be designed to allow for cross-disciplinary connectivities
and relations to emerge. We developed nine thematic Sections to reflect this multiplicity of
viewpoints, and to enable the exploration of public space across the philosophical, political,
social, legal, material, visual and symbolic, and management dimensions of public space.
The selection of texts, authors, and themes in the Public Space Reader reflects a broad range of
viewpoints in examining public space through the lens of varying theoretical perspectives.
For readers in planning and design fields—our primary audience—the most common per-
spective is to perceive public space through material-centered perspectives. Indeed, “mate-
rial urbanity”—the ability of urban material to express civic, aesthetic, functional and social
meanings—should also be at the core of defining the quality of public space, and of asserting
“public space as a material condition (locus) of political space” (de Solà-Morales 2010):

The city, made of conflict and solidarity, stability and dynamism, connection and dis-
tance, appears in the material condition of public space. Over and above sociological,
political and functional considerations, public space imposes itself as a material fact.

In the Public Space Reader, this particular perspective stands both as complementary to and
sometimes in conflict with other definitions of public space which are based on less materially
centered or non-materialist approaches. That is why we structured the Reader around the
idea that public space ought to be understood as a “cluster concept” (Kohn 2004). Namely, as
Margaret Kohn suggests (see Section 3), ‘public space’ has multiple and often contradictory
definitions, and the best way to approach it is to first outline a range of possible meanings, at-
tributes, and criteria for defining it, while simultaneously acknowledging both our biases and
the historical situatedness of our definitions. In addition, in organizing the material in a the-
matic and cross-disciplinary way, we argue that public space cannot be adequately understood
unless observed in its relations with the public sphere and the public realm. In other words,
the social, political, and economic analyses of public space ought to be undertaken together
with a study of the geography of the public sphere (Smith and Low 2006).
The first section, State of the question, includes seminal writings on the public sphere
and public realm that set the stage for reframing public space as a complex, multi-­d imensional,
and multi-scalar artifact that can only be understood in the dialectical relationship with
the public sphere and public realm. The post-modern and post-structuralist theorists
included offer a critique of the canonical texts and in so doing, they lay out a new intellec-
tual territory for situating the study of public space in the context of current philosophical
and political debates. In the rapidly heterogenizing city, these definitions and (re)definitions
hold strong implications for the practice and production of contemporary public space. The
second section, Diversity and inclusion in public space, explores some of the most
current debates and conceptions of public spaces as sites of encounter. The strategies of
inclusion and tactics of exclusion are juxtaposed here with concepts of accessibility, owner-
ship, intersubjectivity, and intersectionality. The Reader frames both inclusion and diversity
within the concepts of social and urban justice. They are understood as fundamental prop-
erties of social systems (Young 2000), and as such they can be supported and represented
 Introduction  7
by the inclusive practices of design and planning. Section 3, From the Just City to the
Right to Public Space, discusses conceptions of public space between the two highly
debated concepts: that of “the Just City” and that of “The Right to The City.” Within the
“the Just City” concept, public space works as a catalyst for creating a democratic city, with
public space at the center of the process of democratization, where principles of diversity,
inclusion and just distribution of resources, risks and benefits are enforced through planning
and policy. Within “The Right to The City” movement, public space is instrumentalized as
a site of conflict where working classes and the traditionally marginalized “counter publics”
struggle to re-appropriate the means of production, of urban space and of the city.
The chapters in Section 4, Public space as site of activism, protest and dissent, argue
that struggle for The Right to Public Space, The Right to The City, and the right to demo-
cratic governance and government has never been more important than it is today. Chapters
present the recent struggles to reclaim urban public space in the face of the increasing com-
modification and privatization and bring back the belief in democratic practices, civic values,
as well as class and civil-rights struggles that have been historically associated with cities
and public spaces. The regulatory frameworks, programming, maintenance, and steward-
ship of public spaces are explored in Section 5, Governance and management of public
space. The chapters present examples of governance models that can be broadly categorized
as state-centered, market-centered, and community-centered. Authors show how zoning
laws, overarching business improvement districts (BIDs), and sly exclusionary tactics on the
one hand and co-creation and stewardship through community participation on the other
create an ecology of differentiated, interrelated, and complex governing practices. Section 6,
­Public art and public culture in/of public space, discusses intricate, formative, and
always evolving relationships between public space, public art, and public culture. From the-
oretical debates in art criticism and political philosophy to specific examples of art and design
practices, this section offers a range of approaches through which spatial practices, representa-
tions of space, and spaces of representation (Lefebvre 1991) are configured and critiqued.
Section 7, Public space infrastructures, exhibits public space as a complex and dy-
namic network of physical and social systems in action. The chapters explore how spaces
and systems of infrastructures and landscape are integral to the socio-spatial production
of public space and how these infrastructures influence the conceptualization and for-
mation of public space and possibilities for interaction and communication. These new
and emerging modes and modalities of communication create possibilities for dialogue
and thus for the creation of emergent forms of public spheres. This section also presents
the argument that public space must be understood as a dynamic system, and as the con-
stituent part of the overall urban structure, together with landscape, open space systems,
and infrastructures of mobility. The chapters in Section 8, Experiential dimensions
and evaluation of public space, present several civic, aesthetic, functional, and social
meanings explicitly expressed by the design of space and the material environment of
public space. The dichotomies between the design quality of public space and the pub-
licness of public space, and social versus the civic nature of public space are discussed
in the context of experiencing public space as well as evaluating it. This section also
discusses the expanded experience of physical public space via the Internet, social media
platforms, and their influence on participation in the public sphere. Evaluating experi-
ential dimensions of such an expanded public realm requires new approaches, methods,

Figure 0.3  “Black Lives Matter” protest along 16th Street NW in Washington D.C., 20 June 2020. Photo
© Sara Dević. Courtesy of Sara Dević.
10 Introduction
and tools for evaluation. Finally, chapters in the final section, Global and compara-
tive perspectives on public space, discuss the opportunities and challenges in estab-
lishing an inclusive comparative framework for a globalized study of public space. The
rapid planetary urbanization as well as political developments in the last two decades
have erased any doubts in relation to the fundamental role public space plays in these
processes. In recent developments, the UN-Habitat III’s New Urban Agenda and the
2016–2030 UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) argue that public space holds
the key to sustainable urban development as sites of social and political emancipation,
cultural and economic development, social inclusion, and the promotion of universal
human rights.
The Public Space Reader brings together the work of more than 60 authors in 47 chap-
ters representing a wide geography, temporal spectrum, and most importantly broad and
eclectic disciplinary perspectives on public space. In curating the Reader, we have made
every attempt to include authors from different cultures and with different life experi-
ences. However, we realize that as academics teaching urbanism in North American uni-
versities, we are necessarily drawn toward the public space discourse in the United States
and ­English-language literature. Hence, a large proportion of chapters represent the public
space discourse in the United States, and a few chapters address New York City. Our per-
sonal ­biases—as immigrants and as scholars committed to inter- and trans-disciplinary
work—are clearly toward creating new openings, intersections of knowledges and experi-
ences, and a richer fabric of cross-cultural connectivities. A careful reader will also notice
an attempt to respectfully balance political and ideological perspectives.
We are fully aware of the complex analytical implications and often problematic conno-
tations of the term “global”—and of “global” scholarship—and yet also of the remarkable
scholarship on public space available in other languages. Sadly for us, translating it was not
within the purview of the Reader. Other limitations on the selection of chapters include the
length of the work and its ability to be suitably represented with an edited version, as well as
our limited budget for copyrights and permissions. Finally, we attempted to create a timely
Reader, and have thus included mostly the texts published between 2000 and 2020. Where
necessary, we have also included a smaller number of texts published in the ­t wentieth
­century. Additional sources and literature which could not have been included in the Reader
are located at the end of the volume under Further Reading List.
The Public Space Reader is curated primarily as an academic text for a broad academic
audience. This primarily includes faculty and students in a wide range of schools and grad-
uate and undergraduate departments, including urbanism, architecture, urban design, city
planning, landscape architecture, and design. In addition, it also caters to a wide range of
programs in social sciences, humanities, and liberal arts. We also believe that the Reader
will be an invaluable resource for practitioners in the private sector as well as for designers,
planners, policymakers, and managers of public space working in the public sector. Finally,
we offer it as a valuable resource to the organizations and associations in the civil society
sector, as we believe that much of the future work related to public space will be developed
in the domains of stewardship, care, and community management of shared resources. For
all the above audiences, we have hoped to bring to the fore myriad interrelated issues of
public space in the twenty-first century.

Notes
1 Source: https://www.theguardian.com/world/gallery/2020/apr/02/high-noon-in-a-coronavirus-
stricken-world-in-pictures?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other (Last accessed on 30 June 2020).
2 Source: https://www.boredpanda.com/animals-in-streets-during-coronavirus-quarantine/?utm_
source=google&utm_medium=organic&utm_campaign=organic. See also https://www.theguard-
ian.com/world/2020/mar/22/animals-cities-coronavirus-lockdowns-deer-raccoons (Last accessed
on 30 June 2020).
 Introduction  11
3 Source: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/2020/03/urban-rats-search-for-food-corona
virus/ (Last accessed on 30 June 2020).
4 Source: https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/silent-stadiums-empty-schools-ghostly-streets-
coronavirus-will-rob-us-of-public-space/2020/03/06/7b246052-5ef4–11ea-b29b-9db42f 7803a7_
story.html (Last accessed on 30 June 2020).
5 Source: https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/map.html (Last accessed on 30 June 2020).
6 Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/03/world/coronavirus-news-updates.html (Last accessed
on 30 June 2020).
7 Source: https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/need-extra-precautions/racial-ethnic-minor-
ities.html (Last accessed on 30 June 2020).
8 Source: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/04/03/us/coronavirus-stay-home-rich-poor.
html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage (Last accessed on 30 June 2020).
9 Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/30/nyregion/coronavirus-mta-subway-riders.html
(Last accessed on 30 June 2020).
10 Ibid.
11 Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/31/us/george-floyd-investigation.html (Last accessed
on 30 June 2020).
12 Source: https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/dc-politics/bowser-black-lives-matter-street/
2020/06/05/eb44ff4a-a733-11ea-bb20-ebf0921f3bbd_story.html (Last accessed on 30 June
2020).
13 Source: https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/06/08/black-lives-matter-art-street/ (Last
accessed on 30 June 2020).
14 Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitol_Hill_Autonomous_Zone (Last accessed on 30 June
2020).
15 Source: https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2020/06/trump-just-showed-us-his-core-­campaign-
message-chaos-in-the-streets/ See also: https://www.foxnews.com/politics/trump-blasts-illinois-gov-
pritzker-chicago-mayor-lightfoot-violence (Last accessed on 30 June 2020).
16 Source: https://www.ohchr.org/EN/HRBodies/HRC/Pages/NewsDetail.aspx?NewsID=25971&Lang
ID=E. See also: https://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2020/06/19/world/middleeast/ap-un-human-
rights-racism.html (Last accessed on 30 June 2020).

References
Davis, M. (1990). “Fortress Los Angeles,” in Davis, M. City of Quartz. London: Verso, 223–263.
De Solà-Morales, M. (2010). “The Impossible Project of Public Space,” in Carrera, J. et al. (eds.) In Favour
of Public Space: Ten Years of the European Prize for Urban Public Space. Barcelona: CCCB/ACTAR, 24–32.
Kohn, M. (2004). Brave New Neighborhoods: The Privatization of Public Space. New York: Routledge.
Lefebvre, H. (1974/1991). The Production of Space. Oxford: Blackwell.
Mitchell, D. (2003). The Right to the City: Social Justice and the Fight for Public Space. New York: Guilford
Press.
Smith, N. and Low, S. (2006). “The Imperative of Public Space,” in Low, S. and Smith, N. (eds.) The
Politics of Public Space. New York: Routledge, 1–16.
Sorkin, M. (2007). Indefensible Space: The Architecture of the National Insecurity State. New York: Routledge.
Vidler, A. (2001) “Aftermath—A City Transformed: Designing ‘Defensible Space,” in The New York
Times, 23 September 2001, 4:6.
Young, I. M. (2000). Inclusion and Democracy. Cambridge: Oxford University Press.
1

Public Space: State of

the Question
Public Space: State of
the Question

The chapters in this section—spanning over half a century—include seminal writings on

the public sphere and public realm that frame the broader argument for public space as well
as present a critique of the canonical texts by post-modern and post-structuralist theorists.
In doing so, these writings lay out a new intellectual territory for the study of public space
and situate it in the context of current philosophical and political debates. In the rapidly
heterogenizing city, these definitions and (re)definitions hold strong implications for the
practice and production of contemporary public space. These writings offer clear arguments
in relation to critical questions, such as, what is ‘the public’ as a theoretical construct? And,
how does it relate to the city as a social and political entity?
The discourse of the public or publics brings to fore the concepts of the ’public sphere,’ the
’public realm,’ ‘public domain,’ and ’public space.’ Although some of these are used inter-
changeably, the selection of chapters in this section suggests clear conceptual distinctions
and disciplinary associations. Public sphere, the broadest of all and most commonly the
domain of philosophers, political thinkers, and legal scholars, deals with the extents and
limits of public space as a discursive, political space more often than not focusing on com-
municative aspects. Public realm, although somewhat interchangeable with public sphere,
is most commonly associated with symbolic communication and spatial practices, and thus
with the sociology of the publics. Public realm fits at the intersection of public sphere and
public space and is conceptually where real political action takes place. At the same time,
public realm is also a term most commonly used to describe public space as a site of collec-
tivization through the uses and activities in an urban area. Meanings, uses, and scales of the
term ‘public space’ abound but most commonly, public space is considered an important
component—a physical manifestation—of the public realm. Public domain usually refers to
regulatory domains where legal and policy dimensions of public sites and public gatherings
are determined and debated, such as the right to free speech, free assembly, or the right of
access to privately owned public spaces.

Figure 1.0  Street parade in Cincinnati, Ohio, July 2019. Photo © Vikas Mehta.
16  State of the Question
Two chapters in this section make the argument for the correlation between the public
sphere, public realm, and public space by emphasizing the spatial quality of politics and
linking the spatial dimension of public space to the public sphere. Hannah Arendt argues
for a human presence in public space to enact politics since politics is a public activity,
and because participation creates the conditions of civility and solidarity among citizens.
Arendt makes clear the contrast between community, intimacy, and authenticity on the
one hand, and public values of impartial civic friendship and solidarity on the other. Al-
though Arendt’s conception of politics is over half a century old, its relevance is repeatedly
made visible at the global scale in these challenging times of diminishing democracy. The
social and political uprisings and resistance movements in Istanbul, Caracas, Madrid, Hong
Kong, Taipei, Paris, St. Louis, as well as the Arab Spring, Occupy Wall Street, and the
#MeToo and Black Lives Matter movements have all drawn attention to the civic and po-
litical significance and value of the physical public space as political space, the public sphere.
Smith and Low specifically argue for the value of public space as the “geography of the
public sphere.” They categorically state, “An understanding of public space is an imperative
for understanding the public sphere” and that the “spatiality of the public sphere potentially
transforms our understanding of the politics of the public” (2006, 6).
Smith and Low argue that it is necessary to re-politicize public space by scrutinizing
the historical and geographical specificity of its origins in the United States, in order to
re-imagine the politics of public space. They also importantly suggest the necessity for the
“spatial turn” in the study of public space: while scholarship in the social sciences has been
“spatially undifferentiated,” the work in the so-called spatial fields has tended toward an
anti-social turn. The question for the authors is how to establish the scholarly grounds for
bringing the now parallel but separated work on public space together. Spatializing ‘public
sphere’ and re-politicizing ‘public space’ ultimately creates capabilities for “remaking and
retaking public space and the public sphere.”
Nancy Fraser builds her thesis by critically examining the Habermasian conceptualiza-
tion of the public sphere. She discusses the formation of a bourgeois public sphere in early
modern Europe and how it led to the formation of public opinion, the consensus about the
common good, and its ability to hold the state accountable. Fraser’s now canonical critique
of Habermasian public sphere posits it as constituted by significant exclusions of many
­publics—women, peasants, the working class, and other subaltern publics. Fraser shows how
the bourgeois conception of public sphere became an instrument in creating a hegemony
that eventually translated into forms of political power. Fraser argues that a strict separa-
tion between the state and civil society is the precondition for the bourgeois conception of
public sphere, and moreover that such an informally mobilized body of nongovernmental
discursive opinion serves to counterweight the coercive power of the state. She argues that
such a strict separation creates “weak publics,” a public invited to take part in the opinion
formation but not in decision-making. Such a conception of public sphere is built upon
structural socio-economic inequalities and generates a hypothetical equity in political par-
ticipation, while de facto creating exclusions of multiple counterpublics searching for spaces
of discursive contestation, identity formation, and political action. Fraser asks what kinds
of institutional frameworks can support the formation of public spheres in which “strong
publics” take part in both opinion formation and decision-making? New, more critical,
post-bourgeois definitions of public realm thus become critical in “expanding our capacity
to envision democratic possibilities beyond the limits of actually existing democracy.”
Questioning the normative and rigid context and manifestation of traditional public
space, Crawford critiques the many canonical writings (Habermas, Sennett, Sorkin, Davis,
and her own past work) and provides an alternative to the “end of public space” narrative of
the latter part of the twentieth century. Building on the work of Nancy Fraser and Henri
 State of the Question  17
Lefebvre, Crawford asks, “how can public space be connected with democracy?” and ex-
pands the idea of multiple counterpublics to the physical realm of public space where it
translates to the need for and production of “multiple sites of public expression.” With criti-
cal observations of the prosaic everyday spaces in Los Angeles—“everyday public spaces”—
Crawford provides a refreshing view of the many publics, counterpublics, and public spaces
alive with use and meaning in the contemporary city, thus expanding our conceptions of
‘the public’ as well as of ‘space.’ In these trivial and marginal spaces, argues Crawford, the
emerging micropolitics begins to outline new possibilities for democratic practice, and for
public space to act as a medium through which democracy does its work.
Mark Kingwell reveals the enigma and ambiguity of public space describing it variously
as “the age’s master signifier,” a “loose and elastic notion,” a “site of suspicion, stimulation,
and transaction,” and “the basis of public discourse itself.” Citing Hardin’s The tragedy of the
commons, Kingwell builds on the current common model of public space with the “porous-
ness of public and private.” He posits if what we consider public space is no more than an
open marketplace of potential transactions, often monetary or otherwise, between isolated
individuals? In doing so, Kingwell poses some challenging questions: Is public space a form
of public good? How public are certain so-called public spaces? How porous or controlled
are the transitions between public and private spaces? And ultimately, how are the identities
of individuals and societies related to public space?

Figure 1.0.1  Extinction Rebellion on Hannah Arendt Strasse, Berlin, 7 October 2019. Photo © Leonhard
Lenz. Source: Wikimedia Commons, Creative Commons 1.0.
1.1 The Public Realm: The Common
Hannah Arendt
Source: Arendt, H. (1958). The Human Condition, Chicago: The University of
­Chicago Press, 50–58.

The term “public” signifies two closely interrelated but not altogether identical phenom-
ena: It means, first, that everything that appears in public can be seen and heard by every-
body and has the widest possible publicity. For us, appearance—something that is being
seen and heard by others as well as by ourselves—constitutes reality. Compared with the
reality which comes from being seen and heard, even the greatest forces of intimate life—
the passions of the heart, the thoughts of the mind, the delights of the senses—lead an
uncertain, shadowy kind of existence unless and until they are transformed, deprivatized,
and deindividualized, as it were, into a shape to fit them for public appearance.70 The most
current of such transformations occurs in storytelling and generally in artistic transposi-
tion of individual experiences. But we do not need the form of the artist to witness this
transfiguration. Each time we talk about things that can be experienced only in privacy or
intimacy, we bring them out into a sphere where they will assume a kind of reality which,
their intensity notwithstanding, they never could have had before. The presence of oth-
ers who see what we see and hear what we hear assures us of the reality of the world and
ourselves, and while the intimacy of a fully developed private life, such as had never been
known before the rise of the modern age and the concomitant decline of the public realm,
will always greatly intensify and enrich the whole scale of subjective emotions and private
feelings, this intensification will always come to pass at the expense of the assurance of the
reality of the world and men.
[…]
What the public realm considers irrelevant can have such an extraordinary and infectious
charm that a whole people may adopt it as their way of life, without for that reason changing
its essentially private character. Modern enchantment with “small things,” though preached
by early twentieth-century poetry in almost all European tongues, has found its classical
presentation in the petit bonheur of the French people. Since the decay of their once great
and glorious public realm, the French have become masters in the art of being happy among
“small things,” within the space of their own four walls, between chest and bed, table and
chair, dog and cat and flowerpot, extending to these things a care and tenderness which, in
a world where rapid industrialization constantly kills off the things of yesterday to produce
today’s objects, may even appear to be the world’s last, purely humane corner. This enlarge-
ment of the private, the enchantment, as it were, of a whole people, does not make it public,
does not constitute a public realm, but, on the contrary, means only that the public realm
has almost completely receded, so that greatness has given way to charm everywhere; for
while the public realm may be great, it cannot be charming precisely because it is unable
to harbor the irrelevant.
Second, the term “public” signifies the world itself, in so far as it is common to all of us
and distinguished from our privately owned place in it. This world, however, is not iden-
tical with the earth or with nature, as the limited space for the movement of men and the
 State of the Question  21
general condition of organic life. It is related, rather, to the human artifact, the fabrication
of human hands, as well as to affairs which go on among those who inhabit the man-made
world together. To live together in the world means essentially that a world of things is be-
tween those who have it in common, as a table is located between those who sit around it;
the world, like every in-between, relates and separates men at the same time.
The public realm, as the common world, gathers us together and yet prevents our falling
over each other, so to speak. What makes mass society so difficult to bear is not the number
of people involved, or at least not primarily, but the fact that the world between them has
lost its power to gather them together, to relate and to separate them. The weirdness of this
situation resembles a spiritualistic seance where a number of people gathered around a table
might suddenly, through some magic trick, see the table vanish from their midst, so that
two persons sitting opposite each other were no longer separated but also would be entirely
unrelated to each other by anything tangible.
Historically, we know of only one principle that was ever devised to keep a community
of people together who had lost their interest in the common world and felt themselves no
longer related and separated by it. To find a bond between people strong enough to replace
the world was the main political task of early Christian philosophy, and it was Augustine
who proposed to found not only the Christian “brotherhood” but all human relationships
on charity.
[… ]
Worldlessness as a political phenomenon is possible only on the assumption that the world
will not last; on this assumption, however, it is almost inevitable that worldlessness, in one
form or another, will begin to dominate the political scene. This happened after the down-
fall of the Roman Empire and, albeit for quite other reasons and in very different, perhaps
even more disconsolate forms, it seems to happen again in our own days. The Christian
abstention from worldly things is by no means the only conclusion one can draw from the
conviction that the human artifice, a product of mortal hands, is as mortal as its makers.
This, on the contrary, may also intensify the enjoyment and consumption of the things of
the world, all manners of intercourse in which the world is not primarily understood to
be the koinon, that which is common to all. Only the existence of a public realm and the
world’s subsequent transformation into a community of things which gathers men together
and relates them to each other depends entirely on permanence. If the world is to contain a
public space, it cannot be erected for one generation and planned for the living only; it must
transcend the lifespan of mortal men.
Without this transcendence into a potential earthly immortality, no politics, strictly
speaking, no common world and no public realm, is possible. For unlike the common good
as Christianity understood it—the salvation of one’s soul as a concern common to all—the
common world is what we enter when we are born and what we leave behind when we die.
It transcends our lifespan into past and future alike; it was there before we came and will
outlast our brief sojourn in it. It is what we have in common not only with those who live
with us, but also with those who were here before and with those who will come after us.
But such a common world can survive the coming and going of the generations only to the
extent that it appears in public. It is the publicity of the public realm which can absorb and
make shine through the centuries whatever men may want to save from the natural ruin
of time. Through many ages before us—but now not any more—men entered the public
realm because they wanted something of their own or something they had in common with
others to be more permanent than their earthly lives.
[…]
The famous passage in Aristotle, “Considering human affairs, one must not . . . consider
man as he is and not consider what is mortal in mortal things, but think about them [only]
22  Hannah Arendt
to the extent that they have the possibility of immortalizing,” occurs very properly in his
political writings.79 For the polis was for the Greeks, as the res publica was for the Romans,
first of all their guarantee against the futility of individual life, the space protected against
this futility and reserved for the relative permanence, if not immortality, of mortals.
What the modern age thought of the public realm, after the spectacular rise of society
to public prominence, was expressed by Adam Smith when, with disarming sincerity, he
mentions “that unprosperous race of men commonly called men of letters” for whom “pub-
lic admiration . . . makes always a part of their reward . . . , a considerable part… in the
profession of physic; a still greater perhaps in that of law; in poetry and philosophy it makes
almost the whole.”80
Here, it is self-evident that public admiration and monetary reward are of the same nature
and can become substitutes for each other. Public admiration, too, is something to be used
and consumed, and status, as we would say today, fulfills one need as food fulfills another:
public admiration is consumed by individual vanity as food is consumed by hunger. Obvi-
ously, from this viewpoint, the test of reality does not lie in the public presence of others,
but rather in the greater or lesser urgency of needs to whose existence or non-existence
nobody can ever testify except the one who happens to suffer them. And since the need for
food has its demonstrable basis of reality in the life process itself, it is also obvious that the
entirely subjective pangs of hunger are more real than “vainglory,” as Hobbes used to call
the need for public admiration. Yet, even if these needs, through some miracle of sympathy,
were shared by others, their very futility would prevent their ever establishing anything so
solid and durable as a common world. The point then is not that there is a lack of public
admiration for poetry and philosophy in the modern world, but that such admiration does
not constitute a space in which things are saved from destruction by time. The futility of
public admiration, which daily is consumed in ever greater quantities, on the contrary, is
such that monetary reward, one of the most futile things there is, can become more “ob-
jective” and more real.
As distinguished from this “objectivity,” whose only basis is money as a common de-
nominator for the fulfillment of all needs, the reality of the public realm relies on the si-
multaneous presence of innumerable perspectives and aspects in which the common world
presents itself and for which no common measurement or denominator can ever be devised.
For though the common world is the common meeting ground of all, those who are present
have different locations in it, and the location of one can no more coincide with the location
of another than the location of two objects. Being seen and being heard by others derive
their significance from the fact that everybody sees and hears from a different position. This
is the meaning of public life, compared to which even the richest and most satisfying family
life can offer only the prolongation or multiplication of one’s own position with its attend-
ing aspects and perspectives. The subjectivity of privacy can be prolonged and multiplied
in a family, it can even become so strong that its weight is felt in the public realm; but this
family “world” can never replace the reality rising out of the sum total of aspects presented
by one object to a multitude of spectators. Only where things can be seen by many in a va-
riety of aspects without changing their identity, so that those who are gathered around them
know they see sameness in utter diversity, can worldly reality truly and reliably appear.
Under the conditions of a common world, reality is not guaranteed primarily by the
“common nature” of all men who constitute it, but rather by the fact that, differences of
position and the resulting variety of perspectives notwithstanding, everybody is always
concerned with the same object. If the sameness of the object can no longer be discerned,
no common nature of men, least of all the unnatural conformism of a mass society, can
prevent the destruction of the common world, which is usually preceded by the destruction
of the many aspects in which it presents itself to human plurality. This can happen under
 State of the Question  23
conditions of radical isolation, where nobody can any longer agree with anybody else, as
is usually the case in tyrannies. But it may also happen under conditions of mass society
or mass hysteria, where we see all people suddenly behave as though they were members
of one family, each multiplying and prolonging the perspective of his neighbor. In both
instances, men have become entirely private, that is, they have been deprived of seeing and
hearing others, of being seen and being heard by them. They are all imprisoned in the sub-
jectivity of their own singular experience, which does not cease to be singular if the same
experience is multiplied innumerable times. The end of the common world has come when
it is seen only under one aspect and is permitted to present itself in only one perspective.

Notes
70 This is also the reason why it is impossible “to write a character sketch of any slave who lived. . . .
Until they emerge into freedom and notoriety, they remain shadowy types rather than persons”
­( Barrow, Slavery in the Roman Empire, p. 156) [Source: Barrow, R.H. (1928). Slavery in the Roman
Empire. Methuen & Company Limited.]
79 Nicomachean Ethics 1177b31. [Source: Thomson, J. A. K. (1955). The Ethics of Aristotle: The Nicomachean
Ethics. London: Penguin Classics. Re-issued 1976, revised by Hugh Tredennick]
80 Wealth of Nations, Book I, ch. 10 (pp. 120 and 95 of Vol. I of Everyman’s ed.) [Source: Smith, A.
(1776). Wealth of Nations. London: W. Strahan and T. Cadell]

Figure 1.0.2  Street scene in Cincinnati, Ohio. Photo © Vikas Mehta.

1.2 Blurring the Boundaries: Public
Space and Private Life
Margaret Crawford
Source: Crawford, M. (2008). “Blurring the Boundaries: Public Space and Private
Life,” in Chase, J., Crawford, M., and Kaliski, J. (eds.), Everyday Urbanism. New
York: Monacelli Press, 24–35.

[…] Critics and historians began to see multiple versions of the theme park in the increasingly
spectacular and centralized zones of leisure and consumption—gentrified shopping streets,
massive shopping malls, festival marketplaces. According to Michael Sorkin, one of the
primary theorists in this arena, these ersatz and privatized pieces of the city—­pseudopublic
places—were distinguished by consumption, surveillance, control, and endless simulation.
I include my own work among this body of criticism; I contributed a chapter concluding
that the entire world had become a gigantic shopping mall to Sorkin’s book Variations On a
Theme Park: The New American City and the End of Public Space.30
What concerned me more than the emerging theme-park sensibility as depicted in these
studies was part of the book’s subtitle, “The End of Public Space.” This summarizes a fear
repeated by many other critics, urbanists, and architects; in his essay in Sorkin’s book, Mike
Davis expresses alarm at the “destruction of any truly democratic urban spaces.”31 It is easy
to find evidence to support this argument. Los Angeles, for example, is often cited as an
extreme demonstration of the decline of public space. The few remaining slices of tradi-
tional public space (for example, Pershing Square, historically the focus of the downtown
business district, which was recently redesigned by Ricardo Legorreta) are usually deserted,
while Citywalk, the simulated cityscape, shopping, and entertainment center collaged from
different urban elements by MCA and Universal Studio, is always jammed with people.
The existence and popularity of these commercial public places is used to frame a perva-
sive narrative of loss that contrasts the current debasement of public space with golden ages
and golden sites—the Greek agora, the coffeehouses of early modern Paris and London, the
Italian piazza, the town square. The narrative nostalgically posits these as once vital sites of
democracy where, allegedly, cohesive public discourse thrived, and inevitably culminates
in the contemporary crisis of public life and public space, a crisis that puts at risk the very
ideas and institutions of democracy itself.
It is hard to argue with the symptoms these writers describe, but I disagree with the
conclusions they draw. This perception of loss originates in extremely narrow and norma-
tive definitions of both “public” and “space” that derive from insistence on unity, desire
for fixed categories of time and space, and rigidly conceived notions of private and public.
Seeking a single, all-inclusive public space, these critics mistake monumental public spaces
for the totality of public space. In this respect, critics of public space closely echo the conclu-
sions of social theorists such as Jurgen Habermas and Richard Sennett, whose descriptions
of the public sphere share many of the same assumptions.32 Habermas describes the public
sphere as overwhelmed by consumerism, the media, and the state, while Sennett laments
in his book’s very title “the fall of public man.” The word “man” highlights another key
assumption of this position: an inability to conceive of identity in any but universalizing
terms. Whether as a universal man, citizen, consumer, or tourist, the identified subjects
posit a normative condition of experience.
 State of the Question  27
Not surprisingly, the political implications that follow from the overwhelmingly nega-
tive assessments of the narrative of loss are equally negative. Implicit is a form of historical
determinism that suggests the impossibility of political struggle against what Mike Davis
calls “inexorable forces.”33 The universal consumer becomes the universal victim, helpless
and passive against the forces of capitalism, consumerism, and simulation. This tyranny is
compounded by the lack of a clear link between public space and democracy. The two are
assumed to be closely connected, but exact affinities are never specified, which makes it
even more difficult to imagine political opposition to the mall or theme park.
This universalization, pessimism, and ambiguity led me to seek an alternative frame-
work—a new way of conceptualizing public space and a new way of reading Los Angeles.
This essay represents an account of my attempts to rethink our conceptions of “public,”
“space,” and “identity.” The investigation revealed to me a multiplicity of simultaneous
public activities in Los Angeles that are continually redefining both “public” and “space”
through lived experience. In vacant lots, sidewalks, parks, and parking lots, these activities
are restructuring urban space, opening new political arenas and producing new forms of
insurgent citizenship.

Rethinking “public”
Nancy Fraser’s article “Rethinking the Public Sphere” provided an important starting
point for my quest.34 Her central arguments clarify the significant theoretical and political
limitations of prevailing formulations of “public.” Fraser acknowledges the importance of
Jurgen Habermas’s characterization of the public sphere as an arena of discursive relations
conceptually independent of both the state and the economy, but she questions many of his
assumptions about the universal, rational, and noncontentious public arena.
Habermas links the emergence of the “liberal model of the bourgeois public sphere” in
early modern Europe with the development of nation- states in which democracy was rep-
resented by collectively accepted universal rights and achieved via electoral politics. This
version of the public sphere emphasizes unity and equality as ideal conditions. The public
sphere is depicted as a “space of democracy” that all citizens have the right to inhabit.
In this arena, social and economic inequalities are temporarily put aside in the interest
of determining a common good. Matters of common interest are discussed through ra-
tional, disinterested, and virtuous public debate. Like the frequently cited ideal of Athenian
democracy, however, this model is structured around significant exclusions. In Athens,
participation was theoretically open to all citizens, but in practice the majority of the
­population—women and slaves—were excluded; they were not “citizens.” The modern
bourgeois public sphere also began by excluding women and workers: women’s interests
were presumed to be private and therefore part of the domestic sphere, while workers’ con-
cerns were presumed to be merely economic and therefore self-interested. Middle-class and
masculine modes of public speech and behavior, through the required rational deliberation
and rhetoric of disinterest, were privileged and defined as universal.
Recent revisionist histories, notes Fraser, contradict this idealized account, demonstrat-
ing that nonliberal, nonbourgeois public spheres also existed, producing their own defi-
nitions and public activities in a multiplicity of arenas.35 For example, in nineteenth- and
twentieth-century America, middle-class women organized themselves into a variety of
exclusively female volunteer groups for the purposes of philanthropy and reform based on
private ideals of domesticity and motherhood. Less affluent women found access to public
life through the workplace and through associations, including unions, lodges, and political
organizations such as Tammany Hall. Broadening the definition of public to encompass
these “counterpublics” produces a very different picture of the public sphere, one founded
28  Margaret Crawford
on contestation rather than unity and created through competing interests and violent de-
mands as much as reasoned debate. Demonstrations, strikes, riots, and struggles over such
issues as temperance and suffrage reveal a range of discursive sites characterized by multiple
publics and varied struggles between contentious concerns.
In the bourgeois public sphere, citizenship is primarily defined in relation to the state,
framed within clear categories of discourse, and addressed through political debate and elec-
toral politics. This liberal notion of citizenship is based on abstract universal liberties, with de-
mocracy guaranteed by the state’s electoral and juridical institutions. Fraser argues instead that
democracy is a complex and contested concept that can assume a multiplicity of meanings and
forms that often violate the strict lines between private and public on which the liberal bour-
geois public sphere depends. In the United States, counterpublics of women, workers, and
immigrants have historically defended established civil rights but also demanded new rights
based on their specific roles in the domestic or economic spheres. Always changing, these
demands continually redefine democracy and redraw boundaries between private and public.
Fraser’s description of multiple publics, contestation, and the redefinition of public and
private can be extended to the physical realm of public space. First, these ideas suggest that
no single physical environment can represent a completely inclusive space of democracy. Like
Habermas’s idealized bourgeois public sphere, the physical spaces often idealized by ­architects—
the agora, the forum, the piazza—were constituted by exclusion. Where these single publics
are construed as occupying an exemplary public space, the multiple counterpublics that Fraser
identifies necessarily require and produce multiple sites of public expression. These spaces are
partial and selective in response to the limited segments of the population they serve from
among the many public roles that individuals play in urban society.

Redefining “space”
In order to locate these multiple sites of public expression, we need to redefine our under-
standing of “space.” Just as Nancy Fraser looked beyond the officially designated public to dis-
cover the previously hidden counterpublics of women and workers, we can identify another
type of space by looking beyond the culturally defined physical realms of home, workplace,
and institution. I call this new construction “everyday space.” Everyday space is the connec-
tive tissue that binds daily lives together, amorphous and so persuasive that it is difficult even
to perceive. In spite of its ubiquity, everyday space is nearly invisible in the professional dis-
courses of the city. Everyday space is like everyday life, the “screen on which society projects
its light and its shadow, its hollows and, its planes, its power and its weakness.”36
In the vast expanses of Los Angeles, monumental, highly ordered, and carefully designed
public spaces like Pershing Square or Citywalk punctuate the larger and more diffuse space of
everyday life. Southern California’s banal, incoherent, and repetitive landscape of roads is lined
with endless strip malls, supermarkets, auto-repair facilities, fast-food outlets, and vacant lots
that defeat any conceptual or physical order. According to Lefebvre, these spaces are like every-
day life: “trivial, obvious but invisible, everywhere and nowhere.” For most Angelenos, such
spaces constitute an everyday reality of infinitely recumbent commuting routes and trips to the
supermarket, dry cleaner, or video store. The sites for multiple social and economic transactions,
these mundane places serve as primary intersections between the individual and the city.
Created to be seen and approached from moving vehicles, this generic landscape exists to
accommodate the automobile, which has produced the city’s sprawling form. Connected by
an expansive network of streets and freeways, Los Angeles spreads out in all directions with
few differences of density or form. Experienced through the automobile, the bus, or even
the shopping cart, this environment takes mobility as its defining element. Everyday life is
organized by time as much as by space, structured around daily itineraries, with rhythms
 State of the Question  29
imposed by patterns of work and leisure, week and weekend, and the repetitious gestures of
commuting and consumption.
In contrast to the fluidity of its urban fabric, the social fabric of Los Angeles is fragmented;
it is not a single city, but a collection of microcities defined by visible and invisible boundaries
of class, race, ethnicity, and religion. This multiplicity of identities produces an intricate social
landscape in which cultures consolidate and separate, reacting and interacting in complex and
unpredictable ways. Spatial and cultural differences exist even within these groups. “Latino,”
for example, describes the now dominant ethnic group but hides the significant differences
between Mexicans and Cubans, for example, or even between recent immigrants and s­econd-
or third-generation Chicanos. Mobility prevails here too. When new immigrants arrive from
Central America, they tend to move into African American neighborhoods. Both African
Americans and Latinos shop in Korean and Vietnamese shops. Other areas of the city, once
completely white, then primarily Latino, are now mostly Asian.
These generally distinct groups came together—intensified and politicized—in the urban
disturbances of 1992. According to Nancy Fraser’s redefinition of the public sphere, these
events can be seen as a form of public expression that produces an alternative discourse of
“public” and “space.”
[…]

Everyday public spaces

The riots underlined the potent ability of everyday spaces to become, however briefly,
places where lived experience and political expression come together. This realm of pub-
lic life lies outside the domain of electoral politics or professional design, representing a
bottom-up rather than top-down restructuring of urban space. Unlike normative public
spaces, which produce the existing ideology, these spaces help to overturn the status quo. In
different areas of the city, generic spaces become specific and serve as public arenas where
debates and struggles over economic participation, democracy, and the public assertion of
identity take place. Without claiming to represent the totality of public space, these mul-
tiple and simultaneous activities construct and reveal an alternative logic of public space.
Woven into the patterns of everyday life, it is difficult even to discern these places as public
space. Trivial and commonplace, vacant lots, sidewalks, front yards, parks, and parking lots are
being claimed for new uses and meanings by the poor, the recently immigrated, the homeless,
and even the middle class. These spaces exist physically somewhere in the junctures between
private, commercial, and domestic. Ambiguous and unstable, they blur our established un-
derstandings of these categories in often paradoxical ways. They contain multiple and con-
stantly shifting meanings rather than clarity of function. In the absence of a distinct identity of
their own, these spaces can be shaped and redefined by the transitory activities they accommo-
date. Unrestricted by the dictates of built form, they became venues for the expression of new
meanings through the individuals and groups who appropriate spaces for their own purposes.
Apparently empty of meaning, they acquire constantly changing meanings—social, aesthetic,
political, economic—as users recognize and reinterpret them.
Temporally, everyday spaces exist in between past and future uses, often with a no-longer-
but-not-yet-their-own status, in a holding pattern of real-estate values that might one day rise.
The temporary activities that take place there also follow distinct temporal patterns. Without
fixed schedules, they produce their own cycles, appearing, reappearing, or disappearing within
the rhythms of everyday life. Use and activity vary according to the seasons, vanishing in winter,
born again in spring. They are subject to changes in the weather, days of the week, and even
time of day. Since they are usually perceived in states of distraction, their meanings are not im-
mediately evident but unfold through the repetitious acts of everyday life.
30  Margaret Crawford
Conceptually, these spaces can be identified as what Edward Soja, following Henri Lefe-
bvre, called the “thirdspace,” a category that is neither the material space that we experi-
ence nor a representation of space.8 Thirdspace is instead a space of representation, a space
bearing possibility of new meanings, a space activated through social action and social
imagination. Multiple public activities are currently transforming Los Angeles everyday
spaces, among them the garage sale and street vending.
[…]
Democracy and public space
This brings us back to the question that started this investigation: how can public space be
connected with democracy? Individual garage sales might not in themselves generate a new
urban politics, but the juxtapositions, combinations, and collisions of people, places, and
activities that I’ve described create a new condition of social fluidity that begins to break
down the separate, specialized, and hierarchical structures of everyday life in Los Angeles.
Local yet also directed to anyone driving or passing by, these unexpected intersections may
possess the liberatory potential that Henri Lefebvre attributes to urban life. As chance en-
counters multiply and proliferate, activities of everyday space may begin to dissolve some of
the predictable boundaries of race and class, revealing previously hidden social possibilities
that suggest how the trivial and marginal might be transformed into a kind of micropolitics.
In some specific circumstances, as I’ve suggested, the intersection of publics, spaces, and
identities can begin to delineate a new urban arena for democratic action that challenges
normative definitions of how democracy works. Specifically constituted counterpublics
organized around a site or activity create what anthropologist James Holston calls “spaces of
insurgent citizenship.”9 These emergent sites accompany the changes that are transforming
cities such as Los Angeles. Global and local processes, migration, industrial restructuring,
and other economic shifts produce social reterritorialization at all levels. Residents with
new histories, cultures, and demands appear in the city and disrupt the given categories
of social life and urban space. Expressed through the specific needs of everyday life, their
urban experiences increasingly become the focus of their struggle to redefine the conditions
belonging to society. Once mobilized, social identities become political demands, spaces,
and sites for political transformation, with the potential to reshape cities.
The public sites where these struggles occur serve as evidence of an emerging but not yet
fully comprehensible spatial and political order. In everyday space, differences between the
domestic and the economic, the private and the public, and the economic and the political
are blurring. Rather than constituting the failure of public space, change, multiplicity, and
contestation may in fact constitute its very nature. In Los Angeles, the materialization of
these new public spaces and activities, shaped by lived experience rather than built space,
raises complex political questions about the meaning of economic participation and citizen-
ship. By recognizing these struggles as the germ of an alternative development of democ-
racy, we can begin to frame a new discourse of public space, one no longer preoccupied
with loss but instead filled with possibility.

Notes
30 Michael Sorkin, ed., VARIATIONS ON A THEME PARK: THE NEW AMERICAN CITY
AND THE END OF PUBLIC SPACE (New York: Hill and Wong, 1990)
31 Mike Davis, “Fortress Los Angeles: The Militarization of Urban Space,” in Sorkin, VARIATIONS
ON A THEME PARK, 155.
32 Jurgen Habermas, THE STRUCTURAL TRANSFORMATION OF THE PUBLIC SPHERE:
AN INQUIRY INTO A CATEGORY OF BOURGEOIS SOCIETY (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT
Press, 1989); and Richard Sennett, THE FALL OF PUBLIC MAN (New York: Vintage Books,
1974).
 State of the Question  31
33 Davis, “Fortress Los Angeles,” 154-80.
34 Nancy Fraser, “Rethinking the Public Sphere: A Contribution to the Critique of Actually Existing
Democracy,” in THE PHANTOM PUBLIC SPHERE, ed. Bruce Robbins (Minneapolis: University
of Minnesota Press, 1993).
35 Joan Landess, WOMEN AND THE PUBLIC SPHERE IN THE AGE OF THE FRENCH REV-
OLUTION (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1988); Mary P. Ryan, WOMEN IN PUBLIC:
BETWEEN BANNERS AND BALLOTS, 1825-1880 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press,
1990).
36 Henri Lefebvre, CRITIQUE OF EVERYDAY LIFE (London: Verso, 1991).
8 Edward Soja, THIRD SPACE: JOURNEYS TO LOS ANGELES AND OTHER REAL AND
IMAGINED PLACES (New York: Basil Blackwell, 1996).
9 James Holston, “Spaces of Insurgent Citizenship,” PLANNING THEORY 13 (summer 1996):
30-50.
Figure 1.0.3  Chess players in Bryant Park, New York City. Photo © Miodrag Mitrašinović.
1.3 Rethinking the Public Sphere: A
Contribution to the Critique of
Actually Existing Democracy
Nancy Fraser
Source: Fraser, N. (1990). “Rethinking the Public Sphere: A Contribution to the
Critique of Actually Existing Democracy.” Social Text, 2(5/26), 56–80.

Public spheres, common concerns, and private interests

I have argued that in stratified societies, like it or not, subaltern counterpublics stand in a
contestatory relationship to dominant publics. One important object of such interpublic con-
testation is the appropriate boundaries of the public sphere. Here the central questions are,
what counts as a public matter and what, in contrast, is private? This brings me to a third set
of problematic assumptions underlying the bourgeois conception of the public sphere, namely,
assumptions concerning the appropriate scope of publicity in relation to privacy.
Let me remind you that it is central to Habermas’s account that the bourgeois public
sphere was to be a discursive arena in which “private persons” deliberated about “public
matters.” There are several different senses of privacy and publicity in play here. “Publicity,”
for example, can mean 1) state-related; 2) accessible to everyone; 3) of concern to everyone;
and 4) pertaining to a common good or shared interest. Each of these corresponds to a
contrasting sense of “privacy.” In addition, there are two other senses of “privacy” hovering
just below the surface here: 5) pertaining to private property in a market economy; and 6)
pertaining to intimate domestic or personal life, including sexual life.
I have already talked at length about the sense of “publicity” as open or accessible to all.
Now I want to examine some of the other senses,30 beginning with 3) of concern to every-
one. This is ambiguous between what objectively affects or has an impact on everyone, as
seen from an outsider’s perspective, on the one hand, and what is recognized as a matter of
common concern by participants, on the other hand. Now, the idea of a public sphere as an
arena of collective self-determination does not sit well with approaches that would appeal to
an outsider perspective to delimit its proper boundaries. Thus, it is the second, participant’s
perspective is that is relevant here. Only participants themselves can decide what is and
what is not of common concern to them. However, there is no guarantee that all of them
will agree. For example, until quite recently, feminists were in the minority in thinking
that domestic violence against women was a matter of common concern and thus a legit-
imate topic of public discourse. The great majority of people considered this issue to be a
private matter between what was assumed to be a fairly small number of heterosexual cou-
ples (and perhaps the social and legal professionals who were supposed to deal with them).
Then, feminists formed a subaltern counterpublic from which we disseminated a view of
domestic violence as a widespread systemic feature of male-dominated societies. Eventu-
ally, after sustained discursive contestation, we succeeded in making it a common concern.
The point is that there are no naturally given, a priori boundaries here. What will count
as a matter of common concern will be decided precisely through discursive contestation.
It follows that no topics should be ruled off limits in advance of such contestation. On the
contrary, democratic publicity requires positive guarantees of opportunities for minorities
to convince others that what in the past was not public in the sense of being a matter of
common concern should now become so.31
 State of the Question  35
What, then, of the sense of “publicity” as pertaining to a common good or shared in-
terest? This is the sense that is in play when Habermas characterizes the bourgeois public
sphere as an arena in which the topic of discussion is restricted to the “common good” and
in which discussion of “private interests” is ruled out. This is a view of the public sphere
that we would today call civic republican, as opposed to liberal-individualist. Briefly, the
civic republican model stresses a view of politics as people reasoning together to promote
a common good that transcends the mere sum of individual preferences. The idea is that
through deliberation the members of the public can come to discover or create such a com-
mon good. In the process of their deliberations, participants are transformed from a collec-
tion of self-seeking, private individuals into a public-spirited collectivity, capable of acting
together in the common interest. On this view, private interests have no proper place in the
political public sphere. At best, they are the pre-political starting point of deliberation, to
be transformed and transcended in the course of debate.32
Now, this civic republican view of the public sphere is in one respect an improve-
ment over the liberal-individualist alternative. Unlike the latter, it does not assume that
people’s preferences, interests, and identities are given exogenously in advance of public
discourse and deliberation. It appreciates, rather, that preferences, interests, and identi-
ties are as much outcomes as antecedents of public deliberation, indeed are discursively
constituted in and through it. However, as Jane Mansbridge has argued, the civic re-
publican view contains a very serious confusion, one which blunts its critical edge. This
view conflates the ideas of deliberation and the common good by assuming that deliber-
ation must be deliberation about the common good. Consequently, it limits deliberation
to talk framed from the standpoint of a single, all-encompassing “we,” thereby ruling
claims of self-interest and group interest out of order. Yet, this works against one of the
principal aims of deliberation, namely, helping participants clarify their interests, even
when those interests turn out to conflict. “Ruling self-interest [and group interest] out
of order makes it harder for any participant to sort out what is going on. In particular,
the less powerful may not find ways to discover that the prevailing sense of “we” does
not adequately include them.”33
In general, there is no way to know in advance whether the outcome of a deliberative
process will be the discovery of a common good in which conflicts of interest evaporate as
merely apparent or, rather, the discovery that conflicts of interests are real and the common
good is chimerical. But if the existence of a common good cannot be presumed in advance,
then there is no warrant for putting any strictures on what sorts of topics, interests, and
views are admissible in deliberation.34
This argument holds even in the best case scenario of societies whose basic institutional
frameworks do not generate systemic inequalities; even in such relatively egalitarian soci-
eties, we cannot assume in advance that there will be no real conflicts of interests. How
much more pertinent, then, is the argument to stratified societies, which are traversed with
pervasive relations of dominance and subordination. After all, when social arrangements
operate to the systemic profit of some groups of people and to the systemic detriment of
others, there are prima facie reasons for thinking that the postulation of a common good
shared by exploiters and exploited may well be a mystification. Moreover, any consensus
that purports to represent the common good in this social context should be regarded
with suspicion, since this consensus will have been reached through deliberative processes
tainted by the effects of dominance and subordination.
In general, critical theory needs to take a harder, more critical look at the terms “private”
and “public.” These terms, after all, are not simply straightforward designations of societal
spheres; they are cultural classifications and rhetorical labels. In political discourse, they
are powerful terms that are frequently deployed to delegitimate some interests, views, and
topics and to valorize others.
36  Nancy Fraser
This brings me to two other senses of privacy, which often function ideologically to
delimit the boundaries of the public sphere in ways that disadvantage subordinate social
groups. These are sense (5) pertaining to private property in a market economy; and sense
(6) pertaining to intimate domestic or personal life, including sexual life. Each of these
senses is at the center of a rhetoric of privacy that has historically been used to restrict the
universe of legitimate public contestation. The rhetoric of domestic privacy seeks to ex-
clude some issues and interests from public debate by personalizing and/or familiarizing
them; it casts these as private-domestic or personal-familial matters in contradistinction to
public, political matters. The rhetoric of economic privacy, in contrast, seeks to exclude
some issues and interests from public debate by economizing them; the issues in question
here are cast as impersonal market imperatives or as “private” ownership prerogatives or as
technical problems for managers and planners, all in contradistinction to public, political
matters. In both cases, the result is to enclave certain matters in specialized discursive are-
nas and thereby to shield them from general public debate and contestation. This usually
works to the advantage of dominant groups and individuals and to the disadvantage of their
subordinates.35 If wife battering, for example, is labeled a “personal” or “domestic” matter
and if public discourse about this phenomenon is canalized into specialized institutions as-
sociated with, say, family law, social work, and the sociology and psychology of “deviance,”
then this serves to reproduce gender dominance and subordination. Similarly, if questions
of workplace democracy are labeled “economic” or “managerial” problems and if discourse
about these questions is shunted into specialized institutions associated with, say, “industrial
relations” sociology, labor law, and “management science,” then this serves to perpetuate
class (and usually also gender and race) dominance and subordination.
This shows once again that the lifting of formal restrictions on public sphere participation
does not suffice to ensure inclusion in practice. On the contrary, even after women and workers
have been formally licensed to participate, their participation may be hedged by conceptions
of economic privacy and domestic privacy that delimit the scope of debate. These notions,
therefore, are vehicles through which gender and class disadvantages may continue to operate
subtextually and informally, even after explicit, formal restrictions have been rescinded.

Strong publics, weak publics: On civil society and the state

Let me turn now to my fourth and last assumption underlying the bourgeois conception of
the public sphere, namely, the assumption that a functioning democratic public sphere re-
quires a sharp separation of civil society and the state. This assumption is susceptible to two
different interpretations, depending on how one understands the expression “civil society.”
If one takes that expression to mean a privately-ordered, capitalist economy, then to insist
on its separation from the state is to defend classical liberalism. The claim would be that a
system of limited government and laissez-faire capitalism is a necessary precondition for a
well functioning public sphere.
We can dispose of this (relatively uninteresting) claim fairly quickly by drawing on some
arguments of the previous sections. I have already shown that participatory parity is essen-
tial to a democratic public sphere and that rough socio-economic equality is a precondition
of participatory parity. Now I need only add that laissez-faire capitalism does not foster
socio-economic equality and that some form of politically regulated economic reorgani-
zation and redistribution is needed to achieve that end. Likewise, I have also shown that
efforts to “privatize” economic issues and to cast them as off-limits with respect to state
activity impede, rather than promote, the sort of full and free discussion that is built into
the idea of a public sphere. It follows from these considerations that a sharp separation of
(economic) civil society and the state is not a necessary condition for a well functioning
 State of the Question  37
public sphere. On the contrary, and pace the bourgeois conception, it is precisely some sort
of inter-­imbrication of these institutions that is needed.36
However, there is also a second, more interesting, interpretation of the bourgeois assump-
tion that a sharp separation of civil society and the state is necessary to a working public
sphere, one which warrants more extended examination. In this interpretation, “civil society”
means the nexus of nongovernmental or “secondary” associations that are neither economic
nor administrative. We can best appreciate the force of the claim that civil society in this sense
should be separate from the state if we recall Habermas’s definition of the liberal public sphere
as a “body of private persons assembled to form a public.” The emphasis here on “private per-
sons” signals (among other things) that the members of the bourgeois public are not state offi-
cials and that their participation in the public sphere is not undertaken in any official capacity.
Accordingly, their discourse does not eventuate in binding, sovereign decisions author-
izing the use of state power; on the contrary, it eventuates in “public opinion,” critical
commentary on authorized decision-making that transpires elsewhere. The public sphere,
in short, is not the state; it is rather the informally mobilized body of nongovernmental dis-
cursive opinion that can serve as a counterweight to the state. Indeed, in the bourgeois con-
ception, it is precisely this extra-governmental character of the public sphere that confers an
aura of independence, autonomy, and legitimacy on the “public opinion” generated in it.
Thus, the bourgeois conception of the public sphere supposes the desirability of a sharp
separation of (associational) civil society and the state. As a result, it promotes what I shall
call weak publics, publics whose deliberative practice consists exclusively in opinion-­formation
and does not also encompass decision-making. Moreover, the bourgeois conception
seems to imply that an expansion of such publics’ discursive authority to encompass
­decision-making as well as opinion-making would threaten the autonomy of public
­opinion—for then the public would effectively become the state, and the possibility of a
critical discursive check on the state would be lost.
That, at least, is suggested by Habermas’s initial formulation of the bourgeois conception.
In fact, the issue becomes more complicated as soon as we consider the emergence of parlia-
mentary sovereignty. With that landmark development in the history of the public sphere,
we encounter a major structural transformation, since sovereign parliament functions as a
public sphere within the state. Moreover, sovereign parliaments are what I shall call strong
publics, publics whose discourse encompasses both opinion-formation and decision-making.
As a locus of public deliberation culminating in legally binding decisions (or laws), parlia-
ment was to be the site for the discursive authorization of the use of state power. With the
achievement of parliamentary sovereignty, therefore, the line separating (associational) civil
society and the state is blurred.
Clearly, the emergence of parliamentary sovereignty and the consequent blurring of the
(associational) civil society/state separation represents a democratic advance over earlier
political arrangements. This is because, as the terms “strong public” and “weak public”
suggest, the “force of public opinion” is strengthened when a body representing it is em-
powered to translate such “opinion” into authoritative decisions. At the same time, there
remain important questions about the relation between parliamentary strong publics and
the weak publics to which they are supposed to be accountable. In general, these develop-
ments raise some interesting and important questions about the relative merits of weak and
strong publics and about the respective roles that institutions of both kinds might play in a
democratic and egalitarian society.
One set of questions concerns the possible proliferation of strong publics in the form of
self-managing institutions. In self-managed work-places, child care centers, or residential
communities, for example, internal institutional public spheres could be arenas both of opin-
ion formation and decision-making. This would be tantamount to constituting sites of direct
38  Nancy Fraser
or quasi-direct democracy wherein all those engaged in a collective undertaking would par-
ticipate in deliberations to determine its design and operation.37 However, this would still
leave open the relationship between such internal public spheres-cum-decision-making-­
bodies and those external publics to which they might also be deemed accountable. The ques-
tion of that relationship becomes important when we consider that people who are affected
by an undertaking in which they do not directly participate as agents may nonetheless have a
stake in its modus operandi; they therefore also have a legitimate claim to a say, through some
other (weaker or stronger) public sphere, in its institutional design and operation.
Here, we are again broaching the issue of accountability. What institutional arrange-
ments best ensure the accountability of democratic decision-making bodies (strong publics)
to their (external, weak or, given the possibility of hybrid cases, weaker) publics?38 Where
in society are direct democracy arrangements called for and where are representative forms
more appropriate? How are the former best articulated with the latter?
More generally, what democratic arrangements best institutionalize coordination among
different institutions, including among their various co-implicated publics? Should we think
of central parliament as a strong super-public with authoritative discursive sovereignty over
basic societal ground rules and coordination arrangements? If so, does that require the as-
sumption of a single weak(er) external super-public (in addition to, not instead of, various
other smaller publics)? In any event, given the inescapable global interdependence manifest
in the international division of labor within a single shared planetary biosphere, does it
make sense to understand the nation state as the appropriate unit of sovereignty?
I do not know the answers to most of these questions and I am unable to explore them
further in this essay. However, the possibility of posing them, even in the absence of full,
persuasive answers, enables us to draw one salient conclusion: any conception of the public
sphere that requires a sharp separation between (associational) civil society and the state will
be unable to imagine the forms of self-management, inter-public coordination, and political
accountability that are essential to a democratic and egalitarian society. The bourgeois con-
ception of the public sphere, therefore, is not adequate for contemporary critical theory. What
is needed, rather, is a post-bourgeois conception that can permit us to envision a greater role
for (at least some) public spheres than mere autonomous opinion formation removed from
authoritative decision-making. A post-bourgeois conception would enable us to think about
strong and weak publics, as well as about various hybrid forms. In addition, it would allow us
to theorize the range of possible relations among such publics, thereby expanding our capacity
to envision democratic possibilities beyond the limits of actually existing democracy.

Conclusion: Rethinking the public sphere

Let me conclude by recapitulating what I believe I have accomplished in this essay. I have
shown that the bourgeois conception of the public sphere, as described by Habermas, is not
adequate for the critique of the limits of actually existing democracy in late capitalist socie-
ties. At one level, my argument undermines the bourgeois conception as a normative ideal.
I have shown, first, that an adequate conception of the public sphere requires not merely
the bracketing, but rather the elimination, of social inequality. Second, I have shown that a
multiplicity of publics is preferable to a single public sphere both in stratified societies and
egalitarian societies. Third, I have shown that a tenable conception of the public sphere
would countenance not the exclusion, but the inclusion, of interests and issues that bour-
geois masculinist ideology labels “private” and treats as inadmissible. Finally, I have shown
that a defensible conception would allow both for strong publics and for weak publics and
that it would theorize the relations among them. In sum, I have argued against four consti-
tutive assumptions of the bourgeois conception of the public sphere; at the same time, I have
identified some corresponding elements of a new, post-bourgeois conception.
 State of the Question  39
At another level, my argument enjoins four corresponding tasks on the critical theory of
actually existing democracy. First, this theory should render visible the ways in which social
inequality taints deliberation within publics in late capitalist societies. Second, it should
show how inequality affects relations among publics in late capitalist societies, how publics
are differentially empowered or segmented, and how some are involuntarily enclaved and
subordinated to others. Next, a critical theory should expose ways in which the labeling
of some issues and interests as “private” limits the range of problems, and of approaches
to problems, that can be widely contested in contemporary societies. Finally, our theory
should show how the overly weak character of some public spheres in late-capitalist socie-
ties denudes “public opinion” of practical force.
In all these ways, the theory should expose the limits of the specific form of democracy
we enjoy in contemporary capitalist societies. Perhaps it can thereby help inspire us to try
to push back those limits, while also cautioning people in other parts of the world against
heeding the call to install them.

Notes
30 In this essay, I do not directly discuss sense (1) state-related. However, in the next section of this essay,
I consider some issues that touch on that sense.
31 This is the equivalent in democratic theory of a point that Paul Feyerabend has argued in the philos-
ophy of science. See Feyerabend, Against Method (New York: Verso, 1988).
32 In contrast, the liberal-individualist model stresses a view of politics as the aggregation of self-­
interested, individual preferences. Deliberation in the strict sense drops out altogether. Instead, po-
litical discourse consists in registering individual preferences and in bargaining, looking for formulas
that satisfy as many private interests as possible. It is assumed that there is no such thing as the com-
mon good over and above the sum of all the various individual goods, and so private interests are the
legitimate stuff of political discourse.
33 Jane Mansbridge, “Feminism and Democracy,” p. 131.
34 This point, incidentally, is in the spirit of a more recent strand of Habermas’s normative thought,
which stresses the procedural, as opposed to the substantive, definition of a democratic public sphere;
here, the public sphere is defined as an arena for a certain type of discursive interaction, not as an
arena for dealing with certain types of topics and problems. There are no restrictions, therefore, on
what may become a topic of deliberation. See Seyla Benhabib’s account of this radical proceduralist
strand of Habermas’s thought and her defense of it as the strand that renders his view of the public
sphere superior to alternative views. Benhabib, “Models of Public Space: Hannah Arendt, the Liberal
Tradition, and Jurgen Habermas in Habermas and the Public Sphere, ed. Craig Calhoun.
35 Usually, but not always. As Josh Cohen has argued, exceptions are the uses of privacy in Roe v. Wade,
the U.S. Supreme Court decision legalizing abortion, and in Justice Blackmun’s dissent in Bowers,
the decision upholding state anti-sodomy laws. These examples show that the privacy rhetoric is
multivalent rather than univocally and necessarily harmful. On the other hand, there is no question
but that the weightier tradition of privacy argument has buttressed inequality by restricting debate.
Moreover, many feminists have argued that even the “good” privacy uses have some serious negative
consequences in the current context and that gender domination is better challenged in this context
on other discursive grounds. For a defense of “privacy” talk, see Joshua Cohen, “Comments on
Nancy Fraser’s ‘Rethinking the Public Sphere.”
36 There are many possibilities here, including such mixed forms as market socialism.
37 I use the expression “quasi-direct democracy” in order to signal the possibility of hybrid forms of
self-management involving the democratic designation of representatives, managers, or planners held
to strict standards of accountability through, for example, recall.
38 By hybrid possibilities, I mean arrangements involving very strict accountability of representative
decision-making bodies to their external publics through veto and recall rights. Such hybrid forms
might in some, though certainly not all, circumstances be desirable.

Figure 1.0.4  Sunday gathering in Praça São Salvador, Laranjeiras, Rio De Janeiro, Brazil. Photo ©
Miodrag Mitrašinović.
1.4 Masters of Chancery: The Gift of
Public Space
Mark Kingwell
Source: Kingwell, M. (2009). “Masters of Chancery: The Gift of Public Space,”
in Kingwell, M. and Turmel, P. (eds.), Rites of Way: The Politics and Poetics of Public
Space, Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 3–22.

Public space is the age’s master signifier. A loose and elastic notion that is variously de-
ployed to defend (or attack) architecture, to decry (or celebrate) civic squares, to promote
(or denounce) graffiti artists, skateboarders, jay-walkers, parkour aficionados, pie-in-the-
face guerrillas, underground capture the flag enthusiasts, flashmob surveillance-busters,
and other grid-resistant everyday anarchists. It is the unit of choice when it comes to un-
derstanding pollution, predicting political futures, thinking about citizenship, lauding cre-
ativity, and worrying about food, water, or the environment. It is either rife with corporate
creep and visual pollution, or made bleak by intrusive surveillance technology, or both.
It is a site of suspicion, stimulation, and transaction all at once. For some, it is the basis of
public discourse itself, the hardware on which we run reason’s software. Simultaneously
everywhere and nowhere, it is political air.
Given the seeming inexhaustibility of the political demand to reclaim public space, what
is stranger is that nobody admits they have no idea what it is. Most of us assume we know,
but more often the assumption is a matter of piety rather than argument and confused piety
at that.1
[…]
First of all, let’s understand public goods as a subcategory of goods in general. In clas-
sical economics, a good is public when access to it is not gated by ownership, so that its
­benefits—what make it a good—are available to everyone, and one person’s use of the good
does not diminish another’s ability to use it. In the jargon, such goods are nonrival and
nonexcludable. Public goods come in different forms: they may concern tangible things
­(grazing land, fish in the sea, the air we breathe) or intangible ones (education, cultural
identity, political participation). Since they are non-rival, public goods are theoretically
unlimited by definition; in actuality, they often become scarce as a result of use.
How? Well, suppose the public good is a natural resource, such as potable water, whose
supply is limited even as its value to everyone is obvious. Access to such goods is supposed
to be of common interest. Unfortunately, when unmanaged, even abundant public goods
are frequently subject to what the economist Garrett Hardin called “the tragedy of the
commons.” It is rational for each one of us to take advantage of a public good, but to the
extent that we all do, and to the extent that we increase our advantage as interest dictates,
the ultimate effect is the destruction of the resource. Hardin’s common grazing land exam-
ple makes the point vivid: each one of us has an interest in feeding as many of our livestock
as we can, but as more and more people do so, the common land is soon brought up to, and
then as quickly past its limit. Result: everybody loses for winning.
The typical responses to this threat are regulation or privatization. Neither is without cost.
Privatization of some goods—air, for example—is economically untenable as well as offen-
sive to the common need. (Though privately supplied water; sold in bottles for profit is now
widely accepted: a red flag.) Regulation, like all law, is difficult to enforce at the margins. It
also risks what economics call the ratchet effect: the more law you have, the more you will
 State of the Question  43
need, and you can’t go back once you’ve begun. (To be sure, depletion of the source is also
subject to ratchet effects: use begets more and greater use, to the point of failure.)
[…]
In the classical ideal theory, positional public goods and public positional goods should
be contradictions in terms: anything zero-sum is not public, and anything public is not sub-
ject to relative gain. In reality, the various hybrids of publicness and exclusive competition
are unfortunately common. And such hybrids are much harder to regulate than ordinary
goods. Environmental quality or beauty in a landscape are other positional public goods:
in theory open to all and non-rival, in practice they are frequently gated by access and
opportunity costs. The given landscape view may be obtained only from a private house,
for example, just as the university place may be preferentially available to the daughter of
a graduate. Theoretical general access is almost always unevenly distributed in fact. Here
we have only to think of the alleged public goods known equality before the law and the
rightful pursuit of happiness. The latter in particular tends to generate the competitive
equivalent of a commons tragedy, a race to the bottom. Ever struggling to establish position
against their neighbours, individuals compete so hard that everyone ends up spending more
than they have. Once more working in ratchet, they progressively price themselves out of
their own happiness market, but on a wide social scale.
Since happiness is not itself subject to political regulation, at least in liberal states, and be-
cause the public good of status lies beyond their ambit, governments tend to manipulate the
competition instead, using regulation, taxation, reparation to express a common interest in
the distribution of public goods. In an ideal world, the income produced by regulation can
end up managing the first kind of public goods, such as scarce land or fresh water, so that
they survive commons tragedies, or maintaining a vigorous public interest in goods that
tend toward competition, such as education, to avoid unequal use or races to the bottom. Of
course, whatever economists may say, we do not live in a world of ideal theory.
Is public space one of these good even so? Framing an answer to that question is impor-
tant if we are to assess the strong claims in favour of protecting such spaces. By the same
token, the question is difficult to answer in part because space falls somewhere between the
tangible and intangible. It can mean material facts such as right-of-way easements on pri-
vate fields, or the sidewalks and parks of a city. These are there for everyone’s use and enjoy-
ment and, absent vandalism or overuse, they should remain non-rival and non-excludable.
But public space can also mean something larger and looser: the right to gather and discuss, to
interact with and debate one’s fellow citizens. Indeed, the first definition is too narrow for most
activists because, even if material facts and built forms are crucial to public space, the merely
interstitial notion of public space is too limited. This larger notion of public space brings it closer
to the very idea of the public sphere, that place where, in the minds of philosophers at least, citizens
hammer out the common interests that underlie—and maybe underwrite—their private differ-
ences and desires. Here we seek to articulate, according to an ideal theory, the common good,
not just a bundle of specific ones. Public space enables a political conversation that favours the
unforced force of the better argument, the basis of just social order.
This notion of a singular public good has both a semantic and a justificatory affinity
with Rousseau’s distinction between the will of all (mere aggregation of interest) and
the general will (what is actually good for everyone); and with the liberal claim that
what interests the public is not identical with the public interest. The trouble here is not
that rational-public-sphere versions of public space are romantic fictions, though they
may well be chat. Ideals and romances can be powerful political levers, after all, just as
reason’s nonnative power can be effective even amid widespread irrationality. No, the
real problem is that these ideals clash at base and in principle with the presumed au-
thority of private appetite operating in economic reason, where goods are understood as
things to be used, enjoyed, or consumed.
44  Mark Kingwell
A different sort of tragedy of the commons obtains when the order of priority runs from
private to public, from individual to social, indeed when the line between them is blurred
so decisively by the larger reign of capital that “public” is reduced to an empty signifier.
Now instead of having a healthy threshold function which, in the ideal democratic case,
insists upon public reason-giving for any decision concerning the line between public and
private, there obtains a negation of the gap between public and private, between image and
reality.3 Instead of the destruction of a public resource from overuse by individuals, we
observe the conceptual obliteration of publicness itself because of presupposition of proper-
tarian individualism. A hopping arcade or street is a public space only in the sense that each
one of us pursues his or her own version of the production of consumption.
Note two crucial ironies of this clash. First, private individuals enter into the so-called
public space as floating bubbles of private space, suspicious of intrusion by strangers and
jealous of their interests. This is the “right to privacy and anonymity” cited by the Toronto
Public Space Committee. It has a specific urban version, often cited as a gift of cities (as
opposed to mall towns or rural locales), stranger-status as a pleasurable respite from being
known or addressed: one thinks here of the glamour and excitement Simmel, for example,
attaches to urban anonymity.4 The right also has a more general political value: think of our
cherished anonymity in the voting booth, contrasted with the demand to state one’s name
in a criminal court. But in this common model, “public” space is not really public at all; it is
merely an open marketplace of potential transactions, monetary or otherwise, between iso-
lated individuals. Contracts are engaged, sometimes generating negative externalities—noise,
crowding, traffic—which are shouldered as opportunity costs for the general activity. Or the
transaction may be a silent one of letting the other be, a positive externality of namelessness
and solitude amid the hustle and bustle or other strangers’ various projects and movements.
[…]
Second, and as a direct result, any porousness of public and private, say from technolog-
ical change, generates a confusion which is invariably resolved in favour of the private, as
in the protest letter from the Public Space Committee which confuses public space with
individual extension of private space. Social networking websites, to take another example,
are sometimes praised as a form of public space, but they are invariably defended by users
as, in the breach, private. Narcissistic, competitive, and isolating, these systems leach inter-
est and energy away from the real world even as, user by user, they work social interaction
free of actual spaces. Fearsome stories of coordinated harassment and suicide are avoidance
rituals that keep the confusion active. The only occasion or response to the issue is a legal
presumption of individual rights; only their violation prompts regulatory interest in the
“electronic commons”—and it is doomed to failure anyway, since transnational networks
supporting such websites are impossible to control with traditional mechanisms. Touted as
freedom, in fact these networks are no more than unsupervised orgies of self-interest and
self-surveillance, vast herds of humans indulging the evolutionary aping behaviour philoso-
pher René Girard labels “mimetic desire”—and which some of us call lemming behaviour.
Even Charles Taylor, who saw that absent any other values, individual freedom invariably
gives way to vanity and relativism, could not have predicted the sad aimless and antidemo-
cratic reality of Facebook, where friendship is a commodity.
Thus the strange case of unpublic public space. Even when nobody in particular owns
a given area of a city, concrete or virtual, it hardly matters. That space is, conceptually
speaking, owned by the dominant rules of the game, which are hinged to the norm of
private interest—notwithstanding that they may destroy privacy at the very same time. As
Kristine Miller notes in her analysis of selected “public” spaces in New York, among them
Federal Plaza and Times Square, “The story of each location reveals that public space is not
a concrete or fixed reality but rather a constantly changing situation open to the forces of
 State of the Question  45
law, corporations, bureaucracy and government. The qualities of public space we consider
essential, including accessibility, public ownership, and ties to democratic life, are at best,
temporary conditions and often completely absent.” 7 Of course they are! Conceiving of
ourselves as individuals, the great legacy of modern political thought reveals itself as a kind
of booby prize, because the presumption of clashing private interests everywhere suffuses
the spaces, all spaces, of life. Typical arguments for safeguarding public space, inevitably
phrased against this background and so in its terms, are always already lost.
[…]
In the unfortunate prevailing view, public space is a public good at worst of the positional
sort, where enjoyment is a competition, and at best of the simple sort, available for every-
one’s selfish use. Nowhere does it manage to evade or transcend the presuppositions of the
property model. In the collective unconscious, public space is leftover space, the margins
that remain between private holdings and commercial premises, the laneways and parks in
which we negotiate nor our collective meanings but our outstanding transactional interests,
the ones not covered by production and consumption. Even nominally public institutions
such as the large cultural temples—museums and art galleries, artifact-holding artifacts of
a democratization of aesthetic experience—do not outpace this unconscious diminution of
meaning. They are beholden to private donors, their architecture decided by opaque com-
petition, their curation a matter of esoteric intimidation.
None of which is to say that there is not much enjoyment to be had in these spaces, even
as there surely was in the saloons and brothels of Melville’s New York. But arguments
that remain engaged with the enjoyment question leave the larger presuppositions unques-
tioned. The suspicion of surveillance, though similarly mired, contains a kernel of aware-
ness. The non-private streets and parks are still under the eye of the state, which monitors
the presence of individuals via its monopoly on “legitimate” use of force. Each one of us is
made forcibly aware of the traces we leave whenever we traverse these spaces, the swirl of
bodily fluids and DNA as well as sheer visibility that is the stock-in-trade of forensic evi-
dence. It is not a coincidence that cultural glamour currently attaches to the details of the
forensic mechanism, technologies of visual spectacle celebrating the technologies of crimi-
nal localization as in the inescapable CSI franchise. David Caruso snatches off his sunglasses
and falls backward out of the frame, intoning, just before the repurposed Who song clangs
in, “And that, my friend, is… murder.” The lesson carried by this televised mythologem is
that you are always present in the trace of potential guilt, the collar you cannot remove. In
Englishsporting slang, a boxer or wrestler is in chancery when he is pummelled repeatedly
while his head is locked in the opponent’s crooked arm.
Such pre-controlled public spaces are precisely what Althusser predicted as the final vic-
tory of ideology under conditions of individual interest, since not even the countermove of
looking back with personal recording technology—what the cyborg innovator Steve Mann
has labelled sousveillance—changes the background order of things.20 Both being seen and
seeing oneself are form of being called to account: the “Hey, you there!” summons of the
stat that Althusser labelled interpellation, carried within each one of us as the expectation
of singularity. Insistence on individual position and individual right—individual sight, in-
dividual claim—masks the fact that, in public and private alike, we are always already in the
grip of the state. Even if we try to turn cameras back to bear on the state’s functionaries—no
bad tactic for specific battles of charge and countercharge—it is the state which controls the
exception as well as the force of executing that exception.21
The deeper reason for this tangling is that contemporary Western societies remain an uneasy
hybrid of associational and authoritarian social forms, their citizens more socially conditioned
than (as they imagine) autonomous. Democracy is a confusion of claims for individual liberty
made among state-controlled structures of order and security which may, at any moment, revert
46  Mark Kingwell
to violence. Calling for sousveillance, though apparently liberating, is a move that merely re-
turns us to the incoherent objections of the Toronto Public Space Committee.
The salvation of this state is, theoretically, that we the people are the sovereign power,
and that its mechanisms are thus always subject to our public decision and consent. And
yet, the structural irony remains. The mechanisms for exerting this mechanism control are
themselves subject both to the state’s regulation and the de facto trivialization and commer-
cialization characteristic of the private-public order. Consider the vast “war chest” needed
to contest an election, or the distorting feedback effects of exit polling and media satura-
tion. The rational public sphere remains a chimera, albeit an essential one for the politico-­
cultural surround to gesture towards, as long as the actual public spaces of our polity are
merely public goods in the use-value sense, and the public interest reducible at any instant
to the sum of what interests the public.
[…]
As with the court, so with a just society. There can be no useful recourse to public space
unless and until we reverse the polarity of our conception of publicness itself. It is some-
times said that the threshold between public and private must be a public decision. True,
but go farther: the public is not a summing of private preferences or interests, nor even a
wide non-rival availability of resources to those preferences or interests. It is, instead, their
precondition: for meaning, for work, for identity itself. We imagine that we enter public
space with our identities intact jealous of interest and suspicious of challenge, looking for
stimulus and response. But in fact the reverse is true. We cannot enter the public because
we have never left the public; it pervades everything, and our identities are never fixed or
prefigured because they are themselves achievements of the public dimension in human life.
This is unsettling, and sometimes unwelcome. The right to anonymity is a fragile nego-
tiation, and sometimes we will be seen and recognized for who we are. Sometimes we may
experience the even less welcome instability of finding ourselves the spectators, the looker, the
judgers. Jame Stewart’s character L.B. “Jeff” Jefferies, in Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window (1954),
does not think he is a voyeur, only a photographer bored with his injury-forced immobility and
loneliness. But his eye draws him into the various worlds of his Manhattan courtyard neigh-
bourhood: romance, despair; salvation, ambition, success, and of course, murder. In an agony of
indecision about what he is seeing and what to do about it, he wonders whether he has any right
to look. His equally unnerved socialite girlfriend, Lisa Fremont (Grace Kelly), cannot engage
the issue. “I’m not much on rear window ethics,” she says. But it is the rear window, Hitch-
cock suggests, that is really the one before us, even if we pretend not to look. The point, which
suffuses the film, is raised explicitly in an earlier exchange, this time semi-mocking. Stella, the
massage therapist helping Jeff with his recovery, opines,

“We’ve become a race of Peeping Toms. What people ought to do is get outside
their own house and look in for a change. Yes sir. How’s that for a bit of homespun
philosophy?”

JEFF: “Reader’s Digest, April 1939.”

STELLA: “Well, I only quote from the best.”

Which seems to dismiss the point as a matter of pop-sociology guff. And yet, it is Jeff’s police
detective friend, Lieutenant Doyle—the state embodied in the form of a person—who makes
the decisive judgment (even if he is wrong about the murder Jeff believes he’s seen). “People
do a lot of things in private they couldn’t possibly explain in public,” Doyle says. Indeed they
do; and sometimes they have to try and explain even if they don’t want to, and can’t. Urban
life is public life, the courtyard is the city, and proximity inevitably creates the complicated
shared gazes of the unprivate private—which is to say, the always already public.22
 State of the Question  47
We cannot escape these facts, and we can only control them to some small degree—a
degree small enough that we ought to pause and wonder why control is even the issue,
why we imagine that our self hood is so stable or so inviolate. In fact, it is neither, and
the city forever reminds us of this. The city evolved even as we did, and it now pushes us
relentlessly toward new self-conceptions, developing notions of personhood beyond the
horizon of stability—which was never stable in any event. Reconsidered under terms such
as these, public space is never interstitial, marginal, or leftover. It is contested, always and
everywhere, because identity is ever a matter of finding out who we are in the crucible of
perspective-reciprocity. Public space is not a public good so much as an existential one—
one without which democratic politics is impossible, since without a viable res publica, there
is no demos, and vice versa. Upon this conceptual reversal, or what we should rather call
the constantly renewed twinning of self and other, of public and private, of gift and thanks,
the feared call of the state transforms into the unsettling but necessary call of the stranger,
my fellow citizen, without whom I am nothing.
Hey, you there…

Notes
1 I plead guilty: my defence of public space in The World We Want (Toronto: Viking, 1999) was optative
and sentimental; I attempt a more rigorous examination in Concrete Reveries: Consciousness and the City
(Toronto: Viking, 2008), especially chap. 8.
3 Guy Debord, perhaps typically for him, calls this negation the final triumph of capitalism. See The
Society of the Spectacle, trans. Donald Nicholson-Smith (New York: Zone Books, 1995). For more on
threshold functions and their importance for the urban life, see Mark Kingwell, Concrete Reveries:
Consciousness and the City (Toronto: Viking, 2008), especially chap. 7 and chap. 8.
4 Georg Simmel, “The Metropolis and Mental Life” (1903), reprinted in The Sociology of Georg Simmel,
ed. Kurt Wolff (Glencoe, IL: Free Press, 1964), 409-24.
7 Kristine F. Miller, Designs on the Public: The Private Lives of New York’s Public Spaces (Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press, 2008).
20 The term introduced and the practice defended in Steve Mann, “Oversight without Undersight Is an
Oversight” (unpublished paper, 2008); it plays on the sur= over/sous = under replacement just as his
title plays on the doubleness of meaning in “oversight”. Mann’s idea of prophylactic self-recording
as a form of freedom jibes with the recent interest such as “looking-back” even as recording police
brutality or deception with cellphone cameras. The minor flurry resulting from these reversals shows
how minimal their effect really is: looking back is still a form of looking, and while important in
calling functionaries to account, it implicitly affirms that the main technology of “veillance” remains
in the hands of the state.
21 “Sovereign is he who decides on the exception,” Carl Schmitt wrote as the first, flatly declarative line
in his Political Theology: Four Chapters on the Concept of Sovereignty, trans. George Schwab (Cambridge,
MA: MIT Press, 1985 and Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005), 5. The original text was
published in 1922, revised in 1934. Schmitt, “the Hobbes of the twentieth cen­tury,” is a political
arch-realist and anti-liberal who argues that all sovereign states define themselves by means of a
friend/enemy distinction, the essence of the political as such. From this vantage, liberal procedural
democracy—where legitimacy flows from the people to the state, via public debate and decision—is
a dangerous myth. A divergent assessment of political exception, infected by 9/11 and the Bush Ad-
ministration’s response, is offered by Giorgio Agamben in State of Exception, trans. Kevin Attell (orig.
Pub. 2003; Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005).
22 One feels the need to curb this insight, but with no clear argument for how. Except to note that the
line connecting Rear Window’s Jefferies to sleazy pornstar voyeur Jake Scully in Brian De Palma’s
Hitchcock homage Body Double (1984), then to serial killer and voyeur Patrick Bateman in Bret Eas-
ton Ellis’s 1991 novel American Psycho (also a 2000 film with Christian Bale)—who claim to have seen
the De Palma movie thirty-seven times—is one that is, at least, unnecessary!

Figure 1.0.5  Local street market, Hong Kong. Photo © Miodrag Mitrašinović.
1.5 The Imperative of Public Space
Neil Smith and Setha Low
Source: Smith, N. and Low, S. (2006). “The Imperative of Public Space,” in Low, S.
and Smith, N. (eds.), The Politics of Public Space. New York: Routledge, 1–16.

This is a pivotal moment for examining the politics of public space. The broad decay of
twentieth-century American liberalism provides the crucial context for the restructuring
of what counts as public space today, and this, in turn, was sparked by a range of social
shifts and transformations: reactions against the liberatory maelstrom of 1960s politics; the
implosion of official communism after 1989; and the consequent neoliberal onslaught after
the 1980s. Together, these developments brought a trenchant reregulation and redaction
of public space. A creeping encroachment in previous years has in the last two decades be-
come an epoch-making shift culminating in multiple closures, erasures, inundations, and
transfigurations of public space at the behest of state and corporate strategies. In part, these
are the result of supposedly antiterrorist policies initiated after the events of September
11, 2001, especially the far-reaching effects of the U.S. Patriot Act and related legislation,
which produced a wholly unprecedented circumscription of popular uses of public space.
From city parks to public streets, cable and network news shows to Internet blog sites, the
clampdown on public space, in the name of enforcing public safety and homeland security,
has been dramatic. Public behavior once seen simply as eccentric, or even protected by First
Amendment rights, is now routinely treated as a potential terrorist threat.
The clampdown on public space, however, is not simply due to a heightened fear of ter-
rorism after 2001, and it has many local- as well as national-scale inspirations. Many public
uses of space are increasingly outlawed and policed in ways unimaginable a few years previ-
ously, but these rights were already under concerted attack well before 2001. The assertion
of neoliberalism since the 1980s harkens back not to the somewhat progressive appeal of
a twentieth-century American social liberalism, but to the more conservative doctrines
of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century liberalism. The latter were certainly progressive
for their time. Adam Smith’s modern political economy and John Locke’s legal enlight-
enment (borne forth by revolutions from France to Haiti to the United States) dispatched
the aristocratic elitism of the feudal era to the dustbin of history, opening up the market
and the voting booth to anyone with the political standing (and socioeconomic collateral)
to participate. While their doctrines liberated the emerging bourgeoisie from monarchi-
cal tutelage, they also enshrined universal private property (for those with the requisite
military or economic wherewithal) at the expense of the long tradition of common land.
The profitable use of space, Locke argued, justifies a certain kind of “natural rights”-based
privatization of the commons against those who would occupy space merely for purposes
of subsistence. The subsequent global land grab by the European bourgeoisie established
private property immediately, undercutting land claims based on the logic of “special in-
terests,” such as dispossessed peasants, workers, and the poor. When property owners and
participants in the market vote in their own interests, according to the new Enlightenment
doctrine, the collective commonweal is ensured: property owners and consumers in the
marketplace are the new citizens. As this principle is rediscovered at the beginning of the
 State of the Question  51
twenty-first century, we should understand that “neoliberalism” is a very precise definition
of conservatism overtaking us. Thomas Hobbes was also a child of the Enlightenment, and
his deification of the state as the necessary prophylactic against social unrest has increasingly
clear echoes today. Certainly by the 1990s, many urban citizens came to feel that daily life
had become a bellum omnium contra omnes—a war of all against all, as Hobbes put it with
such dour finality. With revanchist panache, this notion was implicitly mobilized by New
York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, and public space was made the central target of that battle. The
document that launched New York’s zero-tolerance policy, a policy now globalized in cit-
ies around the world, was subtitled “Reclaiming the Public Spaces of New York” (Giuliani
and Bratton, 1994; Smith, 2001).
[…]
A multiplicity of divergent meanings attaches to “public,” “public space,” and the “public
sphere.” By “public space” we mean the range of social locations offered by the street, the
park, the media, the Internet, the shopping mall, the United Nations, national govern-
ments, and local neighborhoods. “Public space” envelops the palpable tension between
place, experienced at all scales in daily life, and the seeming spacelessness of the Internet,
popular opinion, and global institutions and economy. It is also not a homogenous arena:
The dimensions and extent of its publicness are highly differentiated from instance to in-
stance. Legally as well as culturally, the suburban mall is a very different place from the
national park or the interior of a transcontinental airliner. Clearly then, the term has a broad
definition. Stretching back to Greek antiquity onward, public space is almost by definition
urban space, and in many current treatments of public space the urban remains the priv-
ileged scale of analysis and cities the privileged site. Far more rare are analyses that take
rural space or global space, for example, as public, and while we retain here a focus on the
urban we also broaden our purview. Public space includes very recognizable geographies of
daily movement, which may be local, regional, or global, but they also include electronic
and institutional “spaces” that are every bit as palpable, if experienced quite differently, in
daily life.
Public space is traditionally differentiated from private space in terms of the rules of
access, the source and nature of control over entry to a space, individual and collective be-
havior sanctioned in specific spaces, and rules of use. Whereas private space is demarcated
and protected by state-regulated rules of private property use, public space, while far from
free of regulation, is generally conceived as open to greater or lesser public participation.
“Public space” has very different meanings in different societies, places, and times, and as all
of this suggests, its meaning today is very much bound up with the contrast between public
and private space. It is impossible to conceive of public space today outside the social gener-
alization of private space and its full development as a product of modern capitalist society.
Public space, in fact, only comes into its own with the differentiation of a nominally rep-
resentative state on the one side and civil society and the market on the other. Implicated
in this transition is the simultaneous pupation of the household as a privatized sphere of
social reproduction. Prior to the emergence of the representative bourgeois state, any public
sphere was far more partial, fragmented, and local; and with such a partial public sphere the
publicness of space in the broad geographical sense can be considered formal, at best, rather
than real. Public space comes about as a specific expression of civil society but does not
remain contained within it; rather it emerges, according to Habermas’s (2001: xi) account
of the public sphere, “between civil society and the state.”
This raises a crucial issue, namely the relationship between public space and the public
sphere. In recent years, philosophers and political theorists, and literary and legal schol-
ars have developed considerable literature concerning the public sphere (see, for example,
Fraser, 1990; Cheah and Robbins, 1998; Habermas, 2001). This literature emphasizes the
52  Neil Smith and Setha Low
ideas, media, institutions, and practices that all contribute to the generation of something
that we can call the public, publics or public opinion, and this work is generally nested both
in a larger historical framework concerning the state and the transformation of bourgeois
social relations and in a normative search for political and moral effectiveness. Laments
about the end of the public sphere or at least its political circumscription are met by reasser-
tions of an ideal public sphere at the heart of liberal democracy and by an insistence on the
multiplicity of public spheres. So viewed, the public sphere is rarely if ever spatialized. In
Habermas’s account, for example, the ideal public sphere is deemed universal and thereby,
in any meaningful sense, spatially undifferentiated. If Fraser’s critique opens some room for
spatializing public sphere theory, and her more recent call that we consider the transnation-
ality of the public sphere reiterates the invitation, the opportunity has not been taken up.
At the same time, architects, geographers, planners, anthropologists, urbanists, and others
have delved into discussions of public space. This work is explicitly spatial, seeking to com-
prehend the ways in which social and political, and economic and cultural processes and
relations make specific public places and landscapes, and the ways in which, in turn, these
geographies reaffirm, contradict, or alter their constituent social and political relations. […]
These public space and public sphere literatures can certainly overlap but more often than
not they occupy quite separate domains. The public sphere remains essentially ungrounded
while public space discussions insufficiently connect to meditations on the public sphere
(but see Mitchell, 2003). Yet the experience of public space belies such an abrupt distinc-
tion between public and private spheres and spaces. It is important to recognize that many
constituents of public space are privately owned, managed, and regulated elements of the
public sphere: the preponderance of media outlets, access to the Internet, many rights of
way in the city and countryside alike, travel on railways, planes and buses, public houses,
and so forth. Access to the global, even more than the local, requires private payment for
Internet, television, or physical access. By the same token, there is considerable public (as
in state) regulation over many aspects and uses of private space, from zoning laws to laws
governing sexuality and social reproduction, the policing of national borders, state surveil-
lance of personal activities, the right to congregate in public space, and so forth. The state
is not by any means coterminous with the public sphere, but rather the product of specific
power relations in any society—power relations that can exclude as many parts of the public
as they include—yet many of the state’s actions do indeed mold and frame what specific
societies take to be the public.
It would be regrettable and self-defeating if the distinction between these literatures
was summarily reduced to one of materialist versus idealist approaches; both literatures are
far too internally diverse to be characterized usefully in this way. Yet they have not really
come together, however complementary they appear: Where the weakness of the public
space literature perhaps lies in the practical means of translation from theories of political
and cultural economy to the materiality of public space, the public sphere literature offers
an historically embedded discussion of the continual making and remaking of the public
vis-à-vis the state and related institutions, and ideologies and modes of communication and
power. By corollary, the weakness of the public sphere literature may lie in the distance that
it maintains from the places and spaces of publicness, whereas it is precisely the insight of the
public space literature that produced public spaces naturalize the very assumptions interro-
gated by public sphere theorists and provide an extraordinary palimpsest for detailed scru-
tiny. If the public sphere can be described as “the sphere of private people coming together
as a public” (Habermas, 2001: 27), its emergence clearly has a history, as we have seen,
but it has an equally clear geography. Once recognized, that spatiality of the public sphere
potentially transforms our understanding of the politics of the public. An understanding of
public space is an imperative for understanding the public sphere.
 State of the Question  53
It may be no accident that public sphere and public space literatures have coalesced somewhat
in isolation over the last few decades. The twentieth century witnessed what we might call a
“lost geography” (Smith, 2003: 1–28). In the nineteenth century and certainly up until World
War I, spatiality and geography were well understood as a crucial language of political power,
but for various reasons having to do both with new modes of economic expansion and a new
politics of global power, the public sense of the connection between geography and power
eroded quickly—mid-century geopolitics, the revival of the linkage in World War II, and the
banal geographical binaries of the Cold War notwithstanding. By the 1960s, the language of
space was moribund and even as a curious Michel Foucault (1980: 77) famously mused about the
causes of this (finding improbable answers in the influence of philosophy) a broad-based theo-
retical reintroduction of a spatial grammar was already afoot in social and cultural theory. Yet
such compensation for a lost geography—the new spatial vocabulary of social theory—has had
a very limited effect on discussions of the public sphere, and this is especially surprising given
the centrality of Kant for recent retheorizations of the public sphere, especially in the literature
considering a new cosmopolitanism which in turn tempts the possibility that universal liberal
(or postliberal) norms may be assumed to undergird the public sphere. It was Kant after all who
argued that time and space provided the two a prioris of conceptual knowledge, and that history
and geography therefore rightly shared the expanse of descriptive and classificatory knowledge
(Adickes, 1924–1925). However contestable that conclusion, its importance to Kant remains
strangely unexamined in latter-day philosophy—Kant’s forty years of lectures on physical ge-
ography at Konigsberg have never been published in English and are rarely acknowledged in
the original—and this translates into a public sphere literature with little interest in or seeming
rationale for investigating the spatiality of the public sphere.
In other words, the lost geography of the public sphere comes with a concurrent loss of poli-
tics, however partial. Abstracting from the location of real events and social relations removes an
entire dimension of political relationality. It is an underlying conviction of this volume that the
respatialization of our sense of the public brings the opportunity of a more complete repolitici-
zation of the public than would otherwise be available. Investigating the means of making and
remaking public space provides a unique window on the politics of the public sphere, suggesting
an even more powerful imperative to the focus on public space.
[…]
Public space and the public sphere represent conjoined arenas of social and political con-
test and struggle. […] [T]he privatization of public space and the curtailment of the public
sphere are certainly not a fait accompli. Indeed the dilemma of public space is surely trivi-
alized by collapsing our contemporary diagnosis into a lament about private versus public.
Insofar as the so-called public sector, represented by the state, often acts as the cutting edge
of efforts to deny public access to places, media (themselves a part of the state according to
classical definition), and other institutions, the contest to render spaces truly public is not
always simply a contest against private interests. Union Square Park in New York City,
following September 11, 2001, provides an exemplary case: There a spontaneous demon-
stration of public activism, commemoration, grief, and organization erupted, but was even-
tually circumscribed by the reasserted police power of the local state.
[…]
Early on, Habermas glimpsed that the blurring of boundaries between society and the
state, which began to become apparent in the nineteenth century and was consummated
in the twentieth, led to the end of a certain kind of liberal public sphere, first announced
in the eighteenth century. He noted the progressive exclusion of the public from the re-
sulting competition between and among private and governmental interests in a putatively
postliberal public sphere. Today, however, a further element enters the equation. Since the
1970s, the social restructuring of economies in Europe, Asia, and the Americas has brought
54  Neil Smith and Setha Low
about a capitalization of social life that would have been inconceivable several decades ear-
lier, from the biotechnological privatization of nature spanning from the entire Amazon to
the human body, to the corporatization of the media and the financialization of everyday
life (Frank, 2000; Martin, 2002), we now live in an era appropriately described, in starkly
political economic terms, as neoliberal. Suddenly nothing is immune from appropriation
as an accumulation strategy. This shift breaks the connection to twentieth-century Ameri-
can liberalism, which was in any case an extraordinary national anomaly in a wider global
perspective, and reaches back to resuscitate the eighteenth-century liberalism, which, from
the vantage point of the twentieth or twenty-first century, now looks jarringly conservative
(Smith, 2005). Not only does society merge with the state, as Habermas intimated, but it
increasingly and forcefully merges with the sphere of private capitalist economic calculation
in a way that the theories of Adam Smith, a genuine progressive in his time, could hardly
anticipate. The difference between now and the eighteenth century is that the infusion of
society with the state and the economy is more complete than could have been dreamt of
in that period, and the results are far from progressive.
What does this mean for the politics of public space? The outlook is not immediately
optimistic. There is less and less room for the kind of ideal public sphere that Habermas
envisages. The advent of neoliberalism clearly threatens a return to the exclusionary lib-
eralism of its eighteenth-century template, but with the technology of the twenty-first
century. It masquerades under the same pretension of universal democratic rights fused
with the particular interests of an assertive and nationally rooted yet fundamentally trans-
national capitalist class. The heightened policing of public space at all scales is an integral
result of the new political deep freeze. Today’s neoliberalism may not divide the populace
as bluntly as in the days of high liberal principle when slavery was legal, African Americans
were counted as three-fifths of a person, and neither women nor the propertyless possessed
a vote, but it makes its own discriminations.
[…] [T]he neoliberal regime that has taken hold of political and cultural power around
the world involves the sharpening of social divisions, based especially on class, race/ethnic,
national, and gender differences, but stretching much further into the fabric of social differ-
ence. The control of public space is a central strategy of that neoliberalism.
[…]
The neoliberalism of public space is neither indomitable nor inevitable, and however much
public space is now under a clampdown, it is not closed. New events, new technologies, new
ways of responding to the neoliberalization of public space, new forms of social organization—
transnational labor organizing, indigenous rights and environmental justice movements, in ad-
dition to those cited above—are always creating alternative new spaces of and for public political
expression. In addition to diagnosing the multifaceted assaults on the public sphere, the central
message of the essays in this volume is that whatever the deadening weight of heightened repres-
sion and control over public space, spontaneous and organized political response always carries
within it the capability of remaking and retaking public space and the public sphere.

References
Adickes, Erich. 1924–1925. Kant als Naturforscher. 2 vols. Berlin: W. de Gruyter.
Cheah, Pheng and Bruce Robbins. 1998. Cosmopolitics. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Foucault, Michel. 1980. Knowledge/Power. New York: Pantheon Books, 1980.
Frank, Thomas. 2000. One Market Under God: Extreme Capitalism, Market Populism, and the End of Economic
Democracy. New York: Random House.
Fraser, Nancy. 1990. “Rethinking the Public Sphere: A Contribution to Actually Existing Democracy.”
Social Text 25/26, 56–79.
 State of the Question  55
Giuliani, R. W. and W.J. Bratton. 1994. Police Strategy No. 5: Reclaiming the Public Spaces of New York. New
York: Office of the Mayor.
Habermas, Jurgen, 2001. The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bour-
geois Society. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Martin, Randy. 2002. The Financialization of Daily Life. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.
Mitchell, Don. 2003. The Right to the City. New York: Guilford.
Smith, Neil. 2001. “Global Social Cleansing: Postliberal Revanchism and the Export of Zero Tolerance.”
Social Justice 28, no. 3, 68–74.
Smith, Neil. 2003. American Empire: Roosevelt’s Geographer and the Prelude to Globalization. Berkeley, CA:
University of California Press.
Smith, Neil. 2005. The Endgame of Globalization. New York: Routledge.
2

Diversity and Inclusion in

Public Space
Diversity and Inclusion in
Public Space

Conventional understanding of public space often assumes a type of open space freely ac-
cessible to the general public, guaranteed by public law (in Brazil and Colombia by the
Constitution), provided by the government, and managed by local authorities and public
institutions as a public amenity. Such spaces have been historically based on the social con-
sensus around shared values, cultural and social meanings and norms, often-fabricated his-
torical narratives, and sometimes faith. Critical theory has challenged the bourgeois notion
of social consensus as the basis for defining the concept of singular ‘public,’ arguing that
any effort to create a truly democratic public sphere has to be based in the process of social
differentiation through which previously marginalized, subaltern, multiple publics ought
to take part in the production of public sphere and public space alike. Researchers across
disciplines have documented a myriad of ways in which subaltern publics (see Fraser, 1990
in Section 1) have created ‘alternative’ spaces of social realization in public: for example,
queer men and women have traditionally developed invisible networks, codes of behavior,
and coded languages aimed at creating ephemeral spaces of collectivization in public and
open spaces. Sometimes, such collective efforts to create alternative spaces were institu-
tionalized through organizing, appropriation, and political action. A case in point is Castro
neighborhood in San Francisco (Castells, 1985), an urban district enabling the community
to spatialize and materialize its claims toward visibility, voice, economic stability, and po-
litical power.
Street vendors have also found ways of bypassing policies and regulations around selling
in public space by creating their own infrastructures of support and solidarity (see Crawford,
2008 in Section 1). More recently, a significant body of literature has emerged addressing
the safety and well-being of women and children in public spaces around the world: some
of the most cited sources in that regard are included as chapters in this Section; others are
listed as references and in the bibliography. An important concern has also been the role of
designing and planning in promoting diversity and inclusion in public space. For example,
Universal Design is in many societies reduced to a technical expertise, a normative practice
centered on universalized notions of access. Issues of capability, capacity, and competency
are often not taken into account. In 2011, World Health Organization amended definition
of disability—as a universal human condition rather than lack of capability for some—and
complexified ways in which professional designers, planners, and policymakers have at-
tempted to rethink principles of universal design.
This Section explores tactical conceptions of public spaces as sites of encounter, and its place
in the larger psycho-geography of urban spaces, where the traditionally marginalized social
groups—multiple counterpublics—enact their right to public space and the city. The way we

Figure 2.0  San Roque open air market in Quito, Ecuador. Photo © Miodrag Mitrašinović.
60  Diversity and Inclusion
here frame both inclusion and diversity is within the concept of social justice. In that sense, they
are both fundamental properties of social systems and not externalities which can be resolved
by policy, planning, or design “solutions” alone (see also Section 3). Elsewhere in the Reader, we
discuss issues of accessibility—another important dimension of inclusion—in relation to privat-
ization, climate change, as well as cultural and social norms and expectations.
In the now canonical “Just Walk On By,” Brent Staples narrates his experiences of walking
through the city, first as a 22 years old, African-American graduate student newly arrived at
the University of Chicago; and then in his early 30s on the streets of New York City. Staples
describes how he unknowingly embodied and represented the culture of fear that pervades
public spaces across the United States, and his ability as an African-American man to alter public
space in “ugly ways.” Being perceived as dangerous is not only an annoyance, embarrassment,
and serious hazard, but also a form of tyranny that the fabricated culture of fear enacts over
African-American men; such a tyranny plays itself out most clearly in public spaces. In order
to avoid potential danger and downplay his ability to “alter public space,” Staples made himself
“less threatening” by moving through the city with alertness, carefully choreographing his ways
about with calculated distances, properly calibrated body language and gaze, dress code, and
by assertively whistling popular melodies of classical European composers. Staples’ invaluable
first-hand account provides a critical insight into how one of the conventionally appreciated
dimensions of public space—anonymity, the desire to take risks and encounter individuals who
are different and previously unknown—which he embraced both in Chicago and in NYC, in
fact created a critical gap between who he is and who he appears to be in public where skin color
traditionally symbolizes a subaltern status (see also Section 1).
The encounters Staples documents are acts of racism, Rudick argues, and graphically
illustrate the role that racism plays in the formation of subjective identities in public space.
Such encounters can be explicit and hostile, just as they can take much more subtle, ‘every-
day’ forms. In order to critically scrutinize them, one needs to look across established cat-
egories and study the “interlocking matrix of power relations” where gendered, racialized,
and class identities function to constrain presence in the public space and participation in
the public sphere. Rudick argues that processes of gendering and racializing of public space
tend to exclude women, people of color, immigrants, and other socially and economically
marginalized groups from the public realm. Public spaces, she asserts, ought to act as a me-
dium through which new identities are created and existing ones actively contested. Any
public space, Rudick suggests, can simultaneously act as the medium on local and global
scales: determining the scale(s) of operation is fundamentally a political act.
Kirsten Day extends this discussion by reviewing feminist approaches to urban design
and public space. Feminist scholars have recognized that gender-specific analysis of the
experience of white, middle-class women does not explain the experiences of all women
in public space. Besides, focusing on crime and safety also displaces the fact that women
have historically employed public space as a medium for struggle against oppression. Day
suggests that designers and planners should move beyond “universal design” criteria as their
normative goal and think about networks of public spaces that can accommodate needs and
aspirations characteristic of specific social groups. In that respect, physical features of such
public networks and individual spaces become crucial to enabling women to become lead-
ers in their cities and communities. Even though women’s fear of/in public space will not
be removed by better lighting design, landscape of urban furniture alone, feminist designers
and planners have offered successful examples for how increasing women’s safety leads to a
fundamental rethinking of women’s roles and place in the city.
In the first two decades of the twenty-first century, a nearly global concern for the
safety of women, LGBTQ communities, and minorities in public space has given birth to
new mindsets and attitudes, as well as to a host of regulations, policies, laws, and design
and planning practices aimed at creating more inclusive and safer public spaces around the
 Diversity and Inclusion  61
world. Going beyond gender-specific approaches to public spaces design, and beyond gen-
der mainstreaming, Lacey, Miller, Reeves, and Tankel explore the concept and practice of
intersectionality. Intersectionality is not a purely analytical tool nor a method of analysis,
but a syncretic approach to reframing and reconceptualizing ways in which we think about
inclusion and diversity in public space, and of safer cities. With origins in activism, grass-
roots, and social-justice movements, intersectionality simultaneously considers complex
socio-spatial, political, material-physical, and economic dimensions of individuals’ lives,
situating them as aspects of lived experience. It offers a method for reframing questions, and
not only providing answers and offering solutions. It considers the fact that each individual
and every social group exist at the intersections of power interlocking systems and intersub-
jectivity (see also Kohn, 2008 in Section 3). In the context of public space, it suggests that
safer, more inclusive, and diverse public spaces for women would be equally inclusive for all
publics, although in differentiated ways.
Zukin, Kasinitz, and Chen take on the local shopping street, a feature of all the cities across
the world, a cultural institution that has maintained relevance in the face of a wholesale com-
modification of urban space in the last 40 years, a process which has created mega shopping
malls, consumer paradises, and other privately owned public spaces. The significance of the
local shopping street has been in sustaining the diversity of our cities and building a vibrant
and dynamic ecosystem of social sustainability and cultural exchange. What was once per-
ceived as a place of exchange for locals who may have known each other’s families for gen-
erations, today has given way to what the authors call “super diversity.” The “super-diverse”
local shopping street is closely connected to the emerging globalized habitus composed of a
wide variety of global migrants, and often immigrants, a process that ensures that no ethnic
group holds a clear majority in any transactional geography (see also Van Heeswijk, 2016 in
Section 5). While the complex visual and cultural diversity implies more inclusive cities and
public spaces, usually the contrary is the case. Namely, due to economic and legal standing
of many of the shopkeepers and shoppers along “super-diverse” local shopping streets, much
of the land and real estate ownership has been consolidated. Banks and international invest-
ment firms now own entire streets and urban blocks, thus consolidating control over values
and rents. When they exercise such control to clear the street from long-term residents and
introduce new tenants, long-term shopkeepers and residents experience a deep sense of loss.
As authors argue, the sense of “moral ownership” of the street goes beyond legal property
rights and real estate values and is based on a shared cultural space built by economic, social,
and cultural exchange that took place on the local street.
However, more often than not, such “moral ownership” could also indicate a lack of de-
sire for inclusion, and a type of homogenous cultural identity and aesthetics that ‘celebrates’
difference at the price of diversity. As much as today’s headlines are filled with evidence of
the global struggle for social inclusion and political diversification, and much of that con-
testation takes place on local streets and in traditional public spaces, the underlying process
of economic consolidation continues uninterrupted, and diverse local shopping streets are
being replaced with sanitized shopping paradises.

Reference
Castells, M. (1985). The City and the Grassroots: A Cross-cultural Theory of Urban Social Movements. Los
­A ngeles: University of California Press.

Figure 2.0.1  Diversity Plaza, Queens, New York City. Photo © Miodrag Mitrašinović.
2.1 From Gender Mainstreaming to
Intersectionality: Advances in
Achieving Inclusive and Safe Cities
Anita Lacey, Rebecca Miller, Dory Reeves
and Yardena Tankel
Source: Lacey, A. et al. (2013). “From Gender Mainstreaming to Intersectionality,”
in Whitzman, C. et al. (eds.), Building Inclusive Cities: Women’s Safety and The Right to
The City. New York: Routledge, 143–161.

Introduction
Multiple approaches to engendering safer and more inclusive urban spaces for women now
exist, with city governments, planners and urban citizens across the world advocating for and
adopting initiatives to create new urban paradigms where urban spaces are inclusive of the
diverse needs and aspirations of all citizens. The importance of gender-specific approaches to
urban spaces has evolved from a dominant and problematic approach to urban safety that has
historically left women’s needs off local and international agendas. Spatial and urban planning,
as one particular approach to safe cities, has often disadvantaged women because of a failure to
recognize that women and men have different needs and experiences in cities, as well as different
concerns about how these needs are met. Liberal approaches to women in cities have seen the
development, in the last twenty years, of numerous progressive and varying approaches to the
public-policy fields of urban transport and planning, for example. Gender mainstreaming is one
such approach developed to address women’s concerns, although it engenders significant criti-
cisms that question the extent to which using gender as a single axis of oppression can be truly
transformative of women’s everyday and diverse experiences of exclusion.
This chapter addresses the contributions and shortcomings of liberal mainstreaming ap-
proaches explores intersectionality as a potential framework with which to understand and
develop initiatives and policies that are shaped by, and work with, multiple and inter-
secting social, physical, political and economic aspects of individuals’ lives, not limited to
gender. The use of intersectional approaches in programmes for safe and inclusive cities
would facilitate understanding of why cities exclude women. Exploring intersectionality as
a framework for safe and inclusive cities for women, as this chapter seeks to do, provides for
complex and nuanced understandings of women’s diverse needs, recognizing that women
experience city life in multiple capacities, not solely contra to men.
Intersectionality is one methodological and theoretical approach that addresses the short-
falls of gender mainstreaming by explicitly addressing the many different needs of women
(and men) […] Intersectionality is a means of seeing the ways in which many different
aspects of what determines our lived experiences—including gender, race, class, age and
ability—need to be taken into account in analysis, planning and programming. This chap-
ter does not seek to offer prescriptive approaches of how intersectionality can be enacted,
though it does promote that, in order for an intersectionality framework to be transform-
ative and achieve social justice-oriented spaces of inclusion (Lacey, 2005), it needs to be
participatory of stakeholders and of the diverse populations in cities. Rather than a com-
pletely new approach to women’s rights, this chapter explores intersectionality as a flexible
framework that can inform safe-city discourse, policy and practice.
[…]
 Diversity and Inclusion  65
Intersectionality as a more inclusive approach
Intersectionality offers a framework for considering gender as part of a complex and dy-
namic series of social divisions, identities and structures that shape individuals’ singular and
collective experiences (Lacey, 2012). It is a framework that offers a means of transcending
the potential unidimensionality of much gender analysis. Although gender mainstreaming
takes a singular and binary unit of analysis that is gender, intersectionality deliberately and
explicitly works with complex, multilayered and intersecting points of analysis. Intersec-
tionality allows for recognition of simultaneous difference, identity, power, disadvantage
and privilege, not only individually, but also for relative, collective social experiences and
interactions. Some of these points of difference, identity, power, disadvantage and privilege
focus on ethnicity, race, class, gender, sexuality, faith and religion, age and ability. Further-
more, gender itself is not seen in an intersectionality framework as a binary category, rather
it is seen as more fluid and open, a feature that is particularly pertinent if we are to work
with gender as socially constituted (Lacey, 2012).
[…]
In an attempt to locate and work with simplicity, it would be easy to see intersectionality
as a framework that invokes a simple addition of aspects of identity, be they class, gender,
sexuality, race, ethnicity or age. The danger is that such an approach leads to the reifying of
the limited binary-bound understandings of these categories of analysis. Instead, intersec-
tionality can offer a means of situating these points of analysis as lived experiences (Lacey,
2012). For example, rather than gathering disaggregated data according to various social,
legal and identity categories of women, Anthias and Yuval­-Davis (1983, 1992), Brah (1996),
Maynard (1994) and Yuval-Davis (2006) call for recognition of intersecting and interlock-
ing social divisions. These social divisions are ‘about macro axes of social power’ and have
‘organizational, intersubjective, experiential and representational forms’ (Yuval-Davis,
2006: 198). Intersectionality allows for the recognition and working through of cumulative
and different intersubjective experiences of power (Lacey, 2016). It is a clear break from
generalizations and assumptions about, for example, gendered impacts.
Intersectionality as a methodological and/or analytical framework has a rich genealogy,
combining activist and academic roots, as well as feminist, anti-racist and social-justice
derivations (Combahee River Collective, 1977; Davis, 1981; Lorde, 1984; Crenshaw, 1989;
Collins, 1990). A common momentum, regardless of emphasis or point of origin, is a desire
to work with diversity and difference.
[…]
Intersectionality is a conceptual rather than an assessment tool; however, it can help us
move beyond the problems created by looking at identities from a binary perspective. As
a term, it was introduced by Kimberlé Crenshaw in 1989 in a piece published by the Uni-
versity of Chicago Legal Forum, in which Crenshaw contrasts the dominant, single-axis
analysis of black women’s experiences, which she argues is dominant in anti-discrimination
law and anti-­racist and feminist scholarship and politics, with the multidimensionality of
their experiences (Crenshaw, 1989). Crenshaw calls for theories and strategies that incorpo-
rate both black communities’ experiences and, simultaneously, women’s experiences, while
explicitly working with sexism and patriarchy, racism and privilege.
The calls made by Crenshaw in the late 1980s for an embracing of the intersection (1989),
echoing those made perhaps less explicitly by feminists and anti-racists for many years prior
to that, were taken up by fellow academics, activists and policymakers with considerable zeal.
Nira Yuval-Davis (2006) succinctly traces the employment of intersectional frameworks
and methodologies, both prior to and after Crenshaw’s coining of the term, and in doing so
is able to offer insights into the potential for intersectionality to simply further exacerbate
analysis that does not take account of complexity. It would be easy to look to the work of
Crenshaw, for example, and deduce that there are only two—albeit important—categories
66  Anita Lacey et al.
of analysis: gender and race. Concurrent and preceding intersectional critiques did, how-
ever, take into account multiplicities and did so in an explicit attempt to develop theories
and methods that challenged dominant and narrow understandings of feminism, and what
some referred to as imperial feminism (Anthias and Yuval-Davis, 1992, p. 101).
A black, lesbian, feminist collective, the Combahee River Collective, in Boston, US,
released a ground-breaking statement in 1977 that grew from this group’s recognition that
what they were struggling against was ‘racial, sexual, heterosexual and class oppression’, and
the group committed itself to the ‘development of integrated analysis and practice based
upon the fact that the major systems of oppression are interlocking’ (Combahee River
Collective, 1977). The collective’s statement, influenced by other black feminists calling for
recognition of multiple structures of oppression and privilege, was a radical charge at the
time against a singular focus on race, sexuality or gender, and the collective argued that
white feminists were fixated with gender alone. It was also one of the first explicit develop-
ments of analysis that facilitated recognition of simultaneous and multidimensional oppres-
sions (Combahee River Collective, 1977; Davis, 1998). It is important, then, to recognize
applications of an intersectional approach, even when the moniker is not used.

‘Doing’ intersectionality: Intersectionality and safe cities

‘Doing’ intersectionality comes with particular theoretical and methodological chal-
lenges and commitments. In attempting to locate and analyse particularities, rather than
so-called ‘average’ experiences that replicate dominant positioning, an intersectional
method works with as many facets of social division as the subject divulges. Assumed
categories of analysis may not in fact speak to people’s experiences, and dialogical
processes are key. An example comes from a workshop on gender and cities in Port
Moresby, Papua New Guinea, where a Canadian tool (Simpson, 2009) was used to ex-
plain intersectionality to the group of civil-society members, government workers and
academics working on women’s safety in the city. The tool, developed in a ­Canadian con-
text, refers to race rather than ethnicity, and it quickly became apparent that participants
in Port Moresby, when asked to think about their unique life experiences and circum-
stances, did not see race as immediately applicable to their lives, whereas ­ethnicity—
missing from the intersectionality wheel diagram—was central (Lacey et  al., 2011).
This discursive exercise revealed further key insights into the benefits of an intersec-
tionality framework and methodology, as it confirmed the importance of recognizing
and working with different social divisions intermeshing in unique ways for individ-
uals, in particular locations and contexts, depending on specific social, political and
economic processes, and along with individuals’ specific identities and political values
(Yuval-Davis, 2006, p. 200). Intersectionality thus allows for analysis of particularities,
even within a macro framework, in this case a diverse and fluid city.
An intersectionality approach, in contrast to gender mainstreaming, allows for con-
text-specific programmes and policies to be developed that reflect the nature and multi-
ple identities of women within particular urban spaces and at particular times. There has
been, as Valentine (2007) concedes, a deficit within feminist geography of intersectionality;
however, as Sandberg and Tollefsen (2010) demonstrate in the Swedish context, such an
approach to complex spatial relations can deepen conversations and research on issues such
as fear of violence in public space.
Rather than assuming that women are marginalized solely because of gender inequality
and in relation to inequality with men, intersectionality broadens the lens to include how
differences among women influence how women experience cities in particular ways and
engage in public and participatory domains (Tankel, 2011), such as in the participatory
 Diversity and Inclusion  67
examples previously discussed. In opposition to liberal mainstreaming approaches to gen-
der, Wekerle (2000) suggested that adopting a notion of pluralistic citizenship would allow
for an analysis of how women participate or are excluded in various areas of community
life. This analysis is informed by the diverse identities women embody in the city. Inter-
sectionality challenges mainstreamed and essentialized beliefs that cities are the same for
men and women, and that women experience cities in a singular capacity. This in no way
diminishes the way in which women are often marginalized; it recognizes the differences
among women and the multiple identities that shape their experiences of city life. What
some women identify as safe or unsafe, for example, will vary depending on their differ-
ent experiences in the city and their degrees of mobility and autonomy relating to their
socio-economic standing, age, physical ability, race or sexuality (Tankel, 2011).
[…]
As suggested by Bacchi and Eveline (2009), both mainstreaming and diversity are con-
tested concepts; however, through use of a diversity approach, contestation of identity
categories and such complexities are in fact encouraged and embraced. Intersectionality
encourages and demands us to develop such a diversity approach, utilizing complex and
flexible context-specific frameworks, which allow us to ask appropriate questions about
women’s diverse experiences. Such an approach has long framed the work of women’s and
feminist organizations in cities throughout the world, through an unpacking of what safety
for women in that particular city means, and how women’s multiple positionings influence
their relation to the city socially and spatially, and the extent to which they participate in
decision-making and activism (Tankel, 2011).
Deep-rooted legacies of unequal power relations in cities contribute to determining
whether people have the capacity and acknowledged agency to contribute in participatory
forums, such as participatory budgeting meetings. By making such spaces gender inclusive,
we cannot assume that other domains of power and inequality will not be silenced; it is
problematic to imagine that the inclusion of women will provide a diverse range of women
an avenue to participate in such decision-making processes. An intersectional approach
would open space to question, for example, who is sitting at the table and who is excluded?
Which women are there? And which women aren’t? Beyond gender inclusivity, which
women inform the policies and which women are these policies shaped for? This process of
questioning would engage policymakers and practitioners to ask what spaces these methods
of enquiry open for underrepresented people.
Bacchi and Eveline suggest that ‘the decision to stop using the language of gender main-
streaming is a political one’ (2009, p. 6). This decision can break through static confines and pro-
vide space and dialogue ‘determined by common political emancipatory goals’ (Yuval-­Davis,
2006, p. 206). By embracing the complexity and shifting nature of identity, we can stimulate
opportunities for great social change (McCall, 2005, p. 1777). Such an approach can further-
more encourage recognition of the agency individuals exercise in different spaces and the ways
in which women are also empowered and may exercise resistance in multiple communities
where they are positioned and with which they identify. Just as forms of violence and exclu-
sion intersect on continuums, so do multiple axes of identity that render women vulnerable to
diverse exclusionary practices, as well as providing the means to contest them (Tankel, 2011).
[…]
As a conceptual tool, intersectionality offers an approach that addresses the weaknesses
of gender mainstreaming; it seeks explicitly to engage in complex understandings, rather
than binary categories, of social, political and economic lives and experiences and responds
to this complexity. Coming from a grassroots social-justice tradition, the more inclusive
approach of intersectionality has the potential to become accepted by all stakeholders to
plan for and generate safe and inclusive public spaces and cities.
68  Anita Lacey et al.
References
Anthias, F. and Yuval-Davis, N. (1983). “Contextualizing Feminism: Gender, Ethnic and Class Divi-
sions.” Feminist Review, 15, 62–75.
Anthias, F. and Yuval-Davis, N. (1992). Racialized Boundaries: Race, Nation, Gender, Colour and Class and
the Anti-Racist Struggle. London: Routledge.
Bacchi, C. and Eveline, J. (2009). “Gender Mainstreaming or Diversity Mainstreaming? The Politics of
‘Doing’.” Nordic Journal of Feminist and Gender Research, 17(1), Pp. 2–17.
Brah, A. (1996). Cartographies of Diaspora. London: Routledge.
Collins, P.H. (1990). Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment. New
York: Routledge, Chapman and Hall.
Combahee River Collective (1977). The Combahee River Collective Statement. Retrieved 30 March 2011
from: http://historyisaweapon.com/defconl/combrivercoll.html.
Crenshaw, K. (1989). “Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique
of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory and Antiracist Politics.” University of Chicago Legal
Forum, 138–67.
Davis, A.Y. (1981). Women, Race and Class. New York: Random House.
Davis, A.Y. (1998). “Reflections on Race, Class and Gender in the USA.” In: A.Y. Davis and J. James (eds),
The Angela Y Davis Reader (307–28). Malden, MA: Blackwell.
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ance.” Canadian Review of Sociology and Anthropology, 42(4), 403–20.
Lacey, A. (2012, under review). “[2015] Biopolitical Governmentalities of Women’s Lives: Security and
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2011. Retrieved 6 May 2011 from: www.arts.auckland.ac.nz/webdav/site/arts/shared/Departments/
development-­studies/documents/.
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McCall, L. (2005). “The Complexity of Intersectionality.” Signs, 30(3), 1771–801.
Maynard, M. (1994). “‘Race’, Gender and the Concept of ‘Difference’ in Feminist Thought.” In: H.
­A fshar and M. Maynard (eds), The Dynamics of ‘Race’ and Gender. London: Taylor and Francis.
Sandberg, L. and Tollefsen, A. (2010). “Talking About Fear of Violence in Public Space: Female and Male
Narratives About Threatening Situations in Umea, Sweden.” Social and Cultural Geography, 11(1), l-15.
Simpson, J. (2009). Everyone Belongs: A Toolkit for Applying Intersectionality. Ottawa, ON: CRIAW/ICREF.
Retrieved 12 October 2010 from: www.oaith.ca/assets/files/Publications/Intersectionality/Every-
oneBelongs.pdf.
Tankel, Y. (2011). “Reframing ‘Safe Cities for Women’: Feminist Articulations in Recife.” Development,
54(3), 352–7.
Valentine, G. (2007). “Theorizing and Researching Intersectionality: A Challenge for Feminist Geogra-
phy.” Professional Geographer, 59(1), 10–21.
Wekerle, G.R. (2000). “Women’s Right to the City: Gendered Spaces of a Pluralistic Citizenship.” In:
E.F. Iisn (ed.), Citizenship and the Global City (203–17). London and New York: Routledge.
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13(3), 193–209.
Figure 2.0.2  Superkilen Diversity Park, Copenhagen, Denmark, 2012. Photo © Jilly Traganou. Courtesy
of Jilly Traganou.
2.2 Feminist Approaches to Urban Design
Kristen Day

Source: Day, K. (2011). “Feminist Approaches to Urban Design,” in Banerjee, T.

and Loukaitou-Sideris, A. (eds.), Companion to Urban Design. New York: Routledge,
150–161.

While no single definition of “feminism” prevails, feminist perspectives share a belief that
justice requires freedom and equality for women. These approaches argue that patriarchy—
a social system that attaches power to masculine gender—disadvantages women. Patriarchy
burdens women through the gendered division of labor and activities, gendered access to
resources, and the construction of gendered identities (Law 1999).
Feminist perspectives emphasize the differences between women and men (Greed 2006;
Sandercock and Forsyth 1992). If we assume that no differences exist, then we may cre-
ate systems and spaces that reinforce the status quo (Rakodi 1991; Wallace and Milroy
1999; Weisman 1992). In considering differences, we must also consider differences among
women themselves (Anthony 2001). Race/ethnicity, class, sexuality, religion, physical abil-
ity, age—all shape women’s experiences and their relative privilege. Increasingly, feminist
scholars recognize that the views and experience of white, middle-class women (whose
voices dominated the US women’s movement until the 1980s), do not represent the priori-
ties and experiences of all women (Sandercock and Forsyth 1992).
[…]

Women’s use of public spaces

Contemporary Western and especially US urban design scholarship reveals a nostalgia for a
perceived loss of public life (Brill 1989) and a scorn for the increasing privatization of public
spaces (cf. Huxtable 1997; Sorkin 1992). Critics advocate a return to the traditions of ide-
alized, “truly public” spaces to overcome limitations on civil rights (free speech, assembly),
increased exclusion, and a growing focus on consumption in public space.
From a feminist perspective, however, there is no such thing as “truly public” space that is
experienced in the same way by all groups (Mozingo 1985; Ruddick 1996). Gender shapes
women’s experiences of public space. The oft-celebrated right to observe and mingle with
strangers in public space, for example, is not shared equally among women and men. Women
are less likely to approach strangers in public space and more likely to be approached by them,
than are men (cf. Henley 1977). Experiences of objectification (of the male gaze) can shape
some women’s use of urban environments (Borlsoff and Hahn 1997; Gardiner 1989). Also, the
characterization of an idealized public sphere where all come together in equal and free ex-
change of ideas, does not resonate with some women’s experiences (Fraser 1992). In accounts
of urban life, women are typically characterized as part of the “background,” rather than as
part of the “action” (Lofland 1975, in Sandercock and Forsyth 1992).
For many women, responsibility for home and children and fear for safety constrain
their activities in public space (Franck 2002; Franck and Paxson 1989; Harrington et al.
1992). Gendered social norms further limit women’s public space participation (Gardiner
1989; 1994), by encouraging women to curtail their behavior to keep up socially desirable
self-presentations of femininity.
 Diversity and Inclusion  73
Women’s bodily experiences of public spaces are also distinctive. For example, women
may have smaller “personal space” bubbles than men. People tend to stand closer to women
than to men, and women move out of the way for others more often than do men (Mozingo
1989). Women are touched more in public spaces than are men. Women often find crowd-
ing less stressful, compared to men, and may even find some crowded situations appealing
(Mozingo 1989), assuming that crowding does not involve groping or sexual harassment.
Women’s use and experience of public spaces differ significantly with race/ethnicity,
culture, sexuality, age, and physical ability. Recent years have seen an increase in research
on women’s use of public spaces around the world and especially in developing countries
(cf. Alizadeh 2007; Chhibber 2002; Mazumdar and Mazumdar 2001; Mills 2007; Sang-
wha 1999; Seedat et al. 2006). Much of this research involves case studies of women in one
country or city. Still needed are comparative studies that integrate these cases and advance
theories of women and public space.
There is danger in overstating women’s constraints in public space. Certainly, women en-
joy public spaces and traverse them freely under many circumstances (Lofland 1984; Wilson
1991). Indeed, women’s use of public space can constitute resistance, when women define
their own identities through participation in self-determined, meaningful activities. Con-
sider, for example, women’s use of lesbian bars (Wolfe 1992), or creation of feminist public
art (Lacy 1995), or young Latinas’ claims on dangerous urban street environments (Hymas
2003), and even homeless women’s occupation of highly visible public spaces (Casey et al.
2008), as cases in point.
If the goal of urban design is to create accessible, diverse, and open public spaces, then
we must recognize that no single setting will meet the needs of all groups at all times
(Franck and Paxson 1989). Rather, it is more appropriate to think about a network of
spaces that can accommodate the meaningful characteristics of specific social groups.
Public spaces will be more useful for women if these spaces provide perceived and actual
safety and facilitate women’s multiple roles by allowing women to conveniently enter-
tain children, complete work tasks, and/or accomplish household responsibilities such as
shopping or other errands.
[…]

Women and safety in urban environments

Extensive research examines women’s experiences of fear and safety in the city. Women
consistently report greater fear in urban environments than do men (Gordon and Riger
1989; Grabowsky 1995; Stanko 1987). Fear especially impacts those women with the fewest
resources to ensure their safety. In the United States and other Western countries, women
who are most fearful include older women, women with limited education and lower in-
comes, and women of color (Gordon and Riger 1989; Pain 1997a; Thompson et al. 2002).
These women are more likely to reside in high crime neighborhoods, which may explain
their higher fear (Gordon and Riger 1989; Loukaitou-Sideris and Fink 2009; Pain 1997b).
Physical features associated with women’s (and men’s) fear of crime include the presence
of hiding places, limited vistas, and low potential for escape (Fisher and Nasar 1992; Nasar
and Fisher 1992); graffiti; poor maintenance; dense vegetation; and inadequate lighting
(Cooper Marcus and Wischemann 1983; Day 2000a; Nasar and Fisher 1992; Wekerle and
Whitzman 1995). Fearful places include pathways, alleys, bus and transit stops, parking
lots, tunnels, and natural areas (Cooper Marcus and Wischemann 1983; Gordon and Riger
1989; Loukaitou-Sideris and Fink 2009; Loukaitou-Sideris et al. 2002). Women’s fear is
especially heightened at night time (Valentine 1992; Warr 1990).
[…]
74  Kristen Day
For women of color, the notion of safety in urban environments is broader than the
absence of assault or disorder. Safety also involves feeling welcome and accepted in a
setting (Day 1999b). Walking alone in a neighborhood, hiking in an urban park, or par-
ticipating in community events require reassurance that individuals will not “stand out”
uncomfortably in terms of race or ethnicity, and will not be targeted by race harassment
or violence.
Fear functions as a form of social control over women’s use of urban environments, since
women are persuaded to significantly curtail their travel and behavior in public spaces out
of fear (Deegan 1987; Valentine 1989). Women have made considerable strides in reversing
their exclusion from public spaces, and yet social rules for appropriate behavior for women
still restrict their full and equal access. These social norms designate “unseemly” places
where women should not go—especially not alone or at night, or else risk sexual assault
or harassment and be blamed for any harm that may occur (Gardiner 1989; 1994). More
recently, researchers have expanded the study of women and fear to also examine women’s
resistance to fear in urban environments (Hyams 2003; Koskela 1997). This research is
important for helping us to understand women as bold and assertive users of urban environ-
ments and not only as victims.
[…]
Feminist urban designers and planners have undertaken several initiatives to enhance
women’s safety in cities. One example is the groundbreaking work of METRAC in
Toronto, where a special committee has implemented numerous planning projects to
increase women’s safety (Modlich 1986; Wekerle and Whitzman 1995). Similar efforts
have also taken place in the Netherlands (Sandercock and Forsyth 1992). Feminist
scholars warn us that we must exercise caution in turning to urban design as the (only)
solution to enhancing women’s safety in urban environments (Koskela and Pain 2000).
Many of the underlying issues that cause women’s fear and danger will not be resolved
by better lighting and safer transit, as important as these issues are. Indeed, increasing
women’s safety will also require a fundamental rethinking of women’s roles and place
in the city.
[…]
We must also recognize the numerous ways in which women play leadership roles in
the shaping of cities and communities. Women are leaders in creating urban gardens;
spearheading neighborhood improvements; grassroots organizing supporting urban
parks; establishing national women’s policy think tanks; documenting public history;
and in struggles around housing, childcare, and neighborhood preservation (cf. Bland
1989; Cran 1981; Dubrow 2007; Feldman and Stall 1994; Hayden 1997; Rakodi 1991;
Spain 2001). These efforts are often driven by the feminist “ethic of care” for places and
for the people that occupy them (Day 2000b; Krenichyn 2004). We must acknowledge
that in a time when cities are abandoning their public responsibilities, these activities
can sometimes exploit women’s free and unpaid work in the name of “women’s em-
powerment” (Miraftab 2007). At the same time however, women’s leadership in these
efforts represents a powerful force for advancing equity in urban design and planning.
We should work to strategically link women’s community work to formal planning and
design processes and resources, and to other planning movements (sustainability, active
living, etc.) that share similar values.
 Diversity and Inclusion  75
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Figure 2.0.3  Street corner in Cincinnati, Ohio. Photo © Vikas Mehta.

2.3 Constructing Differences in Public
Spaces: Race, Class and Gender as
Interlocking Systems
Susan Ruddick
Source: Ruddick, S. (1996). “Constructing Differences in Public Spaces: Race, Class
and Gender as Interlocking Systems.” Urban Geography, 17(2), 132–151.

Nearly two years ago, on April 5, 1994, in downtown Toronto, two patrons of a trendy
coffee house called Just Desserts were assaulted in an armed robbery that left one, a young
women, dead and sent the other, an older man, to hospital. The slaying of Vivi Leimonis
in the Just Desserts robbery provoked a massive outrage and grief, beginning with the
demonstration outside the Cafe of about 200 citizens who demanded action, and contin-
uing in a public display of grief at the victim’s funeral where thousands—some estimate as
many as 3,500 people—turned out to mourn her death (Millar, 1994). The reporting of
this crime contributed to its construction as a shared public event, with graphic layouts of
the restaurant and sketches of the approximate location of perpetrators and victims, and
intimate details fixing both the time and space of where the robbers entered and when
they left.
[…]
The way in which [these events] came to be represented in the media, and the varied re-
sponses by local citizens given some of the commonly held assumptions about the processes
that contribute to the construction of both public (or social) identities and public spaces
themselves.
First among these is the assumption that public spaces are universally accessible to a civic
public. In fact, as recent scholars of urban life have noted, gendered and racialized identities
function to constrain participation in the public sphere (Young, 1990a; Anderson, 1995). As
this paper demonstrates, an examination of the events surrounding the Just Desserts shoot-
ing and other spectacular crimes suggests that processes by which gendering and racializing
occur are highly interdependent feeding off of and reinforcing one another in what has
been called an interlocking matrix of power relations (Collins, 1990). In uncovering these pro-
cesses, moreover, one must be mindful of the way that gendered and racialized identities
vary across time and space.
The second assumption addresses the scale at which public space is commonly under-
stood to function. Public spaces have tended to be equated with the local level, functioning
within the neighborhood or urban community, circumscribed within processes that oper-
ate at regional, national, and international scales. In fact, the Just Desserts shooting suggests
that the scale at which public space is constituted is not foreordained, but is itself a political
construction. The “scaling of public spaces” and what Young calls the scaling of bodies, the
“structural patterns of group privilege and oppression” (Young, 1990a, pp. 166–167), are
interdependent, intricately bound up with one another.

Rethinking public space: Toward an open-minded public space?

Scholars often have drawn a connection between public spaces and the rise of the public
sphere as a crucible of participatory democracy (Sennett, 1970, 1972; Habermas, 1977,
 Diversity and Inclusion  81
1989; Berman, 1982; Eley, 1990; Howell, 1993). Places such as coffee houses, taverns,
concert halls, and parks provide a social context for the development of public opinion
and debate. Public spaces are critical in the expansion of the public sphere, as they allow,
at least potentially, for encounters between individuals or groups who might not other-
wise meet. Such spaces allow, at least in theory, a place “where one . . . risks encounter
with those who are different, those who identify with different groups and have differ-
ent forms of life” (Young, 1990a: 240). As Weintraub (1995) notes in his work charting
modern conceptions of public space, public space is accorded qualities of openness and
revelation, and is a forum where public interests, the interests of the collectivity, are
represented; private space, by contrast, has been cast as hidden, withdrawn, and repre-
senting the interests of the individual.
In this vein, over the past three decades, urban theorists have extolled the value of public
space in an evolving appreciation of its limits and possibilities, attempting to come to grips
with the potential of public space for sometimes unpredictable confrontation or the build-
ing of new understandings between groups. The works of Jane Jacobs, Marshall Berman,
and Iris Young, spanning some 30 years, provide insights into this evolution of understand-
ing ( Jacobs, 1961; Berman, 1982, 1986; Young, 1990a; but see also Sennett, 1970, 1992;
Rustin, 1986; Goheen, 1993; Howell, 1993; Kasinitz, 1995).
[…]

The limits to a celebration of difference

In recent years, scholars have become more mindful of the interplay between public space
and identity. Interactions in and through public space are crucial to the formation and main-
tenance of social identities. Gillian Rose has noted that “everyday space is not only not
self-evidently innocent, but also bound into various and diverse social and psychic dynam-
ics of subjectivity and power” (Rose, 1993, p. 37).
Public space, by extension, is understood not simply as a passive arena for the manifesta-
tion of specific predetermined social behaviors. It is, rather, the active medium for construc-
tion of new class cultures (Berman, 1982, 1986; Zukin, 1988, 1991; Smith, 1992; Mills,
1993), of sexual and gendered identities (Goodrich, 1990; Wilson, 1991), or of the places
where marginalized identities can be challenged (Deutsche, 1990; Ruddick, 1990, 1995;
Smith, 1993) or confirmed (Duncan, 1979; Kasinitz, 1984; Mair, 1986; Dear and Wolch,
1987). Here public spaces serve not simply to surface particular pregiven behaviors, but be-
come an active medium through which new identities are created or contested, much along the
lines of Berman’s vision of an open-minded public space. Moreover, in these approaches,
new social identities and new meanings of public space are seen to be constructed together.
[…]
City space has been gendered in a way that tends to exclude women from the public
realm, or to include them only in highly scripted and delimited roles. As many scholars
are quick to point out, the long association of city space with the erotic (Barthes, 1986;
Berilowitz, 1990) has meant that the presence of women in public spaces could be inter-
preted only as a symptom of pathology: there was no possibility for the “female flaneur,”
only the prostitute (Valverde, 1991, p. 79; Wilson, 1991, 1995; Swanson, 1995). The lim-
iting of women’s access to public space and the public realm was the outcome of a de facto
spatial segregation that took place on a much larger scale than that of the public spaces
themselves. The planning of suburbia has had, in the past, the effect of relegating women
to the home, away from the city and the public sphere. In one of the early feminist cri-
tiques of the social organization of cities, Saegert (1980, p. 597) argued that “the symbolic
dichotomy of female/male and suburban/urban may reinforce and reflect a variation of an
82  Susan Ruddick
actual segregation of much private life from public socially organized productive life that
perpetuates inequalities” (See also Hayford (1974); Mackenzie and Rose (1983); Fava (1981);
Mackenzie (1989); and Wilson (1991).
Even in the daytime, the sanctioned activities of women in public spaces have, histor-
ically, been highly scripted (gendered) events, with sex-role stereotyping reflected in the
provision (or absence) of infrastructures that have reinforced women’s roles—as primary
caretakers of children, as passive rather than active participants in sports, as promoting
“family life” over the activities of unchaperoned women (Cranz, 1980). The unequal access
of women to safe public spaces continues to be a theme in the literature, despite recent gains
of feminist/activists in developing policy initiatives to create safer cities for women (Lewis
and Bowlby, 1989; Smith, 1989; Wekerle and Whitzman, 1995).
Scholars in black and cultural studies and black feminist writers also have noted the ways
in which roles of visible minorities have been scripted in and through public space. Ac-
counts of encounters with whites in public space graphically illustrate the role that racism
plays in the formation of subjective identities and with few exceptions belie any hope for an
open-minded public space (Baldwin, 1964; Fanon, 1967; West, 1982; Lorde, 1984; Essed,
1990; hooks, 1992; Mbembe, 1992; Anderson, 1995).
[…]
For bell hooks, as a young black woman growing up in white America, moving out of
the safety of her neighborhood was comparable to traveling into a hostile foreign territory.
Although hooks does not write explicitly about public space, her experience of movement
outside her own neighborhood in “the black spaces on the edge of town” was a potentially
life-threatening experience, one of “that terrifying whiteness—those white faces on the
porches staring down on us with hate” (hooks, 1992, p. 170).
hooks is not alone in this sentiment, although this imagery of terror is not commonly
brought to light, because, as she notes,

[as] in the old days of racial segregation where black folks learned to ‘wear the mask,’
many of us pretend to be comfortable in the face of whiteness only to turn our backs
and give expression to intense levels of discomfort
(hooks, 1992, p. 169).

Other black cultural and social critics have voiced similar views (Baldwin, 1964; Halsell,
1969; Larde, 1984; see also Fanon, 1968).
[…]
This contrast, between the lived reality in public spaces as experienced by women and
people of color, and Berman’s utopian vision of an open-minded public space, raises some
profound questions about the limits and possibilities of the celebration of “difference” that
might take place in these spaces. Despite our longing for an open public space, as Young
notes, “the city as an openness to unassimilated otherness […] represents only an ideal”
(Young, 1990a, p. 227).

Race, gender, and class as interlocking systems

The role of gender and race in the construction of social identities has been a subject of in-
creased attention within social geography over the past few years. Geographers have moved
beyond viewing gender, race, and class as distinct categories that operate independently in
an additive fashion. These now are recognized as intersecting categories: as several theo-
rists have noted, these categories are mutually transformative, and intersecting, each altering
the experience of the other. Scholars began to investigate, for instance, the ways that race
 Diversity and Inclusion  83
altered the experience of gender, with black women and white women confronted with
experiences of gendered relationships that marked systemic similarities and differences in
their roles as women (McDowell, 1991).
[…]
In much of the literature on racialized identities, public space and the ways in which
ascribed roles in public spaces serve to naturalize these differently structured identities
have not been a central focus (cf. Anderson, 1995). Mention of social identities and the rep-
resentations of others in public space often are relegated to an aside or anecdote illustrating
the larger thesis of inequity. And yet these representations are not merely the end product or
byproduct of hierarchical and unequal relationships. As already noted, they are profoundly
constitutive of the very being of the subjugated other. One has only to read passages from
the oft-quoted works of Fanon, Lorde, and others about chance encounters of whites and
non­-whites in public spaces to grasp the enormous impact these encounters have on the for-
mation of subjective identities of individuals as “whites” and “non-whites” (Baldwin, 1964;
Fanon, 1968; Lorde, 1984; hooks, 1992). These acts of racism can be overt and hostile, or
they can take much more subtle “everyday” forms (Essed, 1990). To unravel the nature of
encounters in public space requires a consideration of the relational nature of identity that
often requires that one step out of an examination of dyads (man/woman; black/white; old/
young) and look across categories to the ways in which people interact within and across ma-
trices of power (e.g., black man/white woman; white adult/black child). Here, again, the
insights of black feminist writers on interlocking matrices of power provide a rich source in
sketching out various “locations, “in the form of controlling images, that African Ameri-
can men and women have had to occupy. These include, for example, the images of black
women as either “mammy,” “matriarch,” “welfare recipient,” or “hot mama” (Collins,
1990). Black men have fared no better, occupying, among others, the positions of “enter-
tainer,” “athlete,” or “savage” ( Jordan and Weedon, 1995).
[…]
If public space is to become a place where these constructs can be confronted or trans-
formed, as a minimum first step we must become mindful of how these images serve to
prefigure unplanned encounters, to reaffirm constructs and images of subject and object,
to “catch the imagination” of the public. In this regard, an analysis of the media becomes
a critical tool in instructing the public how it should think about such encounters. It is one
discursive medium through which such images are generated and maintained, representing
interactions to the public at large.

Public space and the public realm: Toward a politics of scale

Although it is now common to think of social and spatial practices as mutually constitu-
tive, the implications of this assertion with respect to public space have not been assessed
fully. Public space has generally been considered to be within the purview of communities
defined at the local level, accessed and defined by surrounding neighborhoods or urban
communities. But the scale at which the public realm is constituted is extremely sensitive to
the political and economic role of any given public space.
Scale itself is not predetermined, but produced in the act of creating and contesting social
identity. “Scale is an active progenitor of specific social processes… it is precisely the active
social connectedness of scales that is vital yet we have no coherent, critical thought-out
language for different scales” (Smith, 1993, p. 101). The tendency has been to think of scales
as interacting in discrete nested hierarchies, packed in the way that one would contain a set
of Russian wooden dolls—each doll containing a smaller version of itself that patrols the
boundaries of its contents. This approach tends to avoid relating scales to one another, but
84  Susan Ruddick
rather treats one scale as “dominant” and the others as “residual or emergent.” This taxon-
omy of scales has been reproduced in theoretical divisions that delimit areas of study and
notions of causation in relation to the scale at which forces are believed to operate (Agnew,
1993, p. 252, 267).
Although we tend to think of public space as a local phenomenon, it is, in fact,
constituted at different sets of articulated scales. Public spaces can disturb our conven-
tional hierarchical notions about scale—for instance, they can become at once local
and national spaces for the construction, mediation, and regulation of social identities.
Studies of conflicts in public space suggest that scales converge and are articulated with
one another in complex and shifting nodal relationships: a presumably “local,” small
public square that is situated in a liminal space of a global city may play a more pivotal
international role in the production and dissemination of social identities, in the pro-
duction of mythologies, than entire regions or nations in other parts of the world. It
is simultaneously global and local in terms of the public realm that is invoked through
it. In this sense, there is no necessary connection between the physical scale at which
a public space is constituted and the scope of its public realm. Attempts to control this
scope, to limit or expand it, are integral to the process through which social identities
are constructed, contested, or maintained.
While this relationship between public space and the public realm mostly is taken for
granted, it suggests that some spaces are indeed “more public” than others. This is partly
engendered by different uses of different types of public space and differences in users of that
space: a conflict that erupts in a local park will tend to invoke a different set of dynam-
ics than one that erupts in a civic square (depending in part on the individuals involved);
similarly, public conflicts that occur in a lower-income community may trigger a different
set of dynamics than a conflict within a public space frequented by the new middle class,
partly because of the different spatial scales at which different classes constitute community
(see Smith, 1993, p. 105–107). The latter might appeal to citywide, nationwide, or even
international communities.
But these differences are contextual, and not necessarily fixed. The construction of the
public realm can itself change in the course of a conflict, transforming the scope within
which that conflict is constituted and the notions of the “public” who are affected by or
implicated in the resolution of that conflict. This principle is evident in several disparate
works dealing with public space, political processes, and the construction of social or polit-
ical identities (Deutsch, 1990; Ruddick, 1990; Smith, 1993).
[…]
Scale, then, can become a medium through which identities are constituted; the constitu-
tion of a public space at a particular scale can change the scale at which social identities are
constructed, enabling groups to draw and redraw the boundaries defining who is included
or excluded (see Smith, 1993, pp. 106, 114).
[…]

Reconceptualizing public space

This examination of the Just Desserts shooting suggests several ways in which we might
reconceptualize public space. First, it suggests that the representation of public space is
deeply implicated in the process of othering: the way in which certain others are repre-
sented in public spaces is not simply a byproduct of other structures of inequity; it is deeply
constitutive of our sense of community—who is allowed in, who is excluded, and what
roles should be ascribed to “insiders” and “outsiders.”
 Diversity and Inclusion  85
As such, the events surrounding the Just Desserts shooting do more than raise issues about
the construction of social identity in and through public space. They raise questions about
the nature of public space itself. Yet even a cursory examination of these events suggests
several properties that differentiate certain “public” spaces from others—in terms of their
ascribed economic and symbolic functions and the meanings that different groups attempt
to assign them in the course of a conflict.
Second, and related to the first point, the role that the space plays in class strategies for
reproduction also is a critical element: those spaces that function as recreational and leisure
areas for the new middle class carry with them different political dynamics that those that
serve lower-income groups. Finally, the scale at which public space is constituted is not pre-
determined, but itself involves a political act. In much of the literature on the subject, public
space is assumed to be intrinsically local and particular, situated within a nested hierarchy:
public space (i.e., park, street/neighborhood/city/region/nation). And yet, as these events
show, public spaces do far more that inscribe images about local and particular events: they
can and do become a medium through which regional, national, and even international
identities are constructed or contested.

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Wekerle, G. and Whitzman, C., 1995, Safe Cities: Guidelines for Planning, Design and Management. New
York: Van Nostrand Reinhold.
West, C., 1982, A Genealogy of Modem Racism. In Prophecy and Deliverance! An Afro­-American Revolutionary
Christianity. Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 47–65.
Wilson, E., 1991, The Sphinx in the City. Urban Life, the Control of Disorder and Women. Berkeley. CA:
University of California Press.
——— 1995, The invisible Flaneur. In S. Watons and K. Gibson, editors, Postmodern Cities and Spaces.
Oxford, UK and Cambridge, MA: Blackwell, 59–79.
Young, I., 1990, Justice and the Politics of Difference. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Zukin, S., 1988, Loft Living: Culture and Capital in Urban Change. London: Radius.
——— 1991, Landscapes of Power: From Detroit to Disneyworld. Berkeley, CA: University of California
Press.

Figure 2.0.4  Harlem United at the NYC Pride Parade, 2008. Photo © Harlem United.
Source: Wikimedia Commons, Creative Commons CC-BY-2.0.
2.4 Just Walk on By: A Black Man
Ponders His Power to Alter
Public Space
Brent Staples
Source: Staples, B. (1998). “Just Walk On By: A Black Man Ponders His Power to
Alter Public Space.” Literary Cavalcade, 2(February), 38–41.

My first victim was a woman—white, well-dressed, probably in her early twenties. I came
upon her late one evening on a deserted street in Hyde Park, a relatively affluent neighbor-
hood in an otherwise mean, impoverished section of Chicago. As I swung onto the avenue
behind her, there seemed to be a discreet, uninflammatory distance between us. Not so. She
cast back a worried glance. To her, the youngish black man—a broad six feet two inches with
a beard and billowing hair, both hands shoved into the pockets of a bulky military jacket—
seemed menacingly close. After a few more quick glimpses, she picked up her pace and was
soon running in earnest. Within seconds she disappeared into a cross street.
That was more than a decade ago. I was twenty-two years old, a graduate student newly
arrived at the University of Chicago. It was in the echo of that terrified woman’s footfalls
that I first began to know the unwieldy inheritance I’d come into—the ability to alter pub-
lic space in ugly ways. It was clear that she thought herself the quarry of a mugger, a rapist,
or worse. Suffering a bout of insomnia, however, I was stalking sleep, not defenseless way-
farers. As a softy who is scarcely able to take a knife to a raw chicken—let alone hold it to
a person’s throat—I was surprised, embarrassed, and dismayed all at once. Her flight made
me feel like an accomplice in tyranny. It also made it clear that I was indistinguishable from
the muggers who occasionally seeped into the area from the surrounding ghetto. That first
encounter, and those that followed, signified that a vast, unnerving gulf lay between night-
time pedestrians—particularly women and me. And I soon gathered that being perceived
as dangerous is a hazard in itself. I only needed to turn a corner into a dicey situation, or
crowd some frightened, armed person in a foyer somewhere, or make an errant move after
being pulled over by a policeman. Where fear and weapons meet—and they often do in
urban America—there is always the possibility of death.
In that first year, my first away from my hometown, I was to become thoroughly familiar
with the language of fear. At dark, shadowy intersections in Chicago, I could cross in front
of a car stopped at a traffic light and elicit the thunk, thunk, thunk, thunk of the driver—black,
white, male, or female—hammering down the door locks. On less traveled streets after
dark, I grew accustomed to but never comfortable with people who crossed to the other
side of the street rather than pass me. Then there were the standard unpleasantries with
police, doormen, bouncers, cab drivers, and others whose business is to screen out trouble-
some individuals before there is any nastiness.
I moved to New York two years ago and I have remained an avid night walker. In central
Manhattan, the near-constant crowd cover minimizes tense, one-on-one street encounters.
Elsewhere—visiting friends in SoHo, where sidewalks are narrow and tightly spaced build-
ings shut out to sky—things can get very taut indeed.
Black men have a firm place in New York mugging literature. Norman Podhoretz in his
famed (or infamous) 1963 essay, “My Negro Problem—And Ours,” recalls growing up in
terror of black males; they “were tougher than we were, more ruthless,” he writes—and
 Diversity and Inclusion  91
as an adult on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, he continues, he cannot constrain his
nervousness when he meets black men on certain streets. Similarly, a decade later, the
essayist and novelist Edward Hoagland extols a New York where once “Negro bitterness
bore down mainly on other Negroes.” Where some see mere panhandlers, Hoagland sees
a “mugger who is clearly screwing up his nerve to do more than just ask for money.” But
Hoagland has “the New Yorker’s quick-hunch posture for broken-field maneuvering,” and
the bad guy swerves away.
I often witness that “hunch posture” from women after dark on the warrenlike streets of
Brooklyn where I live. They seem to set their faces on neutral and, with their purse straps
strung across their chests bandolier style, they forge ahead as though bracing themselves
against being tackled. I understand, of course, that the danger they perceive is not a hallu-
cination. Women are particularly vulnerable to street violence, and young black males are
drastically overrepresented among the perpetrators of the violence. Yet these truths are no
solace against the kind of alienation that comes of being ever the suspect, against being set
apart, a fearsome entity with whom pedestrians avoid making eye contact.
It is not altogether clear to me how I reached the ripe old age of twenty-two without be-
ing conscious of the lethality nighttime pedestrians attributed to me. Perhaps it was because
in Chester, Pennsylvania, the small, angry industrial town where I came of age in the 1960s,
I was scarcely noticeable against a backdrop of gang warfare, street knifings, and murders. I
grew up one of the good boys, had perhaps a half-dozen fistfights. In retrospect, my shyness
of combat has clear sources.
Many things go into the making of a young thug. One of those things is the consumma-
tion of the male romance with the power to intimidate. An infant discovers that random
flailings send the baby bottle flying out of the crib and crashing to the floor. Delighted, the
joyful babe repeats those motions again and again, seeking to duplicate the feat. Just so, I re-
call the points at which some of my boyhood friends were finally seduced by the perception
of themselves as tough guys. When a mark cowered and surrendered his money without
resistance, myth and reality merged—and paid off. It is, after all, only manly to embrace the
power to frighten and intimidate. We, as men, are not supposed to give an inch of our lane
on the highway; we are to seize the fighter’s edge in work and in play and even in love; we
are to be valiant in the face of hostile forces.
Unfortunately, poor and powerless young men seem to take all this nonsense literally.
As a boy, I saw countless tough guys locked away; I have since buried several, too. They
were babies, really—a teenage cousin, a brother of twenty-two, a childhood friend in his
mid-twenties—all gone down in episodes of bravado played out in the streets. I came to
doubt the virtues of intimidation early on. I chose, perhaps even unconsciously, to remain
a shadow-timid, but a survivor.
The fearsomeness mistakenly attributed to me in public places often has a perilous flavor.
The most frightening of these confusions occurred in the late 1970s and early 1980s when
I worked as a journalist in Chicago. One day, rushing into the office of a magazine I was
writing for with a deadline story in hand, I was mistaken for a burglar. The office manager
called security and, with an ad hoc posse, pursued me through the labyrinthine halls, nearly
to my editor’s door. I had no way of proving who I was. I could only move briskly toward
the company of someone who knew me.
Another time I was on assignment for a local paper and killing time before an interview.
I entered a jewelry store on the city’s affluent Near North Side. The proprietor excused her-
self and returned with an enormous red Doberman pinscher straining at the end of a leash.
She stood, the dog extended toward me, silent to my questions, her eyes bulging nearly out
of her head. I took a cursory look around, nodded, and bade her good night. Relatively
speaking, however, I never fared as badly as another black male journalist. He went to
92  Brent Staples
nearby Waukegan, Illinois, a couple of summers ago to work on a story about a murderer
who was born there. Mistaking the reporter for the killer, police hauled him from his car
at gunpoint and but for his press credentials would probably have tried to book him. Such
episodes are not uncommon. Black men trade tales like this all the time.
In “My Negro Problem—And Ours,” Podhoretz writes that the hatred he feels for blacks
makes itself known to him through a variety of avenues—one being his discomfort with
that “special brand of paranoid touchiness” to which he says blacks are prone. No doubt he
is speaking here of black men. In time, I learned to smother the rage I felt at so often being
taken for a criminal. Not to do so would surely have led to madness—via that special “par-
anoid touchiness” that so annoyed Podhoretz at the time he wrote the essay.
I began to take precautions to make myself less threatening. I move about with care,
particularly late in the evening. I give a wide berth to nervous people on subway platforms
during the wee hours, particularly when I have exchanged business clothes for jeans. If I
happen to be entering a building behind some people who appear skittish, I may walk by,
letting them clear the lobby before I return, so as not to seem to be following them. I have
been calm and congenial on those rare occasions when I’ve been pulled over by the police.
And on late-evening constitutionals along streets less traveled by, I employ what has
proved to be an excellent tension-reducing measure: I whistle melodies from Beethoven
and Vivaldi and the more popular classical composers. Even steely New Yorkers hunching
toward nighttime destinations seem to relax, and occasionally they even join in the tune.
Virtually everybody seems to sense that a mugger wouldn’t be warbling bright, sunny selec-
tions from Vivaldi’s Four Seasons. It is my equivalent of the cowbell that hikers wear when
they are in bear country.
 Figure 2.0.5  74th Street in Jackson Heights, Queens, New York City. Photo © Vikas Mehta.
2.5 Spaces of Everyday Diversity: The
Patchwork Ecosystem of Local
Shopping Streets
Sharon Zukin, Philip Kasinitz and Xiangming Chen
Source: Kasinitz, P., Zukin, S. and Chen, X. (2015). “Spaces of Everyday Diversity:
The Patchwork Ecosystem of Local Shopping Streets,” in Kasinitz, P., Zukin, S. and
Chen, X. (eds.), Global Cities, Local Streets: Everyday Diversity from New York to Shang-
hai. New York: Routledge, 1–28.

If you want to see the diversity that is driving the growth of cities today, take a walk on
the shopping street of almost any neighborhood. These local streets are fast becoming a
“global” urban habitat, where differences of language and culture are seen, heard, smelled,
felt, and certainly tasted. Here is where globalization is embedded in local communities,
where immigrants from different regions of the world work alongside the native-born, and
the national dishes of foreign cuisines, from pizza to pupusas, become local attractions.
Whether we’re walking, shopping, taking our clothes to the dry cleaner, or getting a bite
to eat, these are the spaces where we experience everyday diversity.
Yet local shopping streets are the most taken-for-granted spaces on the planet. Surrounded
by houses and dotted with small stores, they seem like useful but insignificant passageways
between our homes and the wider world. But they are not only places for economic ex-
change. Local shopping streets express an equally important need for social sustainability
and cultural exchange.
Where do they come from? How do they change? What does diversity on a local shop-
ping street really mean?
Though they are less famous than the central agora of ancient Athens or the forum of
ancient Rome, local shopping streets have equally historic roots. This kind of street creates
a miniature marketplace for nearby residents and forms a “natural” community center. It
is often a hot spot of urban vitality. Yet today, in an age of accelerated mobility and global
“flows,” local shops risk losing their livelihood to both suburban shopping malls and online
retail sales.
[…]

A social world
Let’s begin with the positive things we find in most local shopping streets, including the
twelve we write about. Grocery stores and takeout delis, dry cleaners, hair salons: clustered
together, local shops make urban life possible by offering city dwellers a convenient place to
get the goods and services they need to survive. But local shops also make city life sociable.
Think about cafes, bars, barber shops, and nail salons: people spend time in these places,
exchanging gossip and news, or maybe just saying “good morning” when they buy a cup
of coffee, making a momentary connection to both the wider world and their home com-
munity. Both inside the store and outside in the street, local shops sustain social interaction.
Look at the shopkeepers who sweep the sidewalk and keep an eye on passersby. City laws
usually require them to keep the sidewalk clean, but they do so much more.
 Diversity and Inclusion  97
The perceptive urban writer Jane Jacobs (1961) noted years ago how shopkeepers protect
the social order of the street. They watch out for crimes, offer school children a safe haven
inside their shops, and create an island of familiarity in a world of strangers. On the street
where Jacobs lived in New York City, shopkeepers knew many neighbors’ names, accepted
packages for them if they were not at home when deliveries arrived, and kept an extra set
of their apartment keys for emergencies. Taking on these unpaid responsibilities, business
owners and their employees provided local residents with both safety and convenience.
Yet despite shopkeepers’ involvement in their customers’ daily lives, the local shopping
street in Jacobs’s city is not a traditional village “where everybody knows your name.” Most
of her shopkeepers did not live in the neighborhood, and while many shoppers did, the
social life of the street did not exclude outsiders.
For Jacobs, the local shopping street is a distinctly urban space that is neither as intimate
as the home nor as anonymous as the central business district. At its best, this kind of space
provides for the needs of both neighbors and strangers.
In Jacobs’s time, before the era of shopping malls, superstores, and online shopping be-
gan, city dwellers could satisfy most of their daily needs on their local shopping street.
Each store—“the butcher, the baker, the candlestick maker,” in the words of an old nursery
rhyme—specialized in a different task. All over the city, local shopping streets replicated the
same specialized functionality. Yet each neighborhood’s special character, its “DNA,” was
encoded in the ecosystem of its local shopping street.
If an ecosystem is a complex network with many interrelated parts, all interacting with the
surrounding environment, the ecosystem of a local shopping street brings together in one
compact physical space the networks of social, economic, and cultural exchange created
every day by store owners, their employees, shoppers, and local residents. These networks
may be as far-flung as the global migrations that bring men and women to open taquerias
and Chinese restaurants in cities in the Global North, and as local as customers from the
next block who come to the small shop, greengrocer, or bodega which is still open at mid-
night to buy a container of orange juice.
Ideally, to satisfy everyday needs, you never have to leave your neighborhood.
[…]

A globalized habitus
Sociologists and anthropologists use the term habitus to indicate a set of everyday practices
and aesthetic tastes that are shared by social and cultural groups who socialize together—
and socialize each other (Bourdieu 1984, 1990). We can think of local shopping streets as a
habitus in two senses, as both a “conceptual” space, embodying, reproducing, and symboliz-
ing the collective tastes of a social group, and a “lived” space, which is physical, functional,
and experiential (adapted from Lefebvre 1991). The conceptual space is the one we visualize
when we think of the shopping street. And the lived space is where we go shopping.
At its best, as both a conceptual space and a lived one, a local shopping street can be safe
and inclusive. It can provide a safe space for encounters with the new and different. But at
its worst, it can be dangerous and segregated by race, ethnicity, wealth, or gender. As Jacobs
warned, when a local shopping street is the uncontested “turf ” of some social groups, it
risks becoming a space of exclusion for others.
Let’s take food as an example. Food is a common currency of globalization, circulating
cultural goods and practices from different regions of the world among “natives” and mi-
grants from different areas.
Whether they sell Polish pierogi (dumplings), Salvadorian pupusas (meat or cheese pastries),
or bagels baked according to a recipe imported from Montreal, local food shops create a
98  Sharon Zukin et al.
small but significant space of multicultural sociability. Shoppers who are only strangers may
lay down their suspicions when they are shopping for food; they interact peaceably or at
least shop side by side, and accept each other with some degree of conviviality, civility, and
maybe even empathy (Amin 2012; Anderson 2011; Hall 2012).
Of course, it doesn’t always happen this way. Some people prefer to maintain more in-
sular patterns of consumption. Even those who develop a more cosmopolitan palate will
not necessarily apply this attitude to other people and other spheres of social life. But more
often than not, food shopping provides a safe encounter with unfamiliar others. And the
city is usually the better for it.
It’s not just what is sold that brings together the global and the local. It is also the sellers,
both shopkeepers and their employees. In many cities, the businesses on local shopping
streets are mainly owned and run by migrants. If in earlier times migrant shopkeepers came
from small towns in nearby provinces, now they often travel a greater distance, across na-
tional borders and oceans.
Small retail stores can provide an entry point into the economy for men and women who
migrate with little capital or education. Family members may work in the shop, reducing
the need to pay wages. Merchandise may be supplied, sometimes on credit, by co-ethnic
networks of wholesalers and dealers. Financial costs to open a small shop, particularly in
a working-class neighborhood, are generally low, and rents are even lower for merchants
who sublet a small space in a store from another business owner who may come from the
same village or country (Gold 2010; Min 2011). It’s not unusual in New York, London, or
Amsterdam to see a notary public from Ghana or Pakistan sharing a storefront with a travel
agent, jeweler, and vendor of DVDs, all of them transnational migrants.
Sometimes these businesses start out by selling goods and services to co-ethnics. Demo-
graphic changes in the surrounding residential neighborhood may create a business oppor-
tunity for immigrant merchants to provide both products from “back home” and the things
a growing migrant community needs to survive in the new land. Over time a concentration
of such businesses may reshape the habitus of local shopping streets, making it noticeably
more “global,” or making it global in different ways.
With transnational migration and local settlement, clusters of ethnic businesses form
Little Italys, Little Havanas, and Little Senegals. And while these clusters usually begin by
serving migrant communities, they may be discovered by adventurous members of other
groups as well, including food shoppers looking to satisfy new tastes.

From ethnic clusters to super-diversity

In U.S. cities, especially in New York, ethnic clusters on local shopping streets are seen as an
amenity, and are celebrated for adding vitality and diversity to the larger urban landscape (Hum
2014; Lin 2010; Taylor 2000). They may even be marketed as a tourist attraction (Conforti 1996;
Rath 2007). But in some European cities, they are seen as a divisive “balkanization” and a threat
to social cohesion (Hall 2015). Public officials who try to break up ethnic clusters in Amsterdam,
for example, claim that they do so in the name of “diversity,” which has the opposite meaning
from “diversity” in New York because it brings in more members of the ethnic majority,
­native-born Dutch, instead of more members of ethnic minorities.
[…]
Stores owned by global migrants are not limited to ethnic enclaves, or shopping streets in
immigrant neighborhoods. In many cities, migrant shopkeepers serve native populations,
sometimes using their family and community networks to develop an ethnic niche in a spe-
cific economic sector. In that case, native-born customers come to think of the local green-
grocers or nail salons as “Korean” or “Turkish” businesses because of the owners’ ethnicity.
 Diversity and Inclusion  99
Migrants and ethnic “outsiders” are often shopkeepers in low-income, working-class,
and racial-minority neighborhoods. While some may be well liked by their customers,
the fact that they are not co-ethnics can lead to deep resentment and feelings of pow-
erlessness in the surrounding community. “We don’t even control the businesses in our
own neighborhood!” is a persistent cry in many African-American communities, where
“middleman minorities” have become targets of local frustration and even violence (Gold
2010; Kasinitz and Haynes 1996; Min 1996). Yet though riots make the headlines, overt
conflicts between shopkeepers and local residents are rare, even in racially polarized
neighborhoods (Lee 2002).
Today, in many cities around the world, a new pattern is developing in which immi-
grant shopkeepers are neither concentrated in ethnic clusters like a Little Italy or Little
Senegal, nor serve native populations as middleman minorities. Instead, the new glo-
balized habitus is that of a “super-diverse” local shopping street, in which both shop-
keepers and customers come from a wide variety of different, though still predominantly
immigrant, backgrounds.
This new local habitus reflects the “super-diversity” of the global city, where no ethnic group
holds a clear majority and geographical communities are made up of a wide variety of men and
women from different national origins, of different social backgrounds, and with different legal
status (Vertovec 2007: 1024; see also Crul, Schneider, and Lelie 2013). In a super-diverse city,
the fluid, everyday encounters on a local shopping street have a particularly important role to
play. They can create public spaces that capitalize on difference but are also inclusive and egali-
tarian in multiple ways (Hall 2015; Hiebert, Rath, and Vertovec 2015).
In recent years, global migration has brought super-diversity to most of the local shop-
ping streets we write about in [Global Cities, Local Streets]. East Asians, South Asians, and
Central Asians, for example, now own local shops on the same streets in Toronto, Amster-
dam, and New York. Customers at a business in Berlin are heard speaking Turkish, Polish,
Bulgarian and Russian. Halal meat stores serve observant Muslims from many countries
who shop on Fulton Street in Bedford-Stuyvesant, a historically African-American and
Caribbean neighborhood of Brooklyn, and on Javastraat, a working-class shopping street in
Amsterdam originally settled by native-born Dutch.
This degree of super-diversity is increasingly common on local shopping streets in cit-
ies around the world, including Paris (Lallement 2010), London (Hall 2015) and Vienna
(Heide and Krasny 2010). But different migration paths shape different types of habitus. […]

Figure 2.5.1  Structural ecosystem of a local shopping street.

100  Sharon Zukin et al.
Social diversity and moral ownership
When local shops change from one type to another, longtime residents and users experience
a wrenching sense of loss. They have lost their “moral ownership” of the street, a sense
of belonging that goes beyond legal property rights, and is based on a deep identification
with the culture of the space. Moral ownership derives from patterns of sociability that are
learned and reinforced in everyday actions, and become symbols of inclusion. Together, ac-
tions and symbols create a sense that certain groups “own” the street—although their sense
of inclusion often signifies the exclusion of others.
Moral ownership is most empowering for groups who are excluded from mainstream
society and unable to access economic ownership. The author and poet Langston Hughes
(1957: 21–2), a Harlem resident in the early twentieth century, expressed the strong sense
of social justice in moral ownership of the streets through the words of a character in one
of his novels. “I like Harlem because it belongs to me,” the character Jesse B. Semple says.
“It’s so full of Negroes, I feel like I got protection.” Though African Americans were often
chased out of neighborhoods dominated by whites, in their own neighborhoods they felt
unafraid to be themselves. They were not viewed with suspicion on their local shopping
street merely because they had dark skin. There, they were completely “at home.”
By contrast, the sociologist Andrew Deener (2007) describes recent efforts by store own-
ers on the local shopping street of Venice, Los Angeles, to drive away homeless men and
women as well as residents of an adjacent, low-income African-American and Latino com-
munity. New, higher-price stores, a new aesthetic, and events organized by the merchants’
association, constructed a trendy habitus where former shoppers and users of the space
would likely feel out of place. True, the area had been convulsed by gang violence, and
many people were afraid. But the new habitus persuaded the media to recast images of the
street and drew investors’ interest. Moral ownership was taken by a new group, representing
a different social class and identifying with different ethnic and racial solidarities.
Challenges to moral ownership of the streets are as old as urban migration and settle-
ment. But lately, they have become more frequent and more intense. First, the huge scale of
transnational migration—and, in China, domestic migration—brings many more strangers
from “there” to “here,” where they are active authors of urban space. Second, rapid esca-
lation of property values, especially in the biggest, global cities of the world, has unleashed
the targeted capital investment in upscale buildings and stores that is loosely called gentri-
fication. These processes activate a conflict of interest between longtime shopkeepers, who
are often migrants, building owners, and new business owners who appeal to residential
gentrifiers. This conflict of interests often ends in the older stores’ displacement.

Figure 2.5.2  Global sources of local identity on a shopping street.

 Diversity and Inclusion  101
Globalization and gentrification have dramatically changed the experience of local shop-
ping streets. Many streets are more socially and ethnically diverse than ever before. Others
have been homogenized by a hegemonic vision of revitalization that values brand names
and chain stores, on the one hand, and hip, cool, and trendy restaurants and shops, on the
other. Though local institutions in cities around the world still follow different narrative
paths, they often promote a homogenized, glossy vision of the city that puts local identities,
and social diversity, at risk.

References
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Anderson, Elijah. 2011. The Cosmopolitan Canopy: Race and Civility in Everyday Life. New York: Norton.
Bourdieu, Pierre. 1984. Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste, trans. Richard Nice.
­Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press.
——— 1990. The Logic of Practice, trans. Richard Nice. Stanford CA: Stanford University Press.
Conforti, Joseph M. 1996. “Ghettos as Tourism Attractions.” Annals of Tourism Research 23(4): 830–42.
Crul, Maurice, Jens Schneider, and Frans Lelie. 2013. Super-Diversity: A New Perspective on Integration.
Amsterdam: CASA/VU Press.
Deener, Andrew. 2007. “Commerce as the Structure and Symbol of Neighborhood Life: Reshaping the
Meaning of Community in Venice, California.” City and Community 6(4): 291–314.
Gold, Steven J. 2010. Store in the ‘Hood: A Century of Ethnic Business and Conflict. Lanham MD: Rowman &
Littlefield.
Hall, Suzanne. 2012. City, Street, and Citizen: The Measure of the Ordinary. London: Routledge.
Hall, Suzanne. 2015. “Super-diverse Street: A ‘Trans-Ethnography’ Across Migrant Localities.” Ethnic
and Racial Studies 38(1): 22–37.
Heide, Angela and Elke Krasny, eds. 2010. Aufbruch in die Nähe: Wien Lerchenfelder Strasse. Vienna: Turia +
Kant.
Hiebert, Daniel, Jan Rath, and Steven Vertovec. 2015. “Urban Markets and Diversity: Towards a Re-
search Agenda.” Ethnic and Racial Studies 38(1): 5–21.
Hughes, Langston. 1957. Simple Stakes a Claim. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.
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­Temple University Press.
Jacobs, Jane. 1961. The Death and Life of Great American Cities. New York: Random House.
Kasinitz, Philip and Bruce Haynes. 1996. “The Fire at Freddy’s.” Common Quest 1(2): 25–35.
Lallement, Emmanuelle. 2010. La ville marchande, enquête à Barbès. Paris: Téraèdre.
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Lefebvre, Henri. 1991. The Production of Space, trans. Donald Nicholson-Smith. Oxford: Blackwell.
Lin, Jan. 2010. The Power of Urban Ethnic Places: Cultural Heritage and Community Life. New York: Routledge.
Min, Pyong Gap. 1996. Caught in the Middle: Korean Communities in New York and Los Angeles. Berkeley
CA: University of California Press.
Min, Pyong Gap. 2011. Ethnic Solidarity for Economic Survival: Korean Greengrocers in New York. New York:
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Rath, Jan, ed. 2007. Tourism, Ethnic Diversity and the City. New York: Routledge.
Taylor, Ian. 2000. “European Ethnoscapes and Urban Development: The Return of Little Italy in 21st
Century Manchester.” City 4(1): 27–42.
Vertovec, Steven. 2007. “Super-diversity and Its Implications.” Ethnic and Racial Studies 30(6): 1024–54.
3

From the Just City to the Right

to Public Space
From the Just City to the Right
to Public Space

Although the parallel discourses of “the just city” and “the right to the city” (and by exten-
sion “the right to public space”) have often overlapping agendas, their ultimate objectives
are different. “The right to the city” was introduced by Henri Lefebvre in his 1968 book Le
droit à la ville, and later elaborated in his The Production of Space (1974). “The just city” refers
to a body of scholarship which develops a normative theory of urban justice from which it
distills actionable criteria for the practices of urban planning and urban policy. The most
prominent and often quoted work in this regard is Susan S. Fainstein’s book The Just City
(2010) in which she outlines three major components of urban justice: democracy, diversity,
and equity. While “the just city” aims at creating an urban environment based on the nor-
mative concept of “justice,” “the right to the city” aims at “just distribution, justly arrived
at” (Harvey 1973) through the reappropriation of the means of production of urban space
and of the city (Lefebvre 1968/1996). In the first, the objective is to create a more demo-
cratic city, where principles of diversity, inclusion, and just distribution of resources, risks,
and benefits are enforced through planning and policy. Public space is the key catalyst in that
process. For the latter, the objective is the establishment of governing processes led by the
working classes, and public space is the key site of conflict and struggle. Neither is defined as a
singular event or as a finite protocol. Both are long-term movements enacted by complex
alliances of social and political actors and agencies. Both rely heavily on the interlocking
realms of public sphere, public domain, and public space.
Regardless of the ideological differences, in the short term both approaches focus on the
spatial politics of exclusion—the protocols and vehicles employed to intentionally stratify
urban spaces—and the ongoing efforts, conflicts, and struggles to create more equitable
cities. One of the key concepts to address in that respect is that of free speech. Margaret
Kohn unpacks an important legal distinction: free speech in publicly accessible, yet pri-
vately owned places is not protected by the United States Constitution. Kohn’s argument
is that privately owned public spaces limit possibilities for political discourse, and the more
they resemble main streets and downtowns, the more they are likely to restrict civic and
political activity. Moreover, they are employed to fabricate a social consensus on how civic
and political life ought to be conceptualized. From the perspective of a legal scholar, Kohn
juxtaposes two mainstream judicial approaches to public space: the “property rights” ap-
proach, and the “public forum doctrine” approach. Regardless of the political ideology or
judicial approach taken, Kohn argues that the privatization of public space has negative
consequences for democratic politics because it reinforces existing patterns of segregation.

Figure 3.0  A street median appropriated as shared space for urban agriculture, Melbourne, Australia.
Photo © Vikas Mehta.
106  Just City/Right to Public Space
An important aspect in the literature on public space has been the difficulty of formulat-
ing a universal definition. From the strictly legal and judicial perspective, Kohn proposes to
treat it as a “cluster concept”—a term meant to accommodate multiple and often contradic-
tory definitions—and further defines it through the proposed three core components: own-
ership, accessibility, and intersubjectivity. “Intersubjectivity” is the key to Kohn’s argument
in relation to the privatization of public space and its impact on democratic politics: namely,
the key limitation of privatized public spaces is their treatment of citizens as aggregated
individual spectators, and not as participants in the process of negotiations in what she calls
a “shared and contestable world.”
In the literature on urban justice, and the Just City, it has not been always clear how the
five types of social justice concerns—distributive, procedural, interactional, retributive, and
­restorative—apply specifically to public space. Setha Low and Kurt Iveson attempt to fill that
scholarly gap by discussing the five types of social justice concerns in relation to public spaces.
Distributive justice concerns focus on the territorial distribution of public spaces, their quality,
and accessibility. It is also concerned with the resources dedicated to their design, construction,
and maintenance. Procedural justice is concerned with both processes and outcomes of the
production of public space, with issues such as public participation, co-creation and co-design,
opening the work of public institutions to the scrutiny of public review and the like. In other
words, the degree to which the decision-making process moves beyond the perception of fair-
ness and is measurably democratic and inclusive of multiple publics and their needs and aspira-
tions. Interactional justice focuses specifically on the nature of encounters and social interactions
in public space, or rather the degree to which public space enables meaningful social interac-
tions. As an extension of Kohn’s argument, the focus is on the justice-dimensions of intersub-
jectivity. For this process to take place, members of the multiple publics—who may enjoy their
communal spaces elsewhere—come together to produce public space. In that respect, urban and
public policy, design and planning, all play important roles in facilitating and encouraging just
interactions to take place. In place of retributive and restorative justice, Low and Iveson offer
recognition and care and repair. Recognition is a process by which communal and group identities
which have been previously denigrated or stigmatized are re-evaluated and restored to a just sta-
tus. Following Fraser (Fraser 1990, see also Section 1), the authors argue that recognition ought
to be relationally situated, and supported when addressing institutionalized patterns of cultural
value which give a particular group a subordinate status in relation to others. Care and repair are
fundamental for public space in a democratic society, as they imply both the care for each other,
and also the care for the places of gathering.
In the often-cited environmental justice study of the public parks system in B ­ altimore,
Maryland—which employed principles of distributional and procedural justice—­
Christopher Boone and his team studied possible linkages between race and the distribution
of public parks in order to understand the forces that generate patterns of spatial injustice
and the inequitable distribution of resources. Even though the preliminary results based on
the analysis of mean distances from residential areas to parks showed that residents of Bal-
timore have comparatively “good access” to public parks, a historical analysis of the devel-
opment of public parks in Baltimore pointed to a “Baltimore-style apartheid”—historical
and institutional dynamics that have created systemic injustices and have deprived African
American community from equal access to public parks. For assessing the distributional jus-
tice of parks, the team employed PSAs and dasymetric mapping of socioeconomic data and
found that while the African American community has better walking access to parks, it
also has access to significantly less public park acreage per capita than the white and wealthy
residents of Baltimore. Also, by framing public parks as an environmental justice issue, they
argue that the just distribution and equal accessibility to public parks should be seen as an
important determinant of public health. Finally, they suggest that if justice demands “just
 Just City/Right to Public Space  107
distribution justly achieved,” the present state of the public park system in Baltimore is a
clear case of environmental injustice.
The wave of progressive urban transformations, which has transformed cities across Latin
America in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s, has captured much of the imagination of urbanists
and urban scholars from across the world and has been employed as a model for organizing
democratic processes of urbanization by reimagining public infrastructure. These transfor-
mations were all driven by parallel commitments to social justice and the right to the city.
They were initially successful because of the synergies created between new institutional,
cultural and planning practices, innovative political and civic processes, new forms of pub-
lic participation, and an emphasis on public space. The now canonical examples include
the innovative public transportation infrastructure in Curitiba, Brazil; the participatory
budgeting in Porto Alegre, Brazil; the transformations of Favela-Bairro in Rio de Janeiro,
Brazil; new civic culture as a generative tool for rethinking public infrastructure and urban
mobility in Bogotá, Colombia and later in Medellin, Colombia. Some of these transfor-
mations have origins in a long history of social and public services and forms of solidarity,
cooperation, mutual aid, and conviviality provided by both public and private actors of-
ten working together. Importantly, in 1988 “The Right to The City” was codified into
the Brazilian Constitution (later elaborated by a 2001 Federal Law), and in 1991 citizens’
“Right to Public Space” was codified in the Colombian Constitution.
Rachel Berney studies the discrepancies between public policies and programs in ­Bogotá,
Colombia—which employed the creation of public space as a catalyst for broader social
transformation and the erasure of socio-economic inequalities between 1970s and 1990s—
and the twenty-first century neoliberal policies which turned public spaces into a com-
modified spectacle of public order. Through the framework of “pedagogical urbanism”
and that of urban pedagogy, mayors Antanas Mockus and Enrique Peñalosa established a
direct link between “the social” and “the public,” by connecting citizenship with public
space mediated by a new civic culture. “The Right to The City” agenda was directly linked
to the project of liberation of the working classes and the poor: by means of “ownership”
over public space, their socio-economic status was to be radically transformed. Education
was central to this project, and public spaces and infrastructures were designed and enacted
as places of encounter, exchange, and learning. The key dilemma—addressed by David
Harvey in his Social Justice and the City (1972)—of how can “just distribution justly arrived
at” be codified in terms of the social justice principles was resolved in Bogotá, and specific
criteria for evaluation and action were developed.
The civic program included a system of “instructions” and “guides” for proper behavior
in public space and employed a number of mechanisms for its implementation and moni-
toring. As a result, homeless and street vendors were removed from public spaces and parks,
and citizen’s behavior was strictly sanctioned. This process led to the unintentional spectac-
ularization of everyday life in its accepted forms, and opened Bogotá’s public spaces—and
by extension its entire social realm—to an aggressive process of commodification, fueled
by global tourism and direct foreign investments. What thus started as a project of radical
urban pedagogy and socio-economic transformation has developed into an emancipatory
project of a Hausmannian kind.
As Don Mitchell argued, the struggle for reclaiming public space is the struggle for so-
cial justice and, ultimately, the struggle for The Right to The City. The way in which it
was instrumentalized in Bogotá points to another important aspect of its relationship with
social justice: what kinds of rights is “the right to the city” predicated on? Even more im-
portantly, what kinds of rights are demanded and produced through “the right to the city”
imperative? Such rights ought to be contextualized by Lefebvre’s normative argument that
the city is an ouvre, a work in which all its citizens participate on equal footing. What then
108  Just City/Right to Public Space
is the relationship between the cluster of rights under “the right to the city” umbrella and
social justice, and what are the implications for public space? These are some of the ques-
tions Don Mitchell attempts to unpack in his book The Right to The City: Social Justice and
the Fight for Public Space (2003). In the case of Bogotá, the turn from the city as a creative
process produced and enacted by Bogotános to the city of the spectacle (of civility) is pre-
cisely the move from the focus on use-value (the essence of the right to the city concept)
to the domination of exchange-value and therefore commodification of all forms of urban
life. If public space is the catalyst for the production, symbolization, and representation of
the use-value of urban life, it is also the vehicle through which commodification does its
work. Rights, for Mitchell, are social relations and hence a vehicle for organizing the social
content of urban justice. As such, they demand distinct topoi, places in which social groups
and organized individuals will make their claims and demands visible in the public realm.
The key to this process is the concept representation: the logic of representation, suggests
Mitchell, demands the social production of public space. Connecting us with the authors in
Section 1, Mitchell argues that production of public space is both the precondition for and
a product of the struggle for The Right to The City and for social justice.

References
Fainstein, S. S. (2010). The Just City. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
Fraser, N. (1990). “Rethinking the Public Sphere: A Contribution to Actually Existing Democracy,”
Social Text 25 (26), 56–79.
Harvey, D. (1973). Social Justice and the City. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Lefebvre, H. (1968). “The Right to the City,” in Kofman, E. and Lebas, E. (eds. and trans. (1996)) Writing
on Cities. London: Blackwell, 63–181. Originally published as Le droit à la ville. Paris: Anthropos.
Lefebvre, H. (1991/1974). The Production of Space, D. Nicholson-Smith (trans.). Oxford: Blackwell.
Mitchell, D. (2003). The Right to the City: Social Justice and the Fight for Public Space. New York: The
­Guilford Press.
Figure 3.0.1  Signs in Zuccotti Park placed after the Occupy Wall Street protests, Spring 2012. Photo ©
Miodrag Mitrašinović.
3.1 Brave New Neighborhoods: The
Privatization of Public Space
Margaret Kohn
Source: Kohn, M. (2004). Brave New Neighborhoods: The Privatization of Public Space.
New York: Routledge, 1–19.

On March 3, 2003, a lawyer named Stephen Downs was arrested for trespassing at the
Crossgate Mall in Guilderland, New York, a small town near Albany. He did not sneak into
the mall after hours or enter some “employees only” part of the property. He was arrested
for wearing a T-shirt that he purchased at the mall with the slogan “Give Peace a Chance.”
On the eve of the war with Iraq, the message was too political for the mall. Security guards
ordered Downs to either take off the T-shirt or leave the premises. When he refused, they
summoned local police and he was taken away in handcuffs. This was not an isolated in-
cident.1 Although the charges were later dropped after a local protest and international
uproar, the management did not change its official policy against political expression on
mall property.2
According to Downs, the security guards tried to convince him to comply with their
orders, arguing that the mall was “like a private house” and therefore he was acting in-
appropriately.3 Downs believed that his right to political expression was protected by the
First Amendment to the United States Constitution. His mistake, however, was trying
to exercise this right in a privately owned place. In the landmark decision Lloyd Corp. v.
­Tanner (1972), the Supreme Court found that the right to free speech only extends to
activity on public not private property.4 The reason is that the Bill of Rights states that
“Congress shall make no law … abridging the freedom of speech …” Over the course
of the twentieth century, this provision has been interpreted expansively to apply to all
levels of government but the debate about whether to apply the First Amendment to
some private entities remains unresolved. In Lloyd Corp., the Supreme Court rejected the
argument that shopping malls are the modern equivalents of old town centers and should
therefore be treated like public places. But the security guards were wrong in asserting
that the mall was “like a private house.” In a subsequent decision, Pruneyard v. Robbins
(1980), the Supreme Court recognized that a shopping mall, unlike a home or private
club, issues an invitation to the general public and therefore opens itself up to certain
kinds of regulations.5 This means that political speech in publicly accessible but privately
owned places, although not protected by the United States Constitution, could be pro-
tected by state statutes.
The incident at the Crossgate Mall is emblematic of restrictions on political expression
proliferating across the United States. It illustrates the political impact of the privatiza-
tion of public space. If someone cannot wear a T-shirt emblazoned with a Hallmarkesque
endorsement of world peace, then it is hard to imagine union picketers or anti-­­sweat­
shop activists being able to target the Nike or Disney stores at the mall. Even activities
that do not challenge commercial practices, for example, gathering signatures on behalf of
political candidates and ballot initiatives, are routinely forbidden in malls. When private
spaces replace public gathering places, the opportunities for political conversation are di-
minished. Ironically, just as new malls are increasingly designed to recreate the atmosphere
 Just City/Right to Public Space  113
of old-fashioned downtowns, they are restricting the civic, political, and religious activity
that gave city centers their dynamism and variety.
[…]
[In Brave New Neighborhoods] I argue that public life is undermined by the growing phe-
nomenon of private government. Gated communities proliferate in the suburbs, and Business
Improvement Districts—now numbering over one thousand in the United States alone—
create privileged zones within the city. Furthermore, the suburban shopping mall, a private
alternative to the marketplace and the town square, has been so successful that it has become
the model for retail development in city centers. This book considers how these changes affect
democratic politics. It asks what can be done to protect and revitalize public space. There are
two different approaches to this question. Some commentators call for more civility and vig-
orous enforcement of community norms in the form of policing and laws against begging and
loitering.7 Others take the opposite tack, arguing that the vitality of public space comes from
its diversity, heterogeneity, and even its disruptive quality.8 The two opposing views have
been forcefully articulated in a series of American and Canadian legal cases that highlight the
tensions among private ownership, the public sphere, and “outsider politics.”9 Drawing upon
political theory, cultural analysis, and free speech jurisprudence, this book shows why the
disappearance of public space has negative consequences for democratic politics.
[…]

Privatization and political activity

It is practically a truism to say that the disappearance of public space is caused by privatiza-
tion. But what exactly is privatization? It can involve several related processes. Privatization,
in the narrow sense, describes the sale of state-owned assets to individuals or corpora-
tions. This happened in Salt Lake City when the municipality sold a block of downtown
to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. Such direct sales, however, are fairly
uncommon. Usually, the process is indirect; private ownership comes to predominate as
commercial spaces such as shopping malls and theme parks gradually replace public places
such as town squares. Some people feel that this change simply reflects consumers’ prefer-
ences; others suggest that preferences are themselves determined by economic structures.
According to this logic, people go to the mall because there is nowhere else to go. Suburban
malls proved more profitable than traditional town centers because of cheap land, plentiful
parking, and economies of scale. Shopping malls may have survived because they were the
“fittest” according to purely economic criteria but that does not mean that they are prefer-
able from a civic or aesthetic point of view.13
Regardless of whether one views the malling of America as a cause for celebration or
alarm, it is important to recognize that it has distinctive political consequences. Privately
owned places—unlike their state­-owned equivalents—are not obliged to allow religious
activity or political speech. As more of our lives are lived in privately owned places, the
opportunity for certain types of political activity decreases.
Commodification is also part of the broader process that I am calling privatization. Com-
modification occurs when something is turned into an object that can be bought or sold.
Most privately owned common spaces are part of profit-making ventures and are therefore
treated as commodities; theme parks charge entrance fees and shopping malls carefully
calculate how much “public” space is necessary to draw customers into adjacent stores. But
state-owned spaces can also be commodified.
[…]
The courts have developed two opposing approaches to public space. The earlier one
assumed that the government in its role as property owner has all of the same rights as any
114  Margaret Kohn
private individual. According to this “property rights” approach, public space is basically
private space owned by the government, and therefore the responsible bureaucracy has dis-
cretion to regulate or forbid citizens’ access. The latter view—the “traditional public forum
doctrine”—ostensibly governs today. This doctrine emphasizes the government’s respon-
sibility for protecting citizens’ access to public places such as parks and street corners that
have traditionally been used for political activity. But the influence of the property rights
approach is still apparent as judicial decision-makers have narrowed the range of spaces that
are protected as public forums.
Privatization of public space is not only a social or aesthetic issue. Access to public space
is important because public forums are used to communicate ideas to allies and adversar-
ies through techniques such as street speaking, demonstrations, picketing, leafletting, and
petitioning. The face-to-face politics that takes place in public places requires no resources
except perseverance and energy.
[…]

Segregation and public space

The second theme that emerges [in Brave New Neighborhoods] is the claim that privatization
reinforces existing patterns of segregation. It makes it easier to ensure that business people
do not encounter street people, consumers do not confront citizens, and the rich do not
see the poor. Public spaces that fulfill the democratic promise of equality are disappearing
while privately owned zones of safety and corresponding zones of danger are proliferat-
ing.20 This process is evident in the architecture of fear, a landscape of gated communities
and fortress-like malls policed by private security forces.
The design and regulation of the built environment can either reinforce or challenge
existing patterns of inclusion or exclusion. By structuring people’s perceptions, interac-
tions, and dispositions, spatial practices and architectural markers can mitigate or intensify
ingrained social dynamics. One of the purposes of public space is to create a shared set of
symbols and experiences that create solidarity between people who are separated by private
interests.
The privatization of public space exacerbates the effects of racial and class segregation that
already exists in housing patterns.
[…]
Segregation is both a moral and a political problem. From a moral perspective, it is unjust
because it reinforces certain groups' privileged access to safer neighborhoods with better
facilities and services.21 From a political perspective, the problem is that segregation itself
makes it difficult for members of privileged groups to recognize the existence of injustice.22
It makes the reality of deprivation invisible to those who do not live in zones of danger.
Without exposure to deprivation or even difference, the privileged become unable to rec-
ognize their own advantages and unlikely to question a system that produces systematic
disadvantages.
[…]
The privatization of public space gradually undermines the feeling that people of dif-
ferent classes and cultures live in the same world. It separates citizens from each other
and decreases the opportunities for recognizing commonalities and accepting differ-
ences. Public space is made up of more than parks, plazas, and sidewalks; it is a shared
world where individuals can identify with one another and see themselves through the
eyes of others. Seeing oneself through the other’s eyes may be a first step towards rec-
ognizing one’s own privilege and, perhaps, criticizing structures of systematic privilege
and deprivation.
 Just City/Right to Public Space  115
Public-private
The third theme [in Brave New Neighborhoods] is the attempt to clarify the meaning of the
terms “public” and “private.” Or to be more precise, this book challenges the adequacy
of the intuitive understandings of public and private space that we rely on when thinking
about the built environment. Most of the places that we share with strangers are neither
public nor private but exist in a gray area between the two.
[…]
The term “public,” however, is not without problems. Previous commentators have
drawn attention to the contradictory dimensions of the term public.28 Jeff Weintraub has
identified four different uses of the public/private distinction that inform and often confuse
political and scholarly discussions.29 (1) In some contexts the terms “public” and “private”
suggest the difference between the state and the family, whereas (2) in others they are syn-
onyms for the state and the market economy. (3) Political theorists influenced by Hannah
Arendt use “public” to describe the political community that is distinct from the economy,
the household, and the administrative apparatus of the state.30 (4) Finally, cultural critics
treat the public realm as the arena of sociability, a stage for appearing before others.31
The contradictory meanings of public space highlight the difficulty of defining the term
“public.” Intuitively, we take public to mean open or accessible, yet many public buildings
are not open to all. Bureaucratic headquarters and military installations, for example, are
owned by the government but inaccessible to most citizens. These buildings are public in
the sense outlined in definitions one and two; they are owned by the state. Yet places that
are owned and operated under free market principles are sometimes also labeled “public.”
[…]
I propose that we treat public space as a cluster concept. By cluster concept I mean a
term that has multiple and sometimes contradictory definitions. The only way to ap-
proach such a concept is to outline a range of possible meanings or criteria. A subset of
these criteria grouped together would then qualify a site as a public space. 35 Failing to
meet a single criterion, however, would not necessarily categorize a space as private. My
proposed definition of public space has three core components: ownership, accessibility,
and intersubjectivity. In everyday speech, public space usually refers to a place that is
owned by the government, accessible to everyone without restriction, and/or fosters
communication and interaction. This definition reflects the widely shared intuition that
public spaces are the places that facilitate unplanned contacts between people. These
unplanned contacts include interactions between strangers as well as chance meetings
between friends and acquaintances.
[…]
Public space plays an important role as a stage for political activity. According to the
courts, generally accessible, government-owned places such as city streets, squares, and
parks are “traditional public fora.” The political importance of such public spaces was en-
coded in constitutional theory sixty years ago. In Hague v. CIO (1939) the Court considered
the constitutionality of a Jersey City ordinance requiring a permit for speaking in public
places. Writing for the majority, Justice Roberts held that “streets and parks may rest (in
governments but) they have immemorially been held in trust for the use of the public and
… have been used for purposes of assembly, communicating thoughts between citizens, and
discussing public questions. Such use of the streets and public places has, from ancient times,
been a part of the privileges, immunities, rights, and liberties of citizens.”36
The debate about whether to define social spaces as public or private is not merely an
academic question. There are important legal consequences. If a privately owned place is
the functional equivalent of a traditional public forum, the courts are more likely to compel
116  Margaret Kohn
the owners to protect civil rights and allow political activity. Furthermore, privately owned
places may not arbitrarily exclude members of a specific group if they are otherwise open
to the general public.
[…]
Deciding whether to assign the label “public space” is not as easy as checking to make
sure that a given place meets two of the three criteria outlined above. The relative accessi-
bility or exclusiveness of a place can be difficult to assess. Initially, shopping malls, cafes, and
movie theaters, for example, seem generally accessible. The only criterion of admission is
some sort of modest fee, the price of a ticket or a cup of coffee. In some cases, however, this
apparent inclusivity can be based on subtle or invisible forms of exclusion. Private security
guards expel political activists and other undesirables who violate a set of often unwritten
rules. These rules are flexibly and differentially enforced in order to sustain an illusion
of openness while maximizing management’s control.38 Exclusiveness is often achieved
through indirect mechanisms. One task of critical social theory is to identify these less
apparent forms of exclusion so that they can be acknowledged and, perhaps, challenged.
Ownership and accessibility alone, however, cannot fully explain the distinctive quality
of public space. A fuller understanding of the concept requires an account of the kind of
encounters that a space facilitates.39 Some places encourage interaction between people
whereas others foster a kind of collective isolation by focusing everyone on a central object
of attention. Stadiums and theaters, for example, position individuals as members of an
audience whereas others—a playing field, a plaza, a meeting room—may position them as
co-creators of a shared world. To capture this distinction I have used the term “intersub-
jectivity.” Movie theaters and sports stadiums do not feel like public places because they do
not facilitate interaction between people. They aggregate individuals but they do so in a
way that positions them as spectators rather than participants.
[…]
According to Debord, the togetherness fostered through the spectacle is the opposite of
the commonality constituted through dialogue because the latter allows for interaction,
response, and change.41

Conclusion
Municipalities, citizens, consumers, and developers are engaged in a constant struggle to
define and control space. Gated communities are manifestations of the desire to turn pub-
lic space into private space; the popularity of theme parks and their progeny confirms that
spectacle has become a way of life. Downtown districts, residential communities, and shop-
ping malls routinely exclude sources of discomfort for their patrons, including panhandlers
and homeless people, religious zealots, strikers, and petitioners. This desire to exclude the
unsettling and the unattractive is characteristic of a certain mode of spectatorship. It reflects
the widely shared expectation that one should not be forced to view the unpleasant conse-
quences of our social system or witness the sufferings of others. But suffering exists even if
the privileged do not view it; forcing the downtrodden out of sight, banishing them from
the places that the privileged pass in everyday life is not the same as solving social prob-
lems, and may make the problems more difficult to solve. As long as social problems such as
homelessness, poverty, and de facto segregation are only apparent to those who experience
them, there will be few programs committed to change. These problems only become leg-
ible and soluble if they are visible in public space.
[…]
Accessibility and ownership alone, however, do not exhaust the definition of public space.
A community center run by a nonprofit organization seems more like a public space than
 Just City/Right to Public Space  117
a high school football stadium does. The concepts of “spectacle” and “intersubjectivity”
capture this distinction. A community center is a public space because it has rooms that are
designed to host meetings and facilitate debates. A high school football stadium, although
owned by the government and open to all (at least on game day) brings people together as
spectators rather than participants.
These different functions are reflected in the built environment […] Public space can
incite democratic effects when it positions both subject and object together in a shared and
contestable world.

Notes
1 The local press reported that the mall had been asking mall-goers with antiwar T-shirts to leave for
weeks. Winnie Hu, “A Message of Peace on 2 Shirts Touches Off Hostilities at a Mall,” New York
Times, March 6, 2003.
2 Anne Miller, “Mall Drops T-shirt Charges,” The Times Union, March 6, 2003, B1.
3 cnn.com/2003/US/Northeast/03/04/iraq.usa.shirt.reut, March 4, 2003.
4 In Lloyd Corp. v.Tanner (407 U.S. 551) the Supreme Court decided that antiwar protesters had no First
Amendment right to free speech in a privately owned shopping mall. The legal precedent regarding
union picketing of employers is more complex. In Hudgens v. National Labor Relations Board et al. (424
U.S. 507), the Supreme Court found that union members had no First Amendment right to enter a
shopping mall to advertise a strike against their employers, however, they might have some protection
under the National Labor Relations Act. In National Labor Relations Board et al. v. Baptist Hospital, Inc.
(442 U.S. 773) the Supreme Court vacated a hospital rule banning union solicitation in the areas of
the hospital not devoted to patient care (e.g., the cafeteria, lobbies, and gift shop). This suggests that
workers have some right to engage in union activity on their employer’s property, but this right is
limited by competing private property rights. The most recent Supreme Court decision, Lechmere,
Inc. v. NLRB (502 U.S. 527), found that union organizers had no right to enter the shopping center
parking lot in order to distribute pro-union leaflets to employees. See Jamin Raskin, Overruling
Democracy: The Supreme Court Versus the American People (New York: Routledge, 2003), 169–70.
For a fuller discussion of the shopping mall cases, see Chapter 4 [in the Brave New Neighborhoods].
5 Pruneyard Shopping Center et al. v. Robbins (1980) 447 U.S. 74.
7 Hadley Arkes, The Philosopher in the City: Moral Dimensions of Urban Politics (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1981); Robert Teir, “Maintaining Safety and Civility in Public Spaces: A Constitu-
tional Approach to Aggressive Begging,” Louisiana Law Review 54 (1993), 285–338; Robert Ellickson,
“Controlling Chronic Misconduct in City Spaces: Of Panhandlers, Skid Rows, and Public-Space
Zoning.” Yale Law Journal 105 (March 1996), 1165–1246.
8 Susan Bickford, “Constructing Inequality: City Spaces and the Architecture of Citizenship,” Political
Theory 28, no. 3 (2000), 355–376; Iris Marion Young, “The Ideal of Community and the Politics of
Difference,” in Feminism/Postmodernism, ed. L. Nicholson. (New York: Routledge, 1990); Richard
Sennett, The Uses of Disorder (New York: Knopf, 1970).
9 For some readers my decision to include examples from Canada might seem puzzling and for others
my excessive reliance on the experience of the United States requires explanation. I focus on the
United States because it is the country where the process of privatization is most advanced. It is also
the country where I live and work, therefore I am particularly interested in deciphering its political
and cultural logic. Focusing on a single country allows me to show how similar legal and cultural
dynamics affect a range of public spaces (neighborhoods, transportation hubs, shopping, etc.) At the
same time, I want to emphasize that these patterns are not exclusive to the United States or even
the post-industrial West. There are gated communities throughout Mexico and Latin America and
excellent work has been done on the shopping mall in developing countries. See, for example, Mona
Abaza, “Shopping Malls, Consumer Culture, and the Reshaping of Public Space in Egypt,” Theory,
Culture, and Society 18, no. 5 (2001), 97–122. Given that my analysis focuses significantly on the legal
dimension of privatization, however, it makes sense to supplement my discussion of the United States
with the experience of a country with a similar free speech tradition. The Canadian courts draw upon
the same logic and some of the same precedents as the American courts, therefore Canada seemed to
be an appropriate point of comparison.
13 Benjamin Barber, “Malled, Mauled and Overhauled: Arresting Suburban Sprawl by Transforming
the Mall into Usable Civic Space,” in Public Space and Democracy, eds. Marcel Hénaff and Tracy B.
118  Margaret Kohn
Strong (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2001). See also ed. David J. Smiley, Sprawl and
Public Space: Redressing the Mall (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2002).
20 This phrase comes from Aida Hozic, “Zoning or How to Govern (Cultural) Violence,” Cultural Val-
ues 6, no. 1 (2002), 183–195.
21 Iris Marion Young, “Residential Segregation and Differentiated Citizenship,” Citizenship Studies 3,
no. 2 (1999), 240–242.
22 Young, “Residential Segregation and Differentiated Citizenship,” 242.
28 Jeff Weintraub and Krishan Kumar, Public and Private in Thought and Practice: Perspectives on a Grand
Dichotomy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997), 2; Hanna Pitkin, “Justice: On Relating Pri-
vate and Public,” Political Theory 9, no. 3 (1981): 327–352; Norberto Bobbio, “The Great Dichotomy:
Public/Private,” in Democracy and Dictatorship: The Nature and Limits of State Power (Oxford: Polity,
1989).
29 Jeff Weintraub, “The Theory and Politics of the Public/Private Distinction,” in Public and Private in
Thought and Practice, 7.
30 Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958), 22–78.
31 See, for example, Richard Sennett, The Fall of Public Man (New York: Random House, 1976).
35 William E. Connolly, The Terms of Political Discourse (Lexington, MA: D.C. Heath and Company,
1974), 14.
36 Hague v. Committee for Industrial Organizations 307 U.S. 496 (1939).
38 A student in my graduate seminar, Cities and Citizenship, wrote a short paper based on participant
observation at the Oaks Mall. He witnessed security guards asking a group of black youth to leave
the food court because they violated rules against gambling (playing cards). An elderly woman and
young child who were playing Go Fish were not asked to leave. A similar incident in St. Petersburg,
Florida was reported in the newspapers. A black youth, the son of a local minister, was forced to leave
the mall because he was wearing a baseball cap sideways (considered a gang sign) even though white
youths were allowed to wear baseball caps. See Rosalind Helderman, “Lawyer Tests Mall Policy on
Clothing, Gets Warning,” St. Petersburg Times, July 25, 2000, 3B.
39 Richard Sennett, The Uses of Disorder (New York: Knopf, 1970).
41 Guy Debord, The Society of the Spectacle (New York: Zone Books, 1995), 17.

Figure 3.0.2  Sony “Public Space” sign, Sony Wonder, New York City, 2004. Photo © Miodrag Mitrašinović.
3.2 Propositions for More Just Urban
Public Spaces
Setha Low and Kurt Iveson
Source: Low, S. and Iveson, K. (2016). “Propositions for More Just Urban Public
Spaces,” City, 20(1), 10–31.

Social justice and public space: Five propositions

Drawing upon, and extending, the existing work on social justice and cities, we offer five
propositions that can be used in evaluations of the justice of public spaces. As we shall see,
these propositions are both integrative (in the sense that they are designed to address related
but distinct dimensions of justice in relation to public space) and disjunctive (in the sense
that they are not simply cumulative, because putting two or more of these propositions
together can in some circumstances generate tensions and contradictions that will require
contextually specific resolutions).

Public space and distributive justice

Distributive justice refers to questions of how the wealth, rewards, benefits and burdens of
urban life should be distributed to achieve a just city. Do characteristics of the city such
as the provision and regulation of public space contribute to the inequality of rich and
poor? The discussion about distributive justice revolves around whether economic benefits
and burdens should accrue to individuals equally, according to need, according to merit,
or disproportionately to those who are the least well off (Rawls 1971). To the extent that
differences of wealth are a product of processes that systematically distribute resources and
opportunities unequally, such that class inequalities take hold, advocates of distributive
justice argue that they are unjust.
With respect to public space and social justice, a focus on distributive justice generates
two important kinds of questions. First, what is the geographical distribution of public
spaces across the wider urban environment, and what kinds of processes generate such
distributions? Does the distribution of public spaces across the landscape ensure that in-
habitants across the city have access to public spaces regardless of their wealth, or do some
people experience ‘locational dis- advantage’ because they inhabit a neighborhood with
less public space than other neighborhoods? According to Soja (2010, 47), ‘Distributional
inequity is the most basic and obvious expression of spatial injustice.’ As Soja notes, in the
early literature on social justice and the city, the distribution of facilities such as doctors,
schools, and other public services and infrastructure across geographical space was interro-
gated through the concept of ‘territorial justice.’ This issue of locational disadvantage with
respect to public space is one that demands attention to the provision of public space across
a metropolitan area, and poses questions about the distribution of resources required to
provide and maintain public space across the city.
Second, a focus on the distributional dimensions of public space raises the matter of
­a ffordability—does access to public space depend on wealth and/or ability to pay, or is
access ensured regardless of wealth and means? Here, the matter of access to public space
 Just City/Right to Public Space  121
is not only one of provision and location, but also one of design and governance. If people
seeking to occupy public space cannot afford to spend money with nearby businesses and
find themselves being ‘moved on’ from public spaces by hyper-vigilant private security
guards employed by those very businesses, this is a form of distributive injustice. One of
the reasons that public spaces such as parks and public libraries are often highly valued is
that they tend to enshrine the principle of ‘access for all’ that takes no account of individual
wealth and means (see Fincher and Iveson 2008, chap. 7). And of course, one of the reasons
that shopping malls and BIDs have been so controversial is precisely because they tend to
generate exclusion based on wealth. Our example at the beginning of this paper concerning
the closure of public spaces for fee-paying events is an example of a development that raises
questions from the perspective of distributive justice.
Therefore, a focus on distributive justice in relation to public space directs us to examine
both the distribution of public spaces across the city, and the accessibility of those public
spaces to urban populations regardless of their wealth. Of course, when such examina-
tions are conducted, it is one thing to identify unequal distributions of public space and/or
unequal access to public space for the poor, it is another thing to argue that these unequal
distributions are unjust. Unequal outcomes are unjust to the extent that they are the prod-
uct of processes that systematically produce and maintain inequalities through distributions
that favor the rich over the poor. As such, any deep examination of distributive justice must
examine not only the nature of public space outcomes, but also the processes that generate
unequal outcomes.
The related distributional questions of locational disadvantage and affordable access are
becoming ever more important as profit-seeking property developers play an increasing
role in urban governance in many cities. In the UK, for example, Anna Minton (2012, xii)
argues that the marketization of urban development has produced an increasingly ‘divided
landscape of privately owned, disconnected, high security, gated enclaves side by side with
enclaves of poverty which remain untouched by the wealth around them.’ Of course, sim-
ilar claims have been made in cities in other parts of the world (see: Caldeira 2000; Davis
1990, 2006; Low 2003).

Public space and recognition

As noted in the previous section, a number of thinkers have drawn attention to the limi-
tations of an exclusive focus on redistribution as a strategy for achieving social and spatial
justice. Alongside redistribution, recognition seeks to address the systematic devaluing and
stigmatization of some urban identities and ways of life in cities. Disputes over all sorts of
urban issues are instigated by groups who argue that for justice to be done, their particular
values and needs ought to be taken into account in the shaping of cities. When such groups
feel that their very identities and ways of being in the city are unfairly denigrated or stigma-
tized, justice is fundamentally a matter of status and has an inter-subjective dimension: the
pursuit of equality involves working against ‘cultural patterns that systematically deprecate
some categories of people and the qualities associated with them’ (Fraser 1998, 31).
With respect to public space and social justice, a focus on recognition directs our atten-
tion to the norms of use and behavior that are entrenched in the provision and regulation of
public spaces. The formation and expression of collective identities is likely to be highly de-
pendent on access to public spaces, where members of a given group can interact with one
another. Given this, if certain ways of occupying public space are ideologically positioned
as being ‘out of place’ in a given public space, and if such ideologies are inscribed into the
regulatory practices of urban authorities and other urban inhabitants, this could result in in-
justice for some groups in the city (Hall and Smith 2014; Cresswell 2015; Iveson 2007). So,
122  Setha Low and Kurt Iveson
for instance, Low’s (2000, 2006) studies on urban parks have noted the ways in which the
sights, sounds, smells and practices associated with some migrant groups are discriminated
against through regulations that explicitly or implicitly universalize the particular norms of
groups who claim the status of ‘host.’
The forms that recognition might take are still vigorously debated in social and political
theory. Difficult questions are posed by the notion of recognition: what is the nature of the
‘group’ to be recognized? And who or what does the recognizing? Here, justice will not
necessarily be served simply by allowing members of all groups to ‘be themselves’ in public
space. For one thing, when the kinds of public spaces discussed in this paper are finite, it
is always possible that the activities of one group may be incompatible with the activities
of others, so unlimited recognition for all may not be possible. Further, different identity
groups are themselves internally differentiated. Urban inhabitants are likely to ‘belong’ to
many such groups, and the meaning of belonging is always far from settled. Therefore, the
recognition of any given group is never likely to be entirely straightforward.
In this context, thinkers such as Fraser (1998) argue that we should pursue a relational form
of recognition, where claims for recognition are adjudicated according to whether they ad-
dress matters of status relations rather than positively value group identity as such. That is to
say, claims for recognition should not be supported on the grounds that they help to sustain
a group’s distinctiveness per se. Rather, we should support those claims for recognition that
seek to address institutionalized patterns of cultural value which give a particular group a
subordinate status in relation to others. If we accept this premise, then the nature of inter-
action between different groups come sharply into focus.

Public space, encounter and interactional justice

The concept of interactional justice is about the quality of interpersonal interaction in a
specific situation or place. Psychologists find that to a large extent individuals make justice
appraisals based on the quality of interactional treatment they receive (Cropanzano and
Randell 1993). Attributes of interactional fairness include truthfulness, respect, propriety
and justification (Bies 1986).
With respect to public space and social justice, interactional justice refers to the qualities
of interactions between different users of a given public space. It is sometimes difficult to
distinguish interactional justice from recognition (see above) and procedural justice (see
below), since all three incorporate elements of fairness in how a person or group is treated.
For instance, misrecognition may take the form of rules concerning behavior in a public
space (see above), but it may also have an interactional component, in which members of a
group are subject to verbal or physical abuse when occupying a public space in a particular
manner. This interactional component of justice, then, focuses more specifically on the
nature of encounters that take place in public space. It is through such encounters that urban
inhabitants can establish new collective identifications with one another that are not prem-
ised on shared ‘membership’ of a group, but on shared activities and practices.
While the dynamics of encounter between urban inhabitants may at first seem to be a
matter for morality or manners rather than policy and politics, Fincher and Iveson have
argued that policy can indeed play a crucial role in enhancing both the quantity and quality
of interaction among urban inhabitants. Following Peattie, they argue that more convivial
atmospheres need not only a particular orientation towards strangers, but also a ‘material
base’ for their production and maintenance.
[…]
Interactional justice should not be overlooked as simply a form of procedural justice. For
instance, Whitman et al. (2012) found based on a meta-analysis of empirical organizational
 Just City/Right to Public Space  123
studies that a positive interactional justice climate and respectful interpersonal behaviors
significantly increased cooperation throughout the organization. Similar studies of the im-
pact of procedural or interactional justice behaviors and/or climate have not been replicated
in public space nonetheless these findings are indicative of changes that might be expected.
During Occupy Wall Street and the uprisings at Tahrir Square, for example, there were
repeated reports of a palpable climate of trust and cooperation that developed among the
protestors who were committed to treating all participants occupying those public spaces
with care and respect (Maharawal 2014).

Public space and care and repair

Since interactional justice based on respectful treatment and an absence of physical and
verbal abuse contributes to increased cooperation, it follows that pro-social behavior such
as caring for others and participating in the repair of the environment also constitutes an
important dimension of social justice in public space. Recent years have seen a grow-
ing literature from diverse disciplinary perspectives converging around the issue of care.
These intellectual currents include efforts within feminist economics to construct analyt-
ical frameworks for understanding the ‘other economy’ where the direct production and
maintenance of human beings takes place, as well as methodologies for measuring and
valuing it (Tronto 2013). From within social policy research there have been concerted
efforts to engender welfare regimes analysis by bringing in issues of care. Dovetailing and
enriching with the diverse conceptual and empirical engagements has been a philosophical
conversation about the ‘ethics of care’, contesting the narrowness of an ethic of paid work
that drives policy agendas and reforms across welfare states.
The organization and ethics of care has received less attention in the literature on public
space than matters of distribution, recognition and interaction discussed above. We believe
that considerations about care have two important implications for our approach to making
more just public spaces. First, structures of caregiving in any given society will have a sig-
nificant impact on who is able to access public space, and so must be considered as matters
of social justice. This applies most obviously to groups like children or the elderly, whose
access to public space is often facilitated by caring others (such as family members and care
workers). In the Western political tradition, the provision of such care has not been viewed
as a matter of social justice. Instead, visions of public life have been underpinned by an ‘as-
sumption of autonomy,’ which takes for granted the existence of private individuals capable
of participating in public life, and makes autonomy a qualification for full participation. By
treating the production of autonomous individuals as a pre-political matter for the private
realm, and excluding from public life those who are not considered to be autonomous, this
tradition fails to acknowledge that inequalities in the provision of care actually impact upon
public life.
[…]
This notion suggests that social justice would include the resourcing and supporting of
carers who can enable everyone’s access to public space. Tom Hall and Robin Smith’s (2014)
study of homeless volunteers working in Cardiff, UK highlights the role that ‘kindness’
plays in the ‘good city’ and depicts a caring city as more resilient and contributing to con-
viviality. Caring in public space, in this sense, focuses on attending to other’s needs, not just
passively through recognition or interaction, but in pro-social and life-enhancing ways. An
example is the street vendor at Columbus Circle in New York City who protects the safety
of young mothers and children by warning them of dangerous visitors, a rat, or a slippery
sidewalk and calls an ambulance or the police when needed. Other ‘public characters’ who
inhabit public space (Duneier 1999), such as the shoeshine men on Parque Central (Low
124  Setha Low and Kurt Iveson
2000) in San Jose´, Costa Rica or the self-proclaimed ‘park mayor’ of Denver, Colorado’s
central square provide care by watching out for children, the elderly and anyone lost or
confused (Setha Low, field observations). Political and social solidarity is often built out of
caring both for others and the environment (Fennell 2014; Fisher 2012). For example, Oc-
cupy Wall Street (OWS) in New York City was based on a politics of care that focused on
insuring that everyone had a safe place to sleep, access to communication technology and
collective meals. Coats, clothes and daily necessities were collected from surrounding busi-
nesses and residents to address the physical needs of OWS participants and underscore that
caring for one another was a foundational part of representing the ‘99%’ (Maharawal 2013).
The second implication of the literature on care for social justice in public space con-
cerns caring for places. While not well-developed as a concept in public space planning
and policy, women’s environmental activism is often described in maternalist terms—as if
motherhood and caring for the environment go hand in hand (MacGregor 2006) and the
core of ecological integrity and social justice is based on the politics of care (Morgan 2010).
An ethic of caring in public space would also include ‘repair’—the often overlooked acts
of maintenance and upkeep which keep the city and its residents going. Small-scale acts
of kindness and activities of repair such as picking up trash or adding flowers to a public
space are not simply reassuring, but contribute to a sense of well-being and enable other
forms of justice and recognition to flourish (Tronto 2013; Fisher 2012). Acts of repair may
also include more structured and resourced activities of upkeep and maintenance through
a range of formal urban services like trash collection, signage, gardening and the like. As
Amin (2008: 22) points out, while such activities are often ‘invisible’ until they go wrong,
they are vital for the production of a just civic culture in public space.
[…]
Caring and repair can be understood and evaluated as part of social justice in public space
because it speaks to and represents a tolerance for others that provides the groundwork for a
socially just place. Across both of the registers we have discussed—care for people and care for
places—the influence of neoliberalism discussed earlier has been a pernicious effect, pushing
care back into the private market realm as a matter of personal or community responsibility,
rather than acknowledging the need for collective effort and resources (Tronto 2013, 37–40).
Further, some forms of care have been more focused on punitive approaches to so-called
‘anti-social behavior’ that contribute to status inequalities (see recognition and interaction
above), rather than focusing on more pro-social forms of care for people and place.

Public space and procedural justice

We have seen that each of the previous four propositions about justice in public space gener-
ate questions about the processes through which public spaces are produced—through what
processes are resources allocated to their provision and maintenance, and through what
processes are their rules of use and norms of interaction established?
While we agree with critics who argue that justice in urban outcomes must not be
reduced to a matter of procedural fairness (e.g., Fainstein 2000), justice undeniably has
a procedural component. With respect to public space and social justice, a concern with
procedural justice focuses our attention on the ways in which decisions about public spaces
are made—to what extent are public spaces themselves the object of genuinely democratic
and inclusive public debate in the wider urban public sphere, and to what extent are such
debates captured by powerful interests or constrained by existing societal structures such
as, for example, entrenched concepts of private property (e.g., Iveson 2007; Low and Smith
2006; Staeheli and Mitchell 2008).
 Just City/Right to Public Space  125
Importantly, the processes of negotiation and decision-making that shape public spaces
have a significant influence on fairness and our perceptions of fairness. Psychologists have
found that distributional outcomes are not the only relevant issue when determining peo-
ple’s perception of fairness (Tyler and Blader 2003; Tyler 2000, 2005). The way that a
person is included in decision-making processes is equally important. While early research
on social justice supported the findings that people felt most satisfied when outcomes were
distributed fairly, subsequent research found that distributive justice outcomes were often
biased, and that the favorability of an outcome was less crucial when the underlying alloca-
tion process was perceived as fair (Tyler and Blader 2003; Cropanzano and Randall 1993).
Recent research on contacts with the police in Australia found that a relational model of au-
thority that emphasizes the role of procedural justice was associated with ‘higher perceived
legitimacy, outcome fairness and satisfaction with the contact’ (Elliot, Thomas, and Ogloff
2011, 592). Further, a climate of procedural justice may also be manifest in emotional con-
tagion and a sense of trust more generally (Whitman et al. 2012).
Crucially, such research suggests that public spaces will not be perceived as just if ­people
are systematically locked-out of decision-making processes that shape their use—either
through direct forms of exclusion that put decision-making behind closed doors, or through
indirect forms of exclusion where the rules of participation in decision-making systemati-
cally favor some groups over others.

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B. H. Sheppard, & M. Bazerman, 43–55. Greenwich, Connecticut: JAI Press.
Caldeira, Teresa. 2000. City of Walls: Crime, Segregation and Citizenship in Sao Paulo. Berkeley: University
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Cresswell, Tim. 2015. Place: An Introduction. Malden and Oxford: Wiley Blackwell.
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Davis, Mike. 1990. City of Quartz: Excavating the Future in Los Angles. London: Verso.
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Duneier, Mitchell. 1999. Sidewalk. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Elliott, Irina, Stuart, D. M.
Thomas, and James, R. P. Ogloff. 2011. “Procedural Justice in Contacts with the Police: Testing a
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Elliott, Irina, Stuart, D. M. Thomas, and James, R. P. Ogloff. 2011. “Procedural Justice in Contacts with
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Policy, and Law 17 (4): 592–610.
Fainstein, Susan S. 2000. “New Directions in Planning Theory.” Urban Affairs Review 35 (4): 451–478.
Fennell, Catherine. 2014. “Experiments in Vulnerability: Sociability and Care in Chicago’s Redevelop-
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Encounter. Basingstoke: Palgrave.
Fincher, Ruth, and Kurt Iveson. 2012. “Justice and Injustice in the City.” Geographical Research 50 (3):
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Care in Northern Australia.” American Ethnologist 39 (1): 171–186.
Fraser, Nancy. 1998. “Social Justice in the Age of Identity Politics: Redistribution, Recognition and
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Hall, Tom, and Robin Smith. 2014. “Care and Repair and the Politics of Urban Kindness.” Sociology,
1–16.
Iveson, Kurt. 2007. Publics and the City. Malden and Oxford: Blackwell Publishing.
Low, Setha. 2000. On the Plaza: The Politics of Public Space and Culture. Austin: University of Texas Press.
Low, Setha. 2006. “The Erosion of Public Space and the Public Realm: Paranoia, Surveillance and Pri-
vatization in New York City.” City and Society 18 (1): 43–49.
Low, Setha, and Neil Smith. 2006. The Politics of Public Space. New York and London: Routledge.
MacGregor, Sherilyn. 2006. Beyond Mothering Earth: Ecological Citizenship and the Politics of Care. Vancou-
ver: University of British Columbia Press.
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Figure 3.0.3  M ifflin Square Alliance Festival, Philadelphia, PA, 2015. Photo © Miguel Robles-Durán.
Courtesy of COHSTRA. “Playgrounds for Useful Knowledge,” Philadelphia, USA (2014-
2015), by Cohabitation Strategies (Lucia Babina, Emiliano Gandolfi, Gabriela Rendón and
Miguel Robles-Durán) is a project commissioned by The City of Philadelphia Mural Arts
Program and the Pew Center for Arts and Heritage. The project developed into a plat-
form for strategic socio-spatial interventions at the scale of the neighborhood of South East
­Philadelphia. It was conceived to reveal, produce, share and celebrate local knowledges. As
an urban platform it looked for the medium- and long-term restructuring of public spaces
in parallel to the promotion of new cultural, social and economic relations, with the objec-
tive of producing just and sustainable forms of collective inhabitation. The project proposed
looking at playgrounds in the historical tradition of ludic imaginaries and their capacity
to produce new political subjectivities through playful confrontations in public space. The
Mifflin Square Park Festival, a component of the overall project, consisted in the community
take-over of the largest public square in South Philadelphia. It was designed as an annual
event with day-long cultural programming aimed at creating the alliance of neighborhood
residents in order to combat gentrification in the area.
3.3 Parks and People: An
Environmental Justice Inquiry in
Baltimore, Maryland
Christopher G. Boone, Geoffrey L. Buckley, J. Morgan Grove
and Chona Sister
Source: Boone, C. et al. (2009). “Parks and People: An Environmental Justice In-
quiry in Baltimore, Maryland.” Annals of the Association of American Geographers,
99(4), 767–787.

Procedural injustice: Institutional legacies on the landscape

A limitation of much environmental justice literature is the inference of process from pat-
tern. Although the distribution of parks or hazardous facilities can suggest possible linkages
between race and the location of environmental amenities or disamenities, to advance the
science of environmental justice it is necessary to investigate the drivers or forces that gen-
erate those patterns.
One way of doing so is to examine the legacy of past decisions on the present landscape.
Cities are the product of thousands of individual and collective decisions, made in the
context of larger social and economic cycles, environmental limitations and possibilities,
and politics. In the following section, we examine the public and private institutions that
played a significant role in the development of parks and Baltimore’s residential geography,
with a special focus on segregation. We draw on official park plans, master plans, municipal
ordinances, newspaper accounts, unpublished documents from neighborhood associations,
and records from the Home Owners Loan Corporation. Similar documents are available
for most municipalities. Undertaking a historical process analysis, however, requires a con-
siderable investment in time, which is one of the challenges of process- and place-based
research. Yet we and others believe such an approach is critical for advancing environmental
justice research (Pulido 2000; Mennis and Jordan 2005; Pastor, Morello-Frosch, and Sadd
2005).
Results from the outcome analysis show that residents of metropolitan Baltimore have
relatively good access to parks. The mean distance to parks for the 860,000 parcels in metro
Baltimore is 705 m, with a standard deviation of 851 m. Conditions for the City of Balti-
more are even better. In Baltimore, the mean distance of residential parcels to the closest
park boundary is only 500 m and the maximum distance is 1,904 m. The number of acres
per thousand population puts Baltimore in the old range of the NRPA suggestions. Com-
pared to Los Angeles, Dallas, or Phoenix, residents have good walking access to parks (The
Trust for Public Land 2004; Wolch, Wilson, and Fehrenbach 2005). A recent telephone
survey on recreation in metro Baltimore showed that the vast majority of residents, nearly
90 percent, are satisfied with park quality and availability.
[…]
In many cases the establishment of parks was a difficult process. Because of heavy demands
on space in compact walking cities, prior to the second half of the nineteenth century, set-
ting aside land for parks was rare (Rosenzweig and Blackmar 1992; Tuason 1997). In Bal-
timore, the establishment of parks required the long and often difficult process of cobbling
together parcels of private land or the action of civic groups to seek out large donors […] As
 Just City/Right to Public Space  129
the city expanded, it enveloped the country estates of some of the region’s most prominent
citizens. Today, these former estates constitute the core of Baltimore’s park system. Despite
this auspicious beginning, by the turn of the twentieth century it was clear that Baltimore’s
modest system of parks and squares was not meeting the needs of city residents. Nor were
these amenities distributed equally or equitably. An editorial published in the Baltimore
News in 1897 put it bluntly: “The parks of our city should be for the p­ eople—all the
­people—not for a particular class, or for those living in a particular district.”
[…]
Although [by the early 20th Century] Baltimore developed an extensive park system, numer-
ous plans and documents remarked on the relative lack of park space for its black residents. An
Urban League Report from the mid-1930s commented on the absence of “recreation space for
Negroes near their zones of residence” at a time when “the peculiar economic and social pre-
cursors of the depression… gave Negroes more leisure and few organized facilities for using it”
(Reid 1935, 28). Noting that the Playground Athletic League operated numerous playgrounds in
South Baltimore to which “thousands of children flock” each year, a report issued in 1938 by the
South Baltimore Improvement Association “regretted that many of them have great distances to
walk before reaching an area that is safe to play.” This was especially true for South Baltimore’s
“Negro youth,” who were forced to make do with “very meager facilities” (South Baltimore
Improvement Association 1938). A poorly funded Division of Recreation for Colored People,
which fell under the auspices of the Board of Education, could not hope to provide for the
recreational needs of black Baltimoreans. The Long Range Recreation Plan of 1941, prepared

Figure 3.3.1  Park congestion levels in the greater Baltimore region, 2000. PSA = park service area.
130  Christopher G. Boone et al.
by the National Recreation Association for Baltimore’s Board of Public Recreation, concluded
that the city had inadequate acreage in parks, especially for children’s playgrounds, and that the
“colored community is lacking in areas and facilities quite out of proportion to the ratio of its
numbers to the total population” (Pangburn and Allen 1941, ix). The report recommended that
the Board acquire an additional 473 acres for children’s playgrounds, and the plan included the
continued use of two playgrounds, enlargement of eleven others, and creation of fourteen new
playgrounds, for a total of twenty-seven playgrounds “for colored children” (Pangburn and
Allen 1941, x). Similar to the Urban League Report, the park report recognized the increasing
congestion of blacks in the northwest and eastern sections of the city, the doubling and tripling
up of families in former houses owned by whites, and the associated high rates of tuberculosis
and infant mortality. Ironically, the higher rates of disease in the congested black neighborhoods
were historically one of the reasons for segregation policies in the city (Olson 1979). “It is ob-
vious,” the Board concluded, “that the most urgent needs are in the colored community” and
therefore that “some of the very first projects should be undertaken in their neighborhoods”

Figure 3.3.2  Park needs index by census tract for metropolitan Baltimore, 2000, and existing parks.
 Just City/Right to Public Space  131
(Pangburn and Allen 1941, 89). Interestingly, the report also suggested that playgrounds should
be within a quarter-mile radius of every child’s home, the same distance as modern recom-
mendations for walking access. Continued segregation of parks and other recreation facilities,
including golf courses, into the 1950s, despite repeated attempts by the Urban League and others
in the 1930s and 1940s to desegregate the parks, meant the issue of lack of “colored parks” would
remain pressing and noteworthy (see, for example, Wells 2006).
Residential dynamics in Baltimore have been shaped by a long history of de jure and de
facto segregation. For these reasons it was possible for the park reports to speak of “white”
and “colored” parks. The designation of parks by race was a reality because of the high
degree of residential segregation, in addition to the other modes of control that kept white
spaces separate from black. The most egregious segregation acts were the city ordinances
of 1910, 1911, and 1913. Baltimore was the first municipality in the country to legally seg-
regate its city into “white” and “colored” blocks. This Baltimore-style “apartheid” (Power
1983) stipulated that no blacks (with the exception of black servants in white houses) could
move into blocks that were half white and vice versa (Nightingale 2006).
[…]
Baltimore’s population peaked in 1950 and over the course of the next fifty years, its
economy would experience a net loss of 100,000 manufacturing jobs (U.S. Bureau of Cen-
sus 1952; U.S. Census Bureau 2000). Black population continued to increase while white
population dwindled, an all-too-familiar story of post–World War II white (and later black
middle-class) flight. Over the last half century, the city has developed numerous programs,
slogans, and incentives to try to reverse the population and economic decline. In a 1967
parks report, the authors noted that good parks could be one way of brightening Baltimore’s
future. Lack of playgrounds, “particularly within the high-density areas” (City of Baltimore
1967, 11), remained an issue. Although specific racial or ethnic groups are not mentioned
in the report, high-density areas translated for all intents and purposes into black neighbor-
hoods, where residential densities (mean of 10,278/km 2) were nearly double those in pre-
dominantly (> 75 percent) white census tracts. One potential solution, absurd in hindsight,
was the development of parks under elevated expressways. Freeways also served as a means
of clearing slums and blighted areas, which planners viewed as one reason for a declining
population in the city. As World War II drew to a close, the Baltimore City Planning Com-
mission brought in Robert Moses, the influential builder of highways and bridges in New
York City, who promoted an east–west highway that would have displaced 19,000 people
in blighted areas, a form of slum clearance that Moses promoted for the long-term benefit
of the city. H. L. Mencken, Baltimore’s noted journalist and wit, called the plan “idiotic”
(Mohl 2004, 689). A more elaborate plan in 1955, which would have razed large parts of
Rosemont, a middle-class black district, and the historic neighborhoods of Fells Point and
Federal Hill, was shouted down by angry constituents at public hearings in the early 1960s.
The final nail in the coffin was the success of the Movement Against Destruction and other
community groups in stopping the extension of I-70 through Baltimore, which would have
run through Leakin Park, and Interstate 83 at city limits in the early 1970s (Olson 1997;
Mohl 2004). Although the freeway revolts saved many neighborhoods, they did little to
reverse the tide of middle-class flight, not surprising given the larger economic and social
forces that were creating a primarily black core and underclass (Harvey 1985; Massey 1990).
By 2000, blacks constituted 65 percent of the population in the City of Baltimore, and
they lived in a city dotted with parks large and small. Because of the extensive park system,
developed over a century and a half, Baltimore, unlike many American cities, does not have
accessibility goals (Mary Porter, Design Planner, City of Baltimore Department of Parks
and Recreation, personal e-mail communication, 9 May 2006). In essence, the high access
ratio for blacks is a hand-me-down from former white neighborhoods, a historical legacy
132  Christopher G. Boone et al.
of white privilege. But not all hand-me-downs, as any younger sibling knows, are worth
having. Swann Park, located near the Digital Harbor High School and next to the former
Allied Chemical Plant, now owned by Honeywell, was recently closed to the public after
arsenic levels in the soil were found to be 100 times acceptable levels (Pelton 2007). When
parks become brownfields or acute health hazards, it is a stretch to call them an amenity.
Although this park was used actively, the health concerns that arise from the arsenic level
should put it well beyond the amenity category, even if perceived as such by kids playing
baseball or adults walking their dogs.
The next generation of environmental justice research needs to address, among other
concerns, to what degree individual parks contribute to quality of life or meet the needs
of their residents. As a public good, the equitable distribution of parks, whether meas-
ured in terms of spatial distribution, acreage, or quality, should be a basic goal. To
address equity, a needs-based approach, as employed here, can also address distributive
justice concerns. Assessing the public health benefits of parks as an equity issue would
be an innovative strategy. Public health research can help to identify at-risk populations,
especially children at risk of obesity, who would best be served with better access to
parks (Greenberg and Renne 2005; Kipke et al. 2007). Evaluating the ability of parks to
improve health of children, for example, could serve as a guiding principle for equitable
park planning.

Conclusion
Using established and new methods for examining the distributive justice of parks in Balti-
more, we find that African American and high-need populations have better walking access
to parks but access to less park acreage per capita than whites and low-need populations.
For African Americans, the current benefit of living close to parks comes in spite of a long
history of official neglect of the recreational needs of black Baltimoreans in addition to seg-
regation of blacks from white spaces through de jure and de facto mechanisms. The story of
parks in Baltimore illuminates the complex interactions between race and planning where
efforts to segregate the city fueled fear and ignorance, and consequently white and later
middle-class black flight to the suburbs, along with population and economic decline in the
core. As a city working toward revitalization, Baltimore is now living and struggling with
the legacies of segregation and environmental injustice.
This article contributes to environmental justice scholarship in three important ways.
First, it incorporates a novel method, PSAs and dasymetric mapping of socioeconomic
data, for assessing the distributional justice of parks. Although simple buffering around
parks meets the 400-m standard for a walkable park, the PSA method allows us to capture
potential park users by assigning each area of the city to its closest park. The dasymetric
approach improves the efficacy of the PSA method by designating where people actually
live rather than assuming even distribution of residents throughout a census tract or block
group. Nevertheless, this method does not track actual usage, nor does it assess the quality,
attractiveness, or meanings of different parks. The approaches of Low, Taplin, and Scheld
(2005) on local and cultural meanings, and Brownlow (2006) on the ecology of fear of
parks, should be coupled with these distributional analyses to improve our understanding
of park equity.
Second, this article advances environmental justice scholarship by focusing on parks as
an environmental justice issue rather than the traditional spotlight on polluting industry
or hazardous waste facilities. Measuring the uneven distribution of environmental ben-
efits, as opposed to burdens, in relation to where social groups live is a legitimate and
 Just City/Right to Public Space  133
important justice concern. At the root of most environmental justice struggles is con-
cern for human health. The vast majority of environmental justice studies pay attention
to toxins and pollutants because of their negative health impacts. Parks and recreation
spaces generally have positive impacts on physical and mental health, as the public health
literature has convincingly demonstrated. If human health is a fundamental justification
for environmental justice, then parks should fall within the realm of environmental jus-
tice inquiries. The distribution of parks should be scrutinized for other reasons beyond
health implications. As a public investment, parks should be distributed in an equitable
manner in accordance with justifiable needs. This article provides an assessment of need
using established protocols, but further research should refine fairness and equity of park
accessibility and distribution, taking into account perceptions and meanings of parks,
information beyond what can be discerned from census data. As public places in highly
privatized urban areas, parks also provide opportunities for social and community en-
gagement. Very few public places exist in cities, especially those where people can
linger or loiter or express civil disobedience (Mitchell 2003). For the homeless, parks
are a last refuge from increasingly fortified and monitored urban spaces (Davis 1992).
More than a recreation space, parks serve the critical functions of providing public space
and a right to the city. Ecologists support the establishment and maintenance of parks,
although typically for other reasons. Depending on their configuration, parks can pro-
vide important habitats for flora and fauna, spaces for nutrient cycling, stopover points
for migrating species, and other ecosystem functions. The ecosystem function of parks
can also return environmental benefits to humans in the form of cooler temperatures,
amelioration of pollutants, reduction in stormwater loads, and other services. Because of
the multiple benefits derived from parks, their distribution will continue to be debated
and contested.
Third, this article extends environmental justice scholarship by combining an analysis
of distributive and procedural inequity. It is difficult to understand the process of en-
vironmental inequity formation without comprehending the historical and institutional
dynamics that create such inequities. Others have used historical and institutional analyses
to explain the development of environmental disamenities and hazards, but this article
breaks new ground by focusing on the development of an environmental amenity, a parcel
of public space usually regarded as a privilege rather than a burden. What is remarkable
about this story is that the efforts and policies of the segregation ordinances, racial cov-
enants, improvement associations, the Home Owners Loan Corporation, and the Parks
and Recreation Board that created separate black spaces underserved with parks fueled the
fire of middle-class flight and suburbanization. The inherited spaces might appear from a
­present-day point of view to be a just distribution. But if justice demands just distribution
justly achieved, then it is difficult to interpret the pattern of parks in Baltimore as envi-
ronmental justice.

Acknowledgments
Research for this article was supported through awards from the National Science
Foundation Long-Term Ecological Research program (DEB 0423476), the National
Science Foundation Human and Social Dynamics program (SBE–HSD 0624159), and
the U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Service (06JV11242300039). We thank
Audrey Kobayashi and the anonymous reviewers for their very helpful comments and
encouragement.
134  Christopher G. Boone et al.
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Figure 3.0.4  Tercer Milenio Park, Bogotá, Colombia. Image © Villegas Editores. Courtesy of Rachel
Berney.
3.4 Public Space Versus Tableau: The
Right-to-The-City Paradox in
Neoliberal Bogotá, Colombia
Rachel Berney
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ing Right to The City in the Global South. New York: Routledge, 152–170.

Introduction
For the past twenty-five years, the city of Bogotá, Colombia, has labored to overcome its
dystopian image as the world drug capital. Prior to this effort, the city environment was so
hostile that residents were used to negotiating life only in their own self-interest. Through-
out the 1990s and 2000s the city combatted this individualism by re-imagining public space
as an educational ground for citizen interaction and learning. Civic administrations sought
to integrate dispersed territories within the city, humanize public space and encourage
socio-economic integration. The mayor’s office instituted public space projects to forge
links between the city’s prosperous north and the poorer south. The broad goal, according
to officials, was to supersede the income disparities and hostilities among residents by forg-
ing a sense of shared citizenship and, as a result, generate attitudes of civility and common
purpose.
Establishing orderly spaces was paramount to the success of these strategies to reinvent
public space and citizenship. In support of this effort, citizens’ right to public space was
codified into the 1991 Colombian Constitution, and urban interventions in Bogotá’s public
spaces focused on improving equity of access. These policies assumed that by providing
access to a key communal resource, public space, and to free programs there, new Bogo-
tano citizens could be constructed from mutual social interaction and from pride of place.
Paradoxically, while social programs and physical changes to public spaces themselves were
effective in opening the city to all citizens, a strong tension developed between unfettered
access and the imperative of orderly public space.
While officials focused diligently on expanding access to the city, they also created pro-
grams to scrutinize and direct behavior in public spaces (Berney 2011). The right to public
space existed, but only if exercised with what officials deemed proper behavior, in line with
a global neoliberal agenda that favors investment-worthy, stable cities. City leaders offered
a sense of belonging and a right to the city, but under particular conditions. This paradox
carried through to how citizenship was formed and inured by limits to behavior in the city’s
public space. While these programs of the 1990s and 2000s hoped that participation in pub-
lic space would remake a person as a citizen, the actual reality was that, given how behavior
was monitored and constrained by efforts to keep public space orderly, only certain people
were allowed this promised citizenship.
This chapter explores how Bogotá’s goal to produce citizens through access to public
space played out against the need for orderly conduct within the neoliberal agenda. This
is most visible in the activities of the two public space mayors: Antanas Mockus (1995–7 and
2001–3) and Enrique Peñalosa (1998–2000). While these two mayors reshaped governance
in Bogotá and created expansive public space improvements, the new public citizens’ be-
havior was policed and monitored, ultimately limiting the right to the city upon which the
 Just City/Right to Public Space  139
public space improvements were founded. This turned public spaces into tableaux – striking
scenes of public order. Part and parcel of the state-building project, where public space was
likened to the right to the city, were troubling trends in which neoliberal capital redirected
and reshaped public space in undemocratic ways. This created conditions where some citi-
zens’ right to public space was worth less than others. In the following section I will expand
on the connections between public space and the right to the city in the Bogotá case and
how the (re)production of citizens was shaped by those ideals and by the need for foreign
investment.

Public space, citizenship and the right to the city

[…] Public space can be defined essentially as a space of unmitigated encounter where
strangers may freely meet: its essential quality is publicness. The strength and possibility of
reinvention via public space in Bogotá depended greatly on the concept of public space as
the fundamental punto de encuentro (point of encounter) necessary for democracy (Borja and
Muxí 2003: 25; Velásquez Carrillo 2004: 1; Carrión 2004: 60–1). Ideally, this point of en-
counter for Bogotá would be a “classless space.” Castro Jaramillo writes, “public space has
no estratos (socioeconomic divisions) and any investment that is made in it is for the benefit of
the entire city”1 (2003: 86). In this way, the public space mayors saw the creation of public
space as a means of mitigating Bogotá’s lawlessness and poverty, which played a large part
in the city’s global image.
Bogotá’s public spaces became a crucible for the hopes and dreams of local leaders and
were employed as a comprehensive fix for the city’s problems (Berney 2011). Public space
was seen as a territorial integrator and socioeconomic defragmenter, meant to empower and
connect people. Local leaders viewed public space as an effective policy arena for delivering
communal resources. Additionally, public space projects were viewed as easier, cheaper
and more visible than other types of infrastructure and social projects (Salazar Ferro 2003:
72). As such, they were ideally suited to reflect the competency of the period’s politically
independent mayors, Mockus and Peñalosa (Berney 2008). These mayors viewed public

Figure 3.4.1  Bogotá envisioned in 2001 as “a city that constructs spaces of citizen encounter:” Plaza San
Victorino in the center. Image © DAPD. Courtesy the City of Bogotá’s Planning Office.
140  Rachel Berney
space as the most effective platform for reaching and transforming Bogotá’s citizens, while
increasing equity regarding public resources in the city (ibid.). In this sense public space
became a planning ideal, a symbol and a solution (Berney 2011). Making this space truly
public also meant that all citizens would have a stake in maintaining, in the broadest sense,
the newly constituted public space.
The creation of public space also represented a shift to understanding citizens’ right to the
city. The basic right of Bogotanos to use public spaces within the city is well protected by
the 1991 Colombian Constitution. The constitution lays out a precise definition of public
space and establishes the right of access to public space for all citizens (Martin and Ceballos
2004: 267). In Colombia, therefore, access to public space became a right to which each
citizen was guaranteed.
This constitutional change at the national level became integrated into a crucial period
of policy and legal reform around public space in Bogotá during the public space mayors’
time in office.
Latin American cities have engaged in a process of re-envisioning public space both as
symbolic, symbiotic space and as an instrument for exchange and learning (Velásquez Car-
rillo 2004: 20). For example, in 2004, at the end of the public space mayors’ time in office,
the director of Bogotá’s Instituto Distrital de Cultura y Turismo (IDCT, District Institute
of Culture and Tourism), wrote:

Parks are privileged sites for the creation and strengthening of citizenship and for the
development and expression of citizen culture. The essence of citizen culture is based
on tacit agreements, including self-regulation and comprehension of formal norms of
co-existence.”
(Londoño Botero 2003: 11)

[…]
This was a particularly successful project: when asked in a 2006 survey in Bogotá’s pub-
lic spaces who is responsible for those spaces, over one-third of respondents indicated that
they were, and over one-half believed that they were the collective owners of public space.
Furthermore, 82 percent of those surveyed believed that public space ought to belong to
all Bogotanos (Berney 2006). The link between citizenship and public space recast public
space as the ideal site for educating and creating citizens.
One way in which this citizenry was created was through a new mode of development
that I call pedagogical urbanism, a cycle of planning interventions that conveyed and
shaped notions of a healthy society through public space access and programming (Ber-
ney 2011). Pedagogical urbanism privileges education and reform; it is the merging of
social and spatial planning to produce new norms. In the case of Bogotá’s commitment
to public space, pedagogical urbanism took shape in teaching the city’s populace how
to be citizens through public programs and monitored behavior. Pedagogical urbanism
responded to some of the most serious challenges faced by Latin American cities. In
contrast to the downward spirals of fear, misuse and lack of public space use that other
Latin American cities saw during this period, the changes worked in Bogotá demon-
strated a strong interest and investment in the city’s public space and an enormous
change from the recent past.
Bogotá’s mayors, however, wanted to do more than educate citizens and create public
space; their visions for improving their city were far grander. The city’s planners and offi-
cials tied the goals of socio-spatial integration and renewed citizenship to their success at
attracting foreign investment. The transformation of public space, in a very real sense, was
meant to serve the larger goal of attracting international capital. In order to compete in the
global market, however, Bogotá’s public space needed to portray citizens who fit in with
 Just City/Right to Public Space  141
the neoliberal ideal. Thus, public space became less of a truly classless meeting point and
more of a tableau, a “spectacle of the everyday.”
In contrast to grand spectacles in the landscape, Bogotá provides an example of a new
type of spectacle that highlights the importance of the everyday and the communal. This
everyday tableau functions “like a theater in which a pacified public basks in the grandeur
of a carefully orchestrated corporate spectacle” (Crilley 1993: 153). The “spectacle of the
everyday” can be sold as part of the narrative of Bogotá as a safe, desirable place to do busi-
ness, to live and to visit. The irony here lies in the fact that Bogotá’s well-loved and used
spaces may inevitably and increasingly become commodities to help sell the city to tourists
and investors (Berney 2011).

Bogotá’s reinvention
Despite [the] stubborn challenges, the international press began touting Bogotá as an em-
inently livable city by the beginning of the twenty-first century. Pedagogical urbanism
emerged from and, in some respects, triumphed over, the seemingly intractable problems
of previous decades.
[…]
What is certain is that the further Bogotá travels down the path towards becoming fully
articulated in the world market (DAPD 2006: 61), the city’s public space must be used locally
to improve quality of life and globally to present an image of a “world-class” city. Bogotá’s
continued success became visibly linked to the particular spatial logic created through public
space changes (Berney 2008, 2011), especially from the perspective of the international gaze
turned upon the city. In order to be a viable global competitor, the encounters within Bo-
gotá’s public space must portray attitudes and behaviors in line with neoliberal ideals.
[…]
The Bogotá public space mayors’ vision was, in general, oriented around lo social (the
social) and lo público (the public). Each mayor emphasized a different component of the con-
struction of public space during his tenure in office: Mockus focused on changing behavior,
creating opportunities for learning and creating community spirit; while Peñalosa sought to
recreate the physical territory by focusing on creating more, and better, public space. Mar-
tin and Ceballos write, “despite differences in ideas, visions, and forms of management,”
Mockus and Peñalosa contributed to “a logic of constructive community” (2004: 146).
Mockus was primarily focused on “reconstructing citizenship” (Martin and Ceballos
2004: 146). He did this through various unconventional and often theatrical means, in line
with pedagogical urbanism. He focused on everyday activities to bring residents out into
public space, including the “Night for Women”, in which men stayed in to care for their
families and 700,000 women came out to enjoy the city’s public spaces, bars and restaurants
over three nights (Caballero 2004).
[…]
In a similar vein, Peñalosa’s tenure in office was concerned with “reconstructing the
city” (Martin and Ceballos 2004: 146). He proposed that public space was one of the most
important tools for creating equal opportunities for happiness, or satisfaction, in living
there. Peñalosa also stated that creating better public spaces would allow people of different
social classes to interact on an equal basis; he saw the right to the city and class struggles as
inextricably linked. He built a bus system and increased the city’s pedestrian-only streets.
Many of his reforms centered around removing or limiting vehicle traffic to create space
for human encounters. He created the longest pedestrian-only street in the world, which
runs through some of Bogotá’s poorest neighborhoods, declaring that “this pedestrian in-
frastructure shows respect for human dignity” (Peñalosa and Ives 2004: n.p.). He saw deep
connections between access to public space and class disparities.
142  Rachel Berney
[…]
The neoliberal agenda, however, is apparent here: “the park would also favor compet-
itiveness and economic growth, by making the city more attractive to highly qualified
individuals and corporations interested in setting up shop in the region” (Enrique Peñalosa,
personal communication 2007). Thus, public space is both for the poor as a right and for
global capital. While his focus on public and pedestrian space was part of a move for human
dignity, it also reflected the need to project a particular image of Bogotá to the rest of the
world. In his administration, as in Mockus’, the right to the city and public space as a free
space of encounter clashed with global capital, as can now be examined.
[…]
The homeless and poor were removed from public areas, and civil behavior became mon-
itored and enforced by other citizens. A true Bogotano, in a sense, was one who behaved
well and fit within neoliberal class ideals (housed, gainfully employed, and with a strong
sense of civic duty). Cosgrove writes that landscapes functioning as stage sets for human
activity can play a small or large role in human “performances” (1993: 1). Bogotá’s public
spaces became overt and strong participants in the spectacle contained within them. Rather
than being a free point of encounter, public space became a tableau, a space in which to per-
form the image of citizenship that the public space mayors needed to project to the world
at large. Behavior in public spaces was monitored at several different levels, from passive
signage to civic guides, police and programs to manage behavior more actively. In many
parks, city workers were employed to provide directions, lead recreational activities and
direct people to pick up their trash and refrain from inappropriate behavior. This is also in
line with Mockus’ civic behavior programs, in which citizens were encouraged to police
each other. This active behavioral control was further aided by Bogotá’s application of a
“new vocabulary for the citizens” as seen in public space signage systems, which provided
more cues for proper behavior. Examples of such signage include “parks for learning how
to live” and “the success of the park depends on good use” (Berney 2011), creating an ob-
vious connection between the right to public space and the necessity for appropriate action
within it. Learning how to live meant learning how to behave.
In addition, while access to public space was a right, the question of who was truly al-
lowed access became a telling feature of citizenship in a city upping its world-class status.
Bogotá’s Camara de Comercio (Chamber of Commerce) reported in 2002 that parks in

Figure 3.4.2  Street vendors outside a park in the center of Bogotá, Colombia. Photo © Rachel Berney.
Courtesy Rachel Berney.
 Just City/Right to Public Space  143
lower-income neighborhoods were far more likely to be in poor condition than those in
richer neighborhoods. As well, my previous research (2008, 2011) has shown the inequita-
ble treatment of public spaces across the city. While everyone might have a park to go to,
not all parks are equal. Bogotá provides an example of Wastl-Walter and Staeheli’s comment
that “urban policy and urban design are increasingly implemented in ways that are undem-
ocratic, that exclude the poor and that create cities that ‘prioritize the needs of business and
the wealthy’ over the vast majority” (Wastl-Walter and Staeheli 2005: 2).
While the poor received lower-quality parks, they were also unofficially forbidden access
to public space in other parts of the city. Many citizens took on unofficial roles as caretakers
for public space, and some of these volunteer caretakers reported that they expelled indi-
gentes (homeless people) from the spaces or prevented them from entering, especially in the
northern part of the city (Berney 2006). In most of these instances, low-income vendors
verbally and physically expelled the indigentes because the vendors worried they would hurt
their sales.
[…]
In Bogotá, the tyranny (or right) of the majority results in the diminution of second-­
generation, socioeconomic rights for certain people, mostly those with lower incomes.
The city has largely failed to negotiate these conflicts, and as a result, the right to the city
has contracted. As Attoh describes, “the right to the city, if understood as a second gener-
ation right (a right affecting socio-economic status), must also rely upon an explicit theory
of justice” (Attoh 2011: 672). By excluding the poor and monitoring behavior, it seems that
Bogotá has failed to develop a clear or consistent theory of justice, despite the public space
mayors’ rhetoric connecting justice with public space.
[…]

Losing lo público
This chapter presents one history of the many that are possible to recount of Bogotá. This
history is focused on public space, as public space was a central policy focus and, in a sense,
a state-building project for the Bogotá mayors who are examined here. Part and parcel of
this state-building project, where public space was likened to the right to the city, is the
troubling nature of neoliberal capital to redirect and reshape public space in undemocratic
ways, causing some citizens’ rights to this space to be worth less than others’. Public space
is appropriated in spectacles of the everyday, creating a tableau that works against the true
reality of the right to the city. Bogotanos’ right to the city in the form of public space is di-
rectly impacted by the loss of “publicness” in the form of loss of rights by the minority–the
homeless, the drunk and certain vendors–in public spaces in favor of the majority’s values
and preferences, as well as the “preferences” of neoliberal capital that direct and constrict
behavior. The citizens allowed access to and created by public space are forced into certain
types of citizenship at the expense of others, undermining the right to the city and remak-
ing Bogotá’s social and class fragmentation in less visible and more complex ways.

Note
1 Bogotá’s population can be broken down into relative levels of income with reference to its stratified
taxation (estrato) system. Each household in Colombia is assigned a number from one to six accord-
ing to its socioeconomic status (Martin and Ceballos 2004: 82). Ones and twos are classified as low
income; threes and fours are classified as middle income; and fives and sixes are classified as upper
income. This system is used, for example, to determine ability to pay for utilities. The utility payment
structure is set up so that the threes and fours pay their own way, so to speak, while the fives and sixes
pay more to help subsidize the reduced amount that the ones and twos pay.
144  Rachel Berney
References
Attoh, K. A. (2011) “What Kind of Right is the Right to the City?”, Progress in Human Geography, 35:
669–85.
Berney, R. (2011) “Pedagogical Urbanism: Creating Citizen Space in Bogotá Colombia”, Planning Theory,
10 (16): 16–34.
Berney, R. (2008) “The Pedagogical City: How Bogotá, Colombia, Is Reshaping the Role of Public
Space”, PhD dissertation, University of California, Berkeley.
Berney, R. (2006) Bogotá Public Space Survey, Berkeley: University of California.
Borja, J. and Muxí, Z. (2003) El Espacio Público: Ciudad y Ciudadanía, Barcelona: Electa.
Caballero, M. C. (2004) “Academic Turns City into a Social Experiment”, Harvard Gazette, 11 March.
Online: http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/blogs/gems/culturalagency1/HarvardGazetteAcademicturnsc.
pdf (accessed 20 May 2012).
Carrión, M. F. (2004) “Espacio Público: Punto de Partida Para la Alteridad”, in F. Velásquez Carrillo (ed.)
Ciudad e Inclusión: por el Derecho a la Ciudad, Bogotá: Fundación Foro Nacional por Colombia.
Castro Jaramillo, L. (2003) ‘Espacio público: más que maquillaje urbano’, in Universidad de los Andes
(ed.), Bogotá y lo Público, Bogotá: Universidad de los Andes.
Cosgrove, D. (1993) The Palladian Landscape: Geographical Change and Its Cultural Representations in
­Sixteenth-Century Italy, University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press.
Crilley, D. (1993) “Megastructures and Urban Change: Aesthetics, Ideology and Design”, in P. Knox (ed.)
The Restless Urban Landscape, Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
Departamento Administrativo de Planeación Distrital (DAPD) (2006) Curso PNUD la ciudad y sus limites:
hasta donde llega Bogotá? Powerpoint presentation, versión larga, Bogotá: DAPD.
Londoño Botero, R. (2003) “Presentación”, in ODCT and F. Zambrano (eds) Construcción del Espacio
Público, Tres Parques de Bogotá: Nacional, Simón Bolívar, El Tunal, Bogotá: Alcaldía Mayor.
Martin, G., and Ceballos, M. (2004) Bogotá: Anatomía de una Transformación, Políticas de Seguridad Ciuda-
dana 1995–2003, Bogotá: Editorial Pontificia Universidad Javeriana.
Mockus, A. (2012) “Building ‘Citizenship Culture’ in Bogotá”, Journal of International Affairs, 65 (2):
143–6.
Peñalosa, E. and Ives, S. (2004) “The Politics of Happiness”, Yes! Magazine, 20 May. Online: www.yes-
magazine.org/issues/finding-courage/the-politics-of-happiness (accessed 20 May 2012).
Salazar Ferro, J. (2003) “Que Hemos Aprendido del Espacio Público?”, Bogotá y lo Público (Universidad
de los Andes, Bogotá) 1: 69–76.
Velásquez Carrillo, F. (ed.) (2004) Ciudad e Inclusión: por el Derecho a la Ciudad, Bogotá: Fundación Foro
Nacional por Colombia.
Wastl-Walter, D. and Staeheli, L. (2005) “Introduction”, in D. Wastl-Walter, L. Staeheli and L. Dowler
(eds) Rights to the City. International Geographical Union, Home of Geography Publication Series Volume III,
Rome: Societa Geografica Italiana.
Figure 3.0.5  Homeless on Market Street, San Francisco. Photo © Miodrag Mitrašinović.
3.5 To Go Again to Hyde Park: Public Space,
Rights and Social Justice
Don Mitchell
Source: Mitchell, D. (2003). The Right to The City: Social Justice and the Fight for Public
Space. New York: The Guilford Press, 13–41.

Public space engenders fears, fears that derive from the sense of public space as uncontrolled
space, as a space in which civilization is exceptionally fragile. The panic over “wilding” in
New York City’s Central Park in the late 1980s (rampaging young men violently terroriz-
ing joggers and other park users for the sheer joy of it), the fright made palpable by the ex-
plosions in Atlanta’s Olympic Park in 1996, and the new-found fear of public space spurred
by the sense of vulnerability attendant upon the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, no less
than the everyday gnawing uneasiness we feel when we step around a passed-out homeless
person on a sidewalk, often convince us that public space is the space of anarchy. Such an
association of public space with anarchy is, of course, not new; it is not just a feature of the
contemporary city, of the current media-encouraged, overweaning concern about crime,
homelessness, and random terrorism that makes public space seem such an undesirable at-
tribute of the contemporary American city.
Raymond Williams (1997 [1980], 3–5) reminds us, for example, that Matthew Arnold’s
(1993) famous declaration in Culture and anarchy—that culture represents (or ought to rep-
resent) “the best knowledge and thought of the time” (1993, 79)—was made in response to
working people forcing their way into Hyde Park in 1866 to hold an assembly in support of
the right to vote. For Arnold, the Hyde Park demonstrators were “a symptom of the general
anarchy” (Williams 1997 [1980], 6) rather than people struggling for their rights—their
right to assemble, their right to speak, their right to vote. A Hyde Park “rioter,” according
to Arnold, “is just asserting his personal liberty a little: going where he likes, assembling
where he likes, bawling where he likes, hustling as he likes” (Arnold 1993, 88, quoted in
Williams 1997 [1980], 6).1 Even more—and even more shrilly—Arnold objected to a work-
ing person’s “right to march where he likes, meet where he likes, enter where he likes, hoot
as he likes, threaten as he likes, smash as he likes. All this, I say, tends to anarchy” (Arnold
1993, 85, quoted in Williams 1997 [1980], 6).
The proper response, according to Arnold, was repression, the reigning in of “rights,”
and the asserting of firmer control over public space, for “without order there can be no so-
ciety; and without society there can be no human perfection” (Arnold 1993, 181, quoted in
Williams 1997 [1980], 6). Only with order can culture flourish, can cities be centers of civ-
ilization.2 Williams’s point in resurrecting the context of Arnold’s arguments about culture
is important: those rights we take as “immemorial,” such as the right to assemble in and use
public space, are not only relatively new, they are always hotly contested and only grudgingly
given by those in power. Always hotly contested: rights over and to public space are never
guaranteed once and for all. New struggles emerge, if not only over the right to vote then over
the right to live a sane and peaceful life in the nuclear age, the right to control over govern-
ment in totalitarian states, or, especially in the “postmodern” cities of the Western world, the
right, in the absence of decent, affordable housing, simply to live.3 As Williams (1997 [1980],
8) rightly proclaims: “it will always be necessary to go again to Hyde Park.”
[…]
 Just City/Right to Public Space  149
Public space and the Right to the City
“The right to the city” is a slogan closely associated with the French Marxist philosopher
Henri Lefebvre. Writing on the 100th anniversary of the publication of the first volume of
Capital and just before the student and worker uprising of May 1968, Lefebvre’s short book,
Le droit a la ville, sought to outline what a specifically urban post-bourgeois philosophy
might be. Much of the book (now published in English as part of a collection of Writings
on Cities: Lefebvre 1996) is highly abstract and arcane, little more than a set of notes, many
of which would later be expanded upon in Lefebvre’s (1991 [1974]) magnum opus, The
Production of Space.11 But within this rather arch argument about the content of philosophy
and its relationship to the changing social relations of cities were a set of aphorisms and a
key set of concepts that had immediate popular resonance. The most important is Lefebvre’s
normative argument that the city is an ouvre—a work in which all its citizens participate.
There are several issues here that are critical to the development of the argument about
public space and social justice that I will make in this book. The first is Lefebvre’s insist-
ence on a right to the city. Lefebvre was deeply attached to the rural countryside, especially
the village of his birth (Merrifield 2002; Shields 1998), but he shared with Marx a disdain
for the idiocy of rural life. Idiocy in this sense does not refer to the intelligence of the in-
habitants, or even the nature of their customs, but to the essential privacy—and therefore
isolation and homogeneity—of rural life. In contrast, cities were necessarily public—and
therefore places of social interaction and exchange with people who were necessarily dif-
ferent. Publicity demands heterogeneity and the space of the city—with its density and
its constant attraction of new immigrants—assured a thick fabric of heterogeneity, one in
which encounters with difference were guaranteed. But for the encounter with difference
to really succeed, then, as we will see in a moment, the right to inhabit the city—by differ-
ent people and different groups—had always to be struggled for. This is the second issue.
The city is the place where difference lives. And finally, in the city, different people with
different projects must necessarily struggle with one another over the shape of the city, the
terms of access to the public realm, and even the rights of citizenship. Out of this struggle
the city as a work—as an ouvre, as a collective if not singular project—emerges, and new
modes of living, new modes of inhabiting, are invented.12
But the problem with the bourgeois city, the city in which we really live, of course, is that
this ouvre is alienated, and so not so much a site of participation as one of expropriation by a
dominant class (and set of economic interests) that is not really interested in making the city
a site for the cohabitation of differences. More and more the spaces of the modern city are
being produced for us rather than by us. People, Lefebvre argued, have a right to more; they
have the right to the ouvre. Moreover, this right is related to objective needs, needs that any
city should be structured toward meeting: “the need for creative activity, for the ouvre (not
only of products and consumable material goods), the need for information, symbolism, the
imaginary and play” (Lefebvre 1996 [1968], 147). More sharply:

The right to the city manifests itself as a superior form of rights: right to freedom, to
individualization in socialization, to habitat and to inhabit. The right to the ouvre, to
participation and appropriation (clearly distinct from the right to property), are implied
in the right to the city.
(Lefebvre 1996 [1968], 174)

[…]
From the civil rights movement, the Port Huron Statement of the Students for a Demo-
cratic Society, and the Berkeley Free Speech Movement in the United States, to the stirrings
150  Don Mitchell
of the anti-war and anti-imperialism movements that were in fact global in reach, to the
specific complaints of Parisian students fed up with being molded into uncomplaining “or-
ganizational men” (and women), radical social transformation really seemed possible. And for
Lefebvre, this implied the development (finally) of a fully urban society. The right to the city
was the right “to urban life, to renewed centrality, to places of encounter and exchange, to life
rhythms and time uses, enabling the full and complete usage of … moments and places …”
(Lefebvre 1996 [1968], 179). That is to say, the use-value that is the necessary bedrock of urban
life would finally be wrenched free from its domination by exchange-value. The right to the
city implies the right to the uses of city spaces, the right to inhabit. In turn, and highly ger-
mane to the current American city, where we are reduced to arguing over whether one has
the right to publicly urinate if he or she is homeless (Mitchell 1998a, 1998b), the right to in-
habit implies a right to housing (Lefebvre 1996 [1968], 179): a place to sleep, a place to urinate
and defecate without asking someone else’s permission, a place to relax, a place from which to
venture forth. Simply guaranteeing the right to housing may not be sufficient to guaranteeing
a right to the city, but it is a necessary step toward guaranteeing that right.
[…]
Marx himself was famously skeptical toward the value of “rights” as an organizing principle of
social struggle. After all, when rights conflict (as they inevitably do) “force decides” (Marx 1987
[1867], 225). But, as David Harvey (1996, 345) correctly notes in regard to this passage, Marx’s
point was not at all to abjure completely the efficacy of rights (see also Harvey 2000). Rather,
his point was that rights remain efficacious only to the degree they are backed by power, by
at least the implicit threat of violence—violence that is at times the “property” of the state and
at other times, and crucially, “extra-legal” (Harvey 1996, 346, following Derrida 1992, 35).15
To put that another way, rights are at once a means of organizing power, a means of contest-
ing power, and a means of adjudicating power, and these three roles frequently conflict. The
difference between Marx’s skepticism toward rights (and justice more generally: see Merrifield
and Swyngedouw 1996, 1–2) and more postmodern skepticism of rights as a universalizing or
totalizing discourse (Lyotard 1985) is that, while the latter sees rights’ indeterminacy as their
Achilles’ heel, more Marxian (and hence more modernist) approaches are concerned with the
degree to which rights, despite whatever degree of indeterminacy they may possess, are still to
some degree determinant in social life. “Rights”—to the degree they are institutionalized and
protected within specific social situations, to the degree that they are and are not backed by the
violence and the power of the state, and to the degree that they protect the interests of some at
the expense of others (despite and because of the universalizing qualities)—are social relations
and hence a means of organizing the actual social content of justice.16
[…]
For Young (1990), autonomy requires not simply a just distribution of goods and oppor-
tunities but social—or better, socialized—control over the means of distribution. And this
socialized control has to be connected with elaborate, normative, universalizing, and insti-
tutional frameworks that promote autonomy and difference, both of individuals and of
groups. Frameworks of rights, in other words, are crucial to the development of a social
justice that moves beyond distribution and begins to recognize the struggle against oppres-
sion and in favor of autonomy (1990, 25). However, the ways in which we conceptualize
“rights” needs to be transformed (1990, 96–97). Young argues, rightly, that within the
discourse of law “the ‘ethic of rights’ corresponds poorly to the social relations typical of
family and personal life” because such an ethic is based on a model of civic social relations
that takes social detachment rather than social engagement as its basis.31 Critiquing the
Habermasian ideal of a detached “public sphere” and drawing on a range of feminist ar-
guments, Young (1990, 97) notes that the “ideal of impartial moral reason” (which stands
behind much rights talk) “corresponds to the Enlightenment ideal of the public realm of
 Just City/Right to Public Space  151
politics as attaining the universality of a general will that leaves difference, particularity,
and the body behind in the private realms of family and civil society.”
Such a conception of rights—and with it, such a conception of dispassionate social justice—
relies on what Young (1990, 98) calls a “logic of identity” that “denies or represses difference.”
This is because “the logic of identity tends to conceptualize entities in terms of substance rather
than process or relation.” But a more dialectical notion of entities (see Ollman 1990; Harvey
1996) can be adopted, struggled for, and defended. Doing so would mean that the “logic of
identity” has to be replaced with a “logic of representation.” A “logic of representation” centers
on the right of groups and individuals to make their desires and needs known, to represent
themselves to others and to the state—even if through struggle—as legitimate claimants to
public considerations. Such a logic requires the acceptance of a (near) universal and positive
right of representation. Yet, as with any other right, such a right cannot be guaranteed (“ac-
cepted”) in the abstract—rather, it is something always to struggle toward. In this struggle, the
development—or often the radical claiming—of a space for representation, a place in which groups
and individuals can make themselves visible, is crucial. While it is no doubt true that the work
of citizenship requires a multitude of spaces, from the most private to the most public, at the
same time public spaces are decisive, for it is here that the desires and needs of individuals and
groups can be seen, and therefore recognized, resisted, or (not at all paradoxically for thoroughly
materialist rather than idealist normative social practices) wiped out. The logic of representation
demands the construction—or, better, the social production—of certain (though not necessarily
predetermined) kinds of public space.

Representation and public space

Representation, whether of oneself or of a group, demands space. While it is true that “hu-
man beings have no choice but to occupy a space: they just do,” as David Smith (1994b, 151)
puts it, it does not follow that such a space allows for the full, adequate, and self-directed
representation of human beings either to themselves or to others […] While occupying
some place or space is vitally necessary to life, it is not necessarily guaranteed as a right.32
Rather, private property rights hedge in space, bound it off, and restrict its usage. As Smith
(1994b: 42) argues, “the right to own land differs from other commonly enunciated rights,
in that it concerns the appropriation of the scarce material world, and can impinge on the
rights of others to meet such vital needs as food and shelter.” Moreover, private property
rights also potentially trump what Smith (1994b, 43) calls membership rights but which in
the American context might be more commonly understood as ‘the right to assembly’—
that is, those rights that make possible the formation of political communities, that make
possible political representation.
In a world defined by private property, then, public space (as the space for representation)
takes on exceptional importance. At the level of basic needs, as Waldron (1991) argues, in
a society where all property is private, those who own none (or whose interests aren’t oth-
erwise protected by a right to access to private property) simply cannot be, because they
would have no place to be.33 At a less immediate but still vital level, in a world defined by
private property, the formation of a public sphere that is at all robust and inclusive of a variety
of different publics is exceedingly difficult.
[…]
The production of public space—the means through which the cry and demand of the
right to the city is made possible—is thus a dialectic between the “end of public space” and
its beginning. This dialectic is both fundamental to and a product of the struggle for rights
in and to the city. It is both fundamental to and a product of social justice (which thus can-
not be universal except to the degree it relates to the particular and the spatial—particular
152  Don Mitchell
struggles for rights and particular struggles over and for public space). The purpose of the
chapters that follow [in The Right to The City] is to explore—in historical geographical
detail as well as at the level of normative theory—just this dialectic, and to show how it
structures the “right to the city” as it actually exists and as various activists and social groups
have struggled to make it be.

Notes
1 The full sentence reads: “The rough has not quite found his groove and settled down into his work,
and so he is just asserting his personal liberty a little, going where he likes, assembling where he likes,
bawling as he likes, hustling as he likes” (Arnold 1993, 88). The invocation of settling down into
one’s appointed work is telling. But more important, perhaps, is that Arnold makes his argument as
a defense of the State (the capitalization is his), which he sees as both the guarantor of order and the
(perhaps imperfect) expression of perfection. This sets Arnold apart from many of the contemporary
“little Arnolds” writing in America whom we shall shortly meet.
2 My argument throughout the course of this book will not be that “order” in and of itself is bad; rather,
the issue is what kind of order, and protecting whose interests, is to be developed and advanced. In-
deed, I will argue, especially in the Conclusion, that “order” is as vitally necessary to the progressive
city as it is to the oppressive or repressive one.
3 In late 1999, responding to a highly publicized assault that was wrongly linked to a homeless street
person, Mayor Rudy Giuliani of New York reiterated his (and many others’) staunch belief that there
simply is “no right to live on the streets.” Giuliani put it starkly: “Streets do not exist in civilized
societies for the purpose of sleeping there. Bedrooms are for sleeping in” (Bumiller 1999, Al)—which,
of course, is fine if you have one. For those who do not, Giuliani announced a new program to arrest
those sleeping on the streets if they did not “move on” when ordered to do so by the police. Simul-
taneously, Giuliani announced that shelter beds would be conditional on employment. Most of the
homeless, under this policy; were caught in a quite sharp “Catch-22.” As the New York Times put it in
an analysis, “many New Yorkers seemed puzzled by a policy that would throw homeless people out
of shelters and into the streets, and yet arrest them for being there if they would not go to a shelter”
(Bernstein 1999, 1). Indeed.
11 For a discussion of the relationship between these two books, and for an argument that Lefebvre’s
deeply abstract arguments were in part a function of his style of work, which relied heavily on dicta-
tion, see Shields (1998). The best examination of the development of a specifically urban Marxism in
Lefebvre’s work is now to be found in the chapter on Lefebvre in Andy Merrifield’s (2002) wonderful
new book MetroMarxism.
12 There are, of course, more basic arguments as to why the city must be at the heart (but not at all the
exclusive focus) of any struggle for a progressive, socially just world. Among these are the simple fact
that most of the world’s population is now urban, that cities have become the command and control
centers of the global economy and of the practices and policies that are transforming the global envi-
ronment, and that, in fact, increased rather than decreased urbanization will have to be at the heart
of any move toward sustainability under continued population growth: cities are every bit as much a
solution as they are a problem.
15 The best discussions of the geography of rights are authored by Nicholas Blomley (1994a, 1994b).
16 All this is to say (to put it bluntly), “rights” must be at the heart of any Marxist and socialist project of
urban transformation, even while the limits of rights, and the need to continually struggle over them,
must constantly be acknowledged.
31 Michael Brown (1997) and Lynn Staeheli (1994) have begun to explore the complex geography of the
“work of citizenship.” In Brown’s case, primary inspiration is taken from Laclau and Mouffe’s (1985;
Mouffe 1992) post­structuralist development of “radical democracy” that suggests that the moment
of democracy may or may not be easily “public” in any traditional sense. Staeheli develops feminist
arguments (e.g., Pateman 1989) to make the same argument as she shows the widely varying locations
of women’s political work.
32 See Chapter 6 [Mitchell, D. 2003. The Right to The City: Social Justice and the Fight for Public Space. The
Guilford Press] for a discussion of how the California Supreme Court relied on this point to deny
homeless people a claim to the right to sleep in public when no other housing was available.
33 We will examine the degree to which such a world is being constructed in the United States in
­Chapters 5 and 6 [Mitchell, D. 2003. The Right to The City: Social Justice and the Fight for Public Space.
The Guilford Press].
 Just City/Right to Public Space  153
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4

Public Space as Site of

Activism, Protest and Dissent
Public Space as Site of
Activism, Protest and Dissent

From Tahrir Square in Cairo to Zuccotti Park in New York City, and from Athens, Greece,
to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, public spaces have in recent years ignited the imagination of millions
of people worldwide through their capacity to enable forms of democratic public discourse and
transformative political action that had seemed forgotten, and more so increasingly hindered
and outlawed. These recent attempts to reclaim urban public space—particularly in the face
of increasing commodification and privatization of public resources—bring back the belief in
democratic practices, civic values, as well as class and civil-rights struggles that have been histor-
ically associated with cities and public spaces. It also reminds us that the struggle for the right to
public space, The Right to The City, and the right to democratic governance and government,
has never been more important than it is today. A deeper understanding of why that is so holds
the key to understanding the processes of production of urban space, and to the socio-economic
and spatial-material dynamics that shape contemporary cities.
May and June 2020 demonstrations on the streets of Hong Kong and of major American
cities—ongoing at the time of this writing—unequivocally argue for the significance of phys-
ical presence in specific sites of publicness where diverse publics come together to voice their
dissatisfaction with governance at all levels, police brutality, systemic racism, outrageous de-
grees of social and economic inequality, environmental destruction, and much more. It also
reminds us that many “street beautification” and “pedestrianization” projects around the world
intentionally result in the use of large concrete planters strategically distributed across public
spaces. While they do demonstrably protect pedestrians from vehicular terrorist attacks, they
also disable large crowds from gathering in order to launch a protest. As chapters in this section
exemplify, negotiating these contradictions is critical for our understanding of the relationship
between public space, its design and management, civil liberties, and democracy at large.
Knierbein and Hou discuss how urban resistance, open dissent, and civil disobedience gained
momentum and power against authoritarian forms of governing in the Global South and North
since the 1990s, and how they have employed public space in their struggles for democracy or
autonomy. Although some of the uprising we have witnessed in the last 25 years has been fo-
cused on attempts to remove autocratic political leadership and (re)establish democracy, much
of it was motivated by launching a critical resistance to global neoliberal governance and has fo-
cused on increasing inequalities, injustices, and structural imbalances. Some of the protests aim
at social reforms, just redistribution, and the process of political transformation while still being
committed to liberal capitalism, while others focus on radical political change by any means
necessary and are focused on alternative political and economic orders.

Figure 4.0  Occupy Wall Street Protest in Zuccotti Park, New York City, 2 November 2011.  Photo @
Jilly Traganou. Courtesy of Jilly Traganou.
158  Activism, Protest and Dissent
158 
Important for the argument Knierbein and Hou have put forward in their chapter is the
concept of geographic scale as formulated in the work of Neil Smith (i.e., the “jumping scales
of capital”), and the idea that urban resistance at all scales matters only in so far as it is co-
ordinated and organized. In that respect, a street protest at the neighborhood scale focusing
on local political issues is as important as a globally televised protest in central public spaces.
Public spaces, as sites where people come together to enact forms of urban resistance, must
be understood as a system connecting and reorganizing the “fragmented geographies of
crisis.” By framing a global discourse on the utilization of public space for urban resistance
practices, Knierbein and Hou make a strong case for how differentiated, globally disem-
powered and disenfranchised groups relate to public space, and how through public space
they formulate and voice their claims and demands. In that sense, public space is both the
medium for action and transformation, and simultaneously the result of the struggle. In the
face of diminishing democratic institutions and ongoing onslaught of the increasingly glo-
balized capital, Knierbein and Hou argue, public space plays an important role in renewing
and reinvigorating democratic institutions in the pursuit for equity, egalitarian difference,
and justice.
Looking at the actual unfolding of the 15M protest taking place in Barcelona, Spain, in
2011, José Luis de Vicente provides a detailed account on how a young, loosely organized
entity called Democracia Real Ya managed to mount a major uprising through the simultane-
ous use of the physical site of resistance—Plaça de Catalunya—and the use of social media to
coordinate collective action and create a critical mass of participants. In order to demarcate
the appropriated square, the demonstrators reclaimed and rearranged it as a “laboratory
for discussion and participation,” and erected the Acampada Sol camp with a dome made of
wooden pallets as the info hub of the movement. As de Vicente recounts, in a matter of days
the movement, now with a foothold in a space of visibility, became a network. The website
and Twitter account that followed had enabled communication and coordination between
different Spanish cities where parallel demonstrations were initiated. Building on the ex-
perience of the Arab Spring (2010), and four months before the Occupy Wall Street move-
ment, 15M firmly established the link between social media platforms and sites of physical
performance and action. Innovative online strategies were paralleled with the equally in-
novative appropriation of the square and the organization of the camp. Activists holding
iPhones and broadcasting through online stream 24/7 become as important for building
national and global support through social media as it was for stabilizing the physical pres-
ence of the camp. In September 2011, the synergies modeled here by bringing together the
appropriation of public space, the power of social media, the strategies of peer-production
communities, and the emergent, horizontal organization was central to the success of the
Occupy Wall Street movement.
Just how did the 2011 appropriations and occupations of public space actually employ
the spatial and material conditions of public space is the subject of the chapter by Karen A.
Franck and Te-Sheng Huang. They compare four public spaces: Tahrir Square in Cairo;
Pearl Square in Manama, Bahrain; Plaça de Catalunya in Barcelona; and Zuccotti Park
in New York City. By studying their histories, spatial and morphological attributes, and
the activities that took place there during the protests, the authors attempt to understand
whether there are tangible causalities between the characteristics of these urban spaces
and the role they played in encouraging and facilitating the protests. They conclude that
the creative appropriation and employment of public space as a site for political action was
certainly a shared quality, but at the same time that the synergetic creative employment of
communication tools and social media was essential to the planning and coordination of
these demonstrations.
 Activism, Protest and Dissent  159
Zuccotti Park is different from the other three public spaces in that it is not a pub-
lic property. Namely, it was constructed in 1968 by U.S. Steel under the auspices of the
1961 Incentive Zoning resolution. The resolution stipulated the establishment of Privately
Owned Public Spaces (POPS) as a matter of agreement between the City and real estate
developers by which developers receive permission from the New York City Planning De-
partment to add additional floors to the building beyond existing zoning restrictions (FAR)
in return for providing public amenities at the street level (Kayden et al. 2000). The ratio
between bonus square footage and the size and elaboration of POPS has been regulated
by an e­ ver-evolving yet simple algorithm. Resulting public spaces have limited public ac-
cessibility which is strictly regulated by the contract between the developer and the City.
­Zuccotti Park was renovated in 2006 by its current owner, Brookfield Properties; its histor-
ical, morphological, spatial, and legal characteristics are radically different than other public
spaces discussed. Precisely because of this constellation of legal, spatial, and social factors the
OWS was able to use the park for three months. On a city-owned property, OWS would
have been subjected to a different set of laws, regulations, and policies, and arguably the
occupation would not have lasted that long.
Even though mapping key urban typologies that have the focus of attention from the
protesters—the square, the street, and the park—can be employed to reveal more universal
relationships between urban form and socio-spatial engagements that occur during protests,
it is still impossible to universalize the role of public spaces in urban protests, argues Tali
Hatuka. In an attempt to unearth the above causalities and establish coherence in terms of
the employment of public spaces by protest organizers, Hatuka first establishes the matrix of
relationships between key urban typologies (the square, the street, and the park) and protest
dynamics, and then the matrix of spatial choreographies around the categories of spectacle,
procession, and place making. Within this categorization, Plaza de Mayo in Buenos Aires,
Argentina—a site of long-term protests by the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo—is a site of
spectacle, a ritual performance which takes place on Thursdays characterized by the strictly
assigned roles, firmly bounded space of the Plaza, and the cyclical and repetitive nature of
the event. Namely, during the military junta (1976–1983), tens of thousands of Argentinian
citizens “disappeared” because of their political views. In 1977, 14 “mothers” whose loved
ones had disappeared began the protest in Plaza de Mayo by following gathering-in-public
rules: no more than two people were allowed to gather in public spaces at any time. Walking
around the May Pyramid (the central focal point of the plaza) in pairs and holding hands,
their heads covered with white kerchiefs, they carried the banners with photographs and
names of the missing family members. As the number of “mothers” grew to about 30,000
a week, their political significance also increased. In 1983, the military dictatorship ended,
and a democratically elected government was established. In no small part, the Mothers
of Plaza de Mayo helped mount political resistance against the dictatorship and brought it
down. Since the destiny of the “disappeared” has not been fully uncovered even decades
after the end of dictatorship, the ritual continued until 2006. As Suzanna Torre claims, the
Mothers of Plaza de Mayo “suggest that public space is produced through public discourse,
and its representation is not the exclusive territory of architecture but is the product of the
inextricable relationship between social action and physical space.”
In a long tradition of cultural, political, and social dissent’s relationship with urban space,
public space has often been employed as the medium through which activists have trans-
formed spaces and places of everyday life through murals, graffiti, signage, public perfor-
mances, pop-ups, temporary interventions and the like. Examples of this work, starting in
the late 1990s, include Santiago Cirugeda and Recetas Urbanas’ work on tactical urban
interventions in Seville and across Spain (see Figure 4.0.6); Hackitectura’s work in Seville,
160  Activism, Protest and Dissent
160 
Spain; Jill Magid’s System Azure Security Ornamentation (2002) and Evidence Locker
(2004); and Natalie Jeremijenko’s Environmental Health Clinic (xClinic).
In 2010, the term “tactical urbanism” emerged as an umbrella term bringing together a
number of often divergent practices such as guerrilla urbanism, pop-up urbanism, D.I.Y.
urbanism, PARK(ing) Days, guerilla gardening, and more. A series of Tactical Urbanist’s
Guides continues to be published online in multiple languages.1 The main objective of the
tactical urbanism movement has been to engage urban residents in a project of transforming
public spaces and advancing long-term and strategic change by prototyping small-scale,
tactical interventions in the spaces of everyday urbanism. Tactical urbanism projects are
typically led by individuals and small groups of citizens, neighborhood associations, grass-
roots groups, or non-profit organizations.
Del Signore and Riether employ the “hacking” in relation to public space in order to in-
dicate a tactical domain used by spatial practitioners who operate at the intersection of dig-
ital media and urban space. They argue that the growing integration of wireless technology
and communication infrastructure into everyday life increases opportunities for hacking;
the proliferation of open source tools and systems enables individuals to appropriate public
space and turn it to their advantage. “Civic Hackathons,” “Hacking the City,” and citizen
science initiatives that employ hacking as a collaborative community practice use open
source data, the authors argue, to collaboratively suggest ways of making public spaces and
cities more resilient as well as more democratic. “Open source urbanism” builds capabilities
and capacities for change by turning citizens from passive consumers of public and private
services to agents of urban change.

Note
1 See: http://tacticalurbanismguide.com/ (Last accessed on 30 June 2020).
Figure 4.0.1  Umbrella Movement gathering in Admiralty, Hong Kong, 7 December 2014. Photo © Gary
Chan. Source: Wikimedia Commons, Creative Commons CC-BY-2.0.
4.1 City Unsilenced: Spatial Grounds of
Radical Democratization
Sabine Knierbein and Jeffrey Hou
Source: Knierbein, S. and Hou, J. (2017). “City Unsilenced: Spatial Grounds of
Radical Democratization,” in Knierbein, S. and Hou, J. (eds.), City Unsilenced: Ur-
ban Resistance and Public Space in the Age of Shrinking Democracy. London: Routledge,
231–241.

Unsettling urban routines and the democratic paradox

[…] Public space has come into focus during recent struggles where the restructuring of
multiple interrelationships between civil society, state, and markets unfolds. As part of this
restructuring, we see increased attention to the roles that cities play, as the (conception of )
the modern nation-state faces a crisis (Appadurai 1996). With focus on the crisis facing
the modern nation-state, the political formation of many Western liberal democracies is
receiving more criticism. As Mouffe (2000) has stated, liberal democracy has always been
based on a democratic paradox between the liberal and the democratic strands of political
thought.
[…]
As more and more economic and political pressure is put on public space (Madanipour
et al. 2014), accompanied by social and ethnic polarizations, it comes as no surprise that the
realm of public life is the territory where one can witness intensified class reconfigurations,
discrimination, and societal struggles. Tensions in public space, in this sense, need to be
understood as seismographs of an over-accelerated and fragile neoliberal political economic
model. This model has undermined the long history of urban commoning and has rendered
public space a highly competitive field. In this field, political parties dominate representa-
tional space and access to voters; companies strive for higher revenues or civic legitimiza-
tion; and civil society seeks reorientation in a landscape of power in which “the political”
has become increasingly absent.
[…]

Public space as site of mobilization and negotiation

The use of public space as a site of mobilization and negotiation is one of the main processes
that occurred in cases throughout [City unsilenced], from the Global South to the Global
North. Cities are where the material impacts of neoliberal governance on the social lives of
many dwellers become noticeable, as individuals and groups not only take actions but also
engage in a deeper understanding of the changes occurring in their society and mobilize
to find their voice. Recent acts of urban resistance have brought a new generation of pro-
testors to the streets, people who have never before been active in street (or other types of )
politics. Groups that usually would have moral values and positions quite opposite from one
another (LGBT and conservative Muslims) (Yiğit Turan 2017) and left-wing activists and
right-wing protestors can find causes to walk side by side, and, in other cases, form political
coalitions (Kaika and Karaliotas 2017).
 Activism, Protest and Dissent  165
These recent instances of urban resistance combine a place-based and context-specific ap-
proach to protest with new ways of political identity formation (Yiğit Turan 2017) through
horizontal and worlded networks (Knierbein and Gabauer 2017) and more global claims
for egalitarian democracy (Kaika and Karaliotas 2017). Meanwhile, a belief in the power of
open dissent, civil disobedience, and active resistance against (quasi)authoritarian forms of
governing is gaining force. Consensual solutions have found a smaller impact on changing
the political landscapes as a new power balance between mainstream society and increasing
minority power in diverse cities challenges consensual deliberation as a hegemonic tool
of majorities to silence minorities and marginalized groups. Within pluralist and diverse
groups consensus is practiced along with dissent as a valuable form of decision making. In
some cases, power structures inherent in the group (formation) are explicitly reflected and
reworked (Lorey 2014), indicating the active presence of negotiation.
Horizontality as a mode of mobilization, observed in the Latin American movements in
2001, has become a prevalent and effective strategy to self-organize and to develop new
forms of resistance (Lorey 2014). It involves reflexive social regulations, new forms of
organizing, and new modes of subjectivation, which might ideally lead to a collective and
affective form of relations among protestors, while being used as an instrument for cre-
ating a social space in which participants feel empowered to speak and take part in com-
mon challenges. This is a space in which privileges and inequalities can be consciously
addressed, and heterogeneity in the manner of speaking and in the opinions expressed
has to be endured: horizontal self-organization opens up a process in which conflicts and
differences are not negated, but must be first recognized (Lorey 2014). It is important to
note, though, that structural discrepancies are still enmeshed in these forms of horizontal
mobilization. […]

Public space as space of contestation and learning

The heartbeat of neoliberal governance is crisis produced through austerity mechanisms and
processes of de- and re-institutionalization (governance). This model constantly (re)produces
social, political, and cultural divides, thus nurturing repetitive eruptions of urban resistance
against increasing inequality, injustice, and imbalances. Crisis is the seemingly inherent ne-
cessity through which neoliberal measures are legitimized and produced politically, thus ren-
dering it a self-fulfilling prophecy. As crises and impacts of neoliberal governance unfold and
threaten the public life and public spaces of cities, these sites are also where the fissures and
cracks of neoliberalism become visible and its continued evolution becomes contested.
The case studies in [City unsilenced] exemplify the power of public space scholarship that
utilizes hybrid combinations of micro, meso, and macro analytical techniques to carefully
scrutinize urban life at a local level within the context of macro neoliberal politics and eco-
nomics. Understanding that crises are increasingly happening in public spaces with unique
local articulations of protest, prototypical post-structuralist critique risks oversimplifica-
tion or generalization. In the cases of Berlin, Tokyo, Warsaw, and Poznań (Lebuhn 2017,
Dimmer 2017, Domaradzka 2017) activists have used formal means of participation and/
or formal rights and law to claim a citywide or neighborhood referendum, or to claim full
information about legal and public authority-related procedures. Regardless of their results,
the authors state that these processes have helped to facilitate learning in newly established
political communities where the political claims had become more inclusive and focused,
thus (a) trying to attract the wider city publics to engage with and support the activists’
claims and (b) to make a clear message possible during the referendum campaign.
166  Sabine Knierbein and Jeffrey Hou
Meanwhile, other resistance groups have not allowed parties or formal procedures to
entirely co-opt and conquer their mobilization dynamics, as shown in the cases of Athens,
Istanbul, Hong Kong, and Taipei, whereas in Vienna, the emergence of a wider critique—
and thus, of counter-publics—and more actively resisting groups was heavily supported by
some political parties. The cases of Taipei, Hong Kong, Madrid, and Barcelona show that
activists have made their way straight into the political system during times of elections,
thus renewing the governing bodies and challenging long-established political practices. In
Barcelona and Berlin, activist groups have stated their goal to perform as an incubator for
democratic control of the governance regimes in place, and have actively organized policy
and legal recommendations to revert the legal and economic hegemony of existing govern-
ance networks.

Public space as space for rescaling and re-politicizing

[…] We are currently witnessing a moment in which the spatial scales of crisis require more
complex ways to consider and engage the political through modes of urban resistance. Re-
sistance tactics, goals, and claims need to connect and reorganize fragmented geographies
of crisis, that is, resistance groups need to combine the quest for local human needs, urban
equity struggles, regional justice mechanisms, national political contestations, supranational
governance critique, and a struggle against the locally destructive impacts of global and
virtual market forces, thus overcoming the “jumping scales of capital” (Swyngedouw 2003,
referring to Smith 1984).
Urban public spaces are places where social densities and political identities meet, and
where fragmented scales of resistance can be brought together, from local solidarity with
peers within one’s particular comfort zone towards a much more universal solidarity for
egalitarian democracy. Some [authors] have indicated that movements have occasionally
shifted their focus from central public spaces to the neighborhood scale (and narrow com-
fort zone), consequently risking insufficiently addressing central political questions, and
thus reducing the perseverance and universal impact of the movement (Kränzle 2017).
Certain local neighborhood interventions can even serve as a pretext for cultural regen-
eration and symbolic capital accumulation, and thus gentrification. Others, however, have
stressed that there are certain central and politically symbolic places in cities where the
quest for more genuine political reform or revolution has been repeatedly posed over cen-
turies. These squares and streets have witnessed a new spark of radically democratizing the
urban (Chen 2017, Chen and Szeto 2017, Kaika and Karaliotas 2017, Yiğit Turan 2017), and
inspired people to issue more fundamental political claims rather than engaging in narrow
or local, interest-based politics.
Apart from this multi-scalar notion of resistance and the potential of resistance groups
to reconnect and re-politicize the “jumping scales of capital,” we also find resistance as
counteraction, response, and contestation against all types of unsettling: economic, cul-
tural, ecological, social, and political. Much of the debate in urban studies lingers on the
role of resistance movements as a response to the economic crisis (through neo-Marxist
approaches to understand the political economy of public space), and more recently, the po-
litical crisis (particularly through contributions to the post-foundational, post-­political, and
post-­democratic debates) (Flesher Fominaya and Cox 2013). However, looking through the
lenses of public space allows us to detect that neoliberal agendas have also been producing
more severe cultural clashes, social polarizations, and ecological traumas. ­[Authors] have
shown that public space research links analysis at different levels, cross-­cutting through
diverse dimensions, reflecting the impact on the minutiae of everyday life. Many […] em-
phasize attempts to re-politicize the many obvious as well as less visible relations between
 Activism, Protest and Dissent  167
different scales and dimensions of crisis and resistance through radical dialectics (e.g., be-
tween housing and public space research, or between labor market and public space re-
search, or between ecological struggles and their social selectiveness). [Some] highlight the
vulnerability of younger generations to evictions and displacement from their everyday
places either as a result of commodified public spaces (Maharawal 2017) or through racial-
ized broken windows policing against communities of color (Cahill et al. 2017, Owens and
Antiporda 2017). Such conditions provided in turn opportunities for engaged scholarship,
participatory action research, and empowerment of disenfranchised actors to investigate
and mobilize against such conditions and processes.
Insights from Hong Kong, Taipei, and Vienna also leave us more hopeful. In the first two
cases the protests were very much student-led, with an active and politicized student gen-
eration trying to push through social and political reform and change, while in the case of
Vienna, a group of youngsters issued state critique through humanitarian aid for refugees,
thus calling for global human rights and solidarity with incoming refugees. In times of a
decreasing consensus about the prevalence of human rights in our countries, urban resist-
ance struggles are rooted in very material claims and goals as part of the everyday survival
of those who have been dispossessed, disenfranchised, and disempowered (Knierbein and
Gabauer 2017).

Public space as grounds of alter-politics

The city has been historically understood as a collective actor (Bagnasco and Le Gàles
2000), where different parts of urban society constantly perform collaboratively, producing
and using public space as urban commons. The neoliberal project, however, seeks to replace
this collective and collaborative urban history with a new genealogy of competition: the
city as a competitive space. As a result, competition has been rendered as a key aspect of
current democracies, as it is linked to appearance of transparency, efficiency, and so forth,
even though the actual linkages are weak and superficially constructed. Furthermore, in
the construction of an exclusive politics and a moral climate, the narrative of competition
renders those that are not able to or do not want to participate in such competition as out-
casts (Tyler 2015). The various resistance movements presented in [City unsilenced] represent
efforts to expose and intervene in the apparent cracks of this narrative and practice, not only
to claim, but also to radically renew the democratic project.
As space is at the heart of the organization of changing political economies, it is worth
reflecting on the spatial features of the acts of urban resistance and the role public space
plays for different groups that have become increasingly disadvantaged and were ultimately
mobilized by the ongoing outcomes of the neoliberal project. This work draws upon earlier
thinkers who have coined those without a voice the urban subaltern, the disempowered, or
disenfranchised (Roy 2011, Bayat 2010, Fraser 1990), and those who have articulated the
collective production of spaces as truly democratic where constituents that previously had
no part, become now the key agents for renewing democracy (Rancière 2010, Kaika and
Karaliotas 2017). Through the case studies from different cities and continents, we have
gathered results that enable us to (1) further differentiate those disempowered and disen-
franchised and (2) to track how they relate (a) to public space and (b) through public space
to make their claims.
[…]
For all these differently motivated resistance groups—the unemployed, the unsheltered,
the indigent, the un(der)represented, the unattended, the colonized, and the nonconsumers—
public spaces serve as the initial sites where many try to make their claim or state their
dissent within their field, and to expand their political identifications to others (Bayat 2010).
168  Sabine Knierbein and Jeffrey Hou

City Unsilenced. Spatial patterns of urban resistance

the unemployed resistance in (former) workplaces

the unsheltered resistance in (vacant) residential buildings
the indigent resistance in (spaces of) corporate buildings
public
the un(der)represented space resistance in public space/governmental areas
the unattended resistance resistance at transit hubs or public space
the colonized resistance at sites emblematic of colonial history
the nonconsumers resistance in/for non- and de-commodified space

Figure 4.1.1  Spatial patterns of urban resistance. The classification of the aforementioned groups is not
meant to be exclusive, as overlaps may exist before, during, or following acts of resistance
in public space, where one actor can take an active role in more than one of the dimensions.
This scheme shows that public space is where multiple concerns, frustrations, and motivations
for change meet—a crossroads in the sense of political mobilization, where those disadvan-
taged by one dimension of neoliberal capitalism meet those hit by another. Source: Sabine
Knierbein. Graphic Design: Angelika Gabauer.

That way, they enable the embodied realm of public space becoming the key catalyst for
the emergence of wider political dissent and the generation of new and alternative demo-
cratic projects. Public space is thus where the picture of multiple fragmentations, failures,
and fractures of the current global capitalism become traceable, connected, and where
the potential cracks and spaces that escape neoliberalism’s spatial conquering expeditions
can be protected, analyzed, and explored. It is here where different types of publics and
counter-publics meet and collide in cities worldwide where supporters and affected groups
intermingle and develop solidarity despite differences. Public space, thus, represents both an
opportunity and a challenge, as on the one hand it makes their struggle become (globally)
visible to gain supporters; on the other hand, public space is where their vulnerability is
exposed, with a high risk of being further stigmatized, marginalized, dispossessed, crimi-
nalized, or menaced. At times, this includes the risk of losing ones’ lives.
Urban resistance tactics have connected public space assemblies with direct actions into
the private, public, or hybrid territories of capital accumulation to disrupt, offset, or inter-
fere with the productive space of the competitive neoliberal economy. The unemployed, for
instance, have reappropriated vacant factories, container terminals, and office space to set up
new labor markets or collective industrial cooperatives, which in turn finance their protest.
The unsheltered have de-privatized and rehoused empty buildings or have de-commodified
private property through land action and adverse possession. The indigents have blocked
banks and reclaimed bank assets into public and collective property. The un(der)represented
have blocked parliament buildings and emblematic public squares and streets. The unat-
tended have used train stations as local hubs to show a worlded resistance, to stand together
in global solidarity, and to get what is needed on the ground. The colonized have occupied
former prisons emblematic of long histories of colonialism, thus symbolically unchaining
themselves from a colonizing genealogy of oppression and inferiority. The nonconsumers
have developed new alternative modes of being in-common and living and sharing com-
mon resources, while using both private and public properties. […]
Urban research on these dialectical relations between the aforementioned fields can help
to unmask the current neoliberal model as the principal producer of global modes of unset-
tling. Furthermore, there is a strong potential for counter-publics to develop acts, tactics, and
strategies of resistance, not necessarily in the sense of anti-politics (demonstrations against
 Activism, Protest and Dissent  169
certain issues), but more aligned with the idea of alter-politics (Hage 2012, K ­ nierbein and
Gabauer 2017), the affective strive for a politics of change. Alter-politics aims at practicing
a radical hope for a new democratic project that is stronger than the weak post-democratic
model we witness today. It shows affective action for a collective and passionate capacity to
long for alter-modernity (Hardt and Negri 2009, da Silva Andrade and Huguenin 2017), to
collectively produce the commons through an affective utopian project dwelling in present
realities. Alter-politics in this context takes “us outside of ourselves to see how we can be
radically other to ourselves.” It “aims at finding a possibility of a different life outside a
given [political] order of things,” “generating new alter-modern spaces lying outside exist-
ing governmentalities” (Hage 2012, p. 294, 296, referring to Viveiros de Castro 2010, own
insertion).

Unsilencing the public and public spaces

Bayat has depicted public space in Western democracies as part of the institutions of the
modern nation-state, to which many of the urban subaltern in the cities of the Global South
have no access. He argues, “because modernity is a costly existence, not everyone can af-
ford to be modern. It requires the capacity to conform to the types of behavior and modes
of life [. . .] that most vulnerable people simply cannot afford” (Bayat 2010, p. 59). Public
space as a highly formalized space is one of these institutions of the modern urban world.
This is why many of the marginalized “quiet encroachers” tend to avoid public expression
wherever possible. That way, they seek to escape the modern structure of law and order,
which does not offer any resources or opportunities but confines their realm of everyday
action (Bayat 2010). As we take a worlded, critical perspective in examining different forms
of resistance (Roy and Ong 2011), it is also important to consider that silent, individual re-
sistance, or “social non-movements” (Bayat 2010), can also contribute to the urban project
to radically renew democracy.
[City unsilenced] is concerned with ways through which such silence has been dispelled,
by seeing and using the city and public space as a site of resistance and a catalyst for po-
litical change, where people bang their pots and pans, use goggles, umbrellas, and flowers
to disrupt political silence and renew—a democracy in which “the spaces of democracy
(spaces for the practice of democracy) and the democracy of space (democratic relations in
the production of space)” are inherently related (García-Lamarca 2017, referring to Hoskyns
2014, p. 4). As Ober has put it, the original term “democracy” was meant to capture
“power” as the “capacity to do things”: “Demokratia” is not just “the power of the demos”
in the sense of “the superior or monopolistic power of the demos relative to other potential
­power-holders in the state.” Rather it means, more capaciously, “the empowered demos”—
the regime in which the demos gains a collective capacity to effect change in the public
realm, “the collective strength and ability to act within that realm and, indeed, to reconsti-
tute the public realm through action” (Ober 2008, p. 7).
By better understanding the processes, actions, and implications of recent urban resist-
ances, [City unsilenced] aspires to contribute to the ongoing debates and renewed attention
concerning the role and significance of public space in the practice of lived democracy
and lived space. Specifically, we have argued that in the face of diminishing democratic
institutions in cities and regions around the world, political resistance and demonstrations
in public space have a greater role to play not only in holding the state and political es-
tablishments accountable to the interest of the society but in renewing and reinvigorating
our democratic culture and institutions and pursuit for equity, egalitarian difference, and
justice. Without resistance and public space agencies, mobilization of the masses, and con-
tinued public debates and social movements, democracy is at risk of becoming stagnant,
170  Sabine Knierbein and Jeffrey Hou
narrow, and obsolete. The continued presence, contestation, and discourse of public space
are fundamental to a renewed and lived democracy, a democracy that is worlded, open, and
enacted through debates, dissent, contestation, and active participation—democracy that is
fundamental to protecting and enhancing the welfare of citizens and communities against
the encroachment of neoliberal interests and all forms of oppression.

References
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Minnesota Press.
Bagnasco, A. and Le Gàles, P., 2000. Cities in Contemporary Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.
Bayat, A., 2010. Life as Politics: How Ordinary People Change the Middle East. Stanford: Stanford University
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Cahill, C. et al., 2017. The Right to the Sidewalk: The Struggle Over Broken Windows Policing, Young
People, and NYC Streets. In: City unsilenced, 94–105.
Chen, K. W., 2017. Democracy, Occupy Legislature, and Taiwan’s Sunflower Movement. In: City unsi-
lenced, 133–144.
Chen, Y.C. and Szeto, M. M., 2017. Reclaiming Public Space Movement in Hong Kong: From Occupy
Queen’s Pier to the Umbrella Movement. In: City unsilenced, 69–82.
Da Silva Andrade, L. and Huguenin, J. P., 2017. Between Street and Home: Mobility, Housing, and the
2013 Demonstrations in Brazil. In: City unsilenced, 19–29.
Dimmer, C., 2017. Miyashita Park, Tokyo: Contested Visions of Public Space in Contemporary Urban
Japan. In: City unsilenced, 199–213.
Domaradzka, A., 2017. Leveling the Playfield: Urban Movement in the Strategic Action Field of Urban
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Flesher Fominaya, C. and Cox, L., 2013. Understanding European Movements: New Social Movements, Global
Justice Struggles, Anti-Austerity Protest. London and New York: Routledge.
Fraser, N. 1990. Rethinking the Public Sphere: A Contribution to the Critique of Actually Existing De-
mocracy. Social Text, 25 (26), 56–80.
García-Lamarca, M., 2017. Reconfiguring the Public Through Housing Rights Struggles in Spain. In:
City unsilenced, 44–55.
Hage, G., 2012. Critical Anthropological Thought and the Radical Political Imaginary Today. Critique of
Anthropology, 32 (3), 285–308.
Hardt, M. and Negri, A., 2009. Commonwealth. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University
Press.
Hoskyns, T., 2014. The Empty Place: Democracy and Public Space. Abingdon: Routledge.
Kaika, M. and Karaliotas, L., 2017. Athens’ Syntagma Square Reloaded: From Staging Disagreement
Towards Instituting Democratic Spaces. In: City unsilenced, 121–132.
Knierbein, S. and Gabauer, A., 2017. Worlded Resistance as “Alter” Politics: Train of Hope and the Pro-
test Against the Akademikerball in Vienna. In: City unsilenced, 214–228.
Kränzle, E., 2017. Public Space in a Parallel Universe: Conflict, Coexistence, and Co-optation Between
Alternative Urbanisms and the Neoliberalizing City. In: City unsilenced, 186–198.
Lebuhn, H., 2017. Shifting Struggles Over Public Space and Public Goods in Berlin: Urban Activism
Between Protest and Participation. In: City unsilenced, 145–155.
Lorey, I., 2014. The 2011 Occupy Movements: Rancière and the Crisis of Democracy. Theory, Culture &
Society, 31 (7–8), 43–65.
Madanipour, A., Knierbein, S. and Degros, A., 2014. Public Space and the Challenges of Urban Transformation
in Europe. London and New York: Routledge.
Maharawal, M. M., 2017. San Francisco’s Tech-Led Gentrification: Public Space, Protest, and the Urban
Commons. In: City unsilenced, 30–43.
Mouffe, C., 2000. The Democratic Paradox. New York: Verso.
Ober, J., 2008. The Original Meaning of “Democracy”: Capacity to Do Things, Not Majority Rule,
Constellations, 15 (1), 3–9.
 Activism, Protest and Dissent  171
Owens, M. and Antiporda, C., 2017. Occupied Oakland, Past and Present: Land Action on the New
Urban Frontier. In: City unsilenced, 156–170.
Rancière, J. 2010. Dissensus: On Politics and Aesthetics, ed. and trans. Corcoran S. London: Continuum.
Roy, A., 2011. Slumdog Cities: Rethinking Subaltern Urbanism. International Journal of Urban and Regional
Research, 35 (2) (March), 223–238.
Roy, A., and Ong, A., 2011. Worlding Cities: Asian Experiments and the Art of Being Global. Chichester, UK
and Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 307–335.
Smith, N., 1984. Uneven Development: Nature, Capital and the Production of Space. Oxford: Blackwell.
Swyngedouw, E., 2003. Globalisation or “Glocalisation”? Networks, Territories and Rescaling [online].
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douw1. pdf [Accessed 18 July 2016].
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MIT Press, 9–51.
Yiğit Turan, B., 2017. Occupy Gezi Park: The Never-Ending Search for Democracy, Public Space, and
Alternative City-Making. In: City unsilenced, 83–93.
Figure 4.0.2  Conceptual Map of Acampada Sol (V3.0. May 2011) at Puerta del Sol square, Madrid, on
23 May 2011. Photo © Eva y Rafa. Courtesy of Una Línea Sobre el Mar.
 Conceptual map acampadasol v3.0 This conceptual map gets contionusly bursted, and lacks updating (no time to include all comments).
it is only a help to depict what cannot be represented.
it is a humble, unfinished map, precarious at its core. and needed all the same...
Please improve it comenting at http://www.unalineasobreelmar.net/mapa-conceptual-de-la-acampada/

New journalism: General strike Sinde’s

Insumision Anonymous rebelion.org May 68 (september) Law
V for Vivienda matrix project Women fights
Camps for 0,7
sistema digital
tercera informatión
Island kaos en la red
WikiLeaks and many more... en Squatted Social Youth w/o future
with en
Centers (abril) Manifestos:
en en
Egypt civic associations Indignaos, Reacciona,
The upcoming crisis...
en around HIV
por against
por
en in
Workers movement

en with Tiananmen
with in
Bologne Plan
en
No War
en at against 13-M
Pacific revolutions:
en things that happened before Gandhi...
Zapatist moviment en the

en in
Tunez en Ireland
in
Indigenous fights

Argentina in Portugal
19 y 20 diciembre 2001 Greece en
in
corralito

what I do not want to do

has to do with I do

I do not want to follow

I abide by rules that
15m
demonstration Discomfort with personal life
I work at what I dislike

dissociates from the camp unhappy

with I am
but there’s continuity in the message

acampadasol made of people who are self-called at the square to do Read Democracy Now
is diffunded
and gets organized
united by who want

online es
presencial there’s lot of
to be and live
Discomfort together with
facebook streaming
against
using listening using word engaging
in collective intelligence and respect
Telematic task forces not violence with common matters

Twitter fraudster, robber bankers corrupt politicians

Webs and blogs:
tomalaplaza.net promotes
es
cross-fertilization creates
of ideas heterogeneous
and inclussive
assemblies
a friendly atmosphere
Infirmary committees
unrepresentable collective enthusiasm gives
shows a lot of accepts
Food: about
evita holds back with
handles intergenerational
provisiones
Communication acronyms and flags getting drunk
because they divide cause this is serious donating only stuff
not money
Legal stuff: creates
24/7 lawyers service

Expanding:
Diffusion thru Cleaning gives strength to
Action:
Performances signage and art
infrastructures:
makes camps easier and civil camps rising support
(blankets, showers) desobedience activities at other cities at
and countries do

to extend to

make space livable

Carers:
bulid the
living-together
4.2 Taken Square: On the Hybrid
Infrastructures of the #15M
Movement
José Luis de Vicente
Source: De Vicente, J. L. (2012). “Taken Square: On the Hybrid Infrastructures
of the #15M Movement,” in Offenhuber, D. and Schechtner, K. (eds.), Inscribing a
Square: Urban Data as Public Space. Berlin: Springer, 41–47.

Nobody expects the #Spanishrevolution

On May 15, 2011, thousands of citizens in the main spots of Spain took to the streets in
demonstrations of protest, answering the call of a Facebook event that had circulated in the
previous months through social media and online communities. The protest was not backed
by any major political party or union, only by a horizontal loose collective of activist groups
with minor impact and support, up until that point. In fact, the original call came from a
loose pseudo-organization, ¡Democracia Real Ya!1 (Real Democracy Now) with no public
faces or a very defined agenda; at the time of the demonstration, ¡Democracia Real Ya! was
in fact only three months old.
Reasons to protest were quite defined and specific though. A rampant unemployment
that for younger people was reaching dramatic proportions (a rate around 45% for the
18–25 demography), a widening of the gap between citizens and a political class perceived
as privileged and detached from everyday problems, constant scandals of corruption, and
above all, a deep dissatisfaction with a dysfunctional democracy, stuck in an increasingly
bipartisan system where both options end up meaning, in practical terms, no real option,
and perceived as equally inefficient and unable to provide real solutions.
The demonstrations themselves, even though contemplated with skepticism by the main-
stream media and political parties, were not surprising. “About time” was one common
reply from citizens and analysts who were sure that the degrading social conditions would
eventually spawn some reaction on the street. It was neither surprising nor particularly new
in 2011 that the reaction wouldn’t come from traditional organizations but from loose,
self-organized groups that would use social media to coordinate collective action and create
a critical mass of participants. The argument that social media can be a catalyst that enables
unprecedented mechanisms for collective action, and that these can have an impact on the
political sphere, has been discussed countless times in the last few years.
What was surprising is what happened the night after the demonstration. A small group
of around 40 people who didn’t know each other, wondering what to do once the demon-
stration was over, staged an impromptu assembly at the Puerta del Sol, the main square in
the heart of the city center, and decided to stay.2 It’s not clear who was the first to actually
say, “what if we stay?,” but three days later it was not 40 people, but more than ten thousand;
it was not only Madrid, but Barcelona’s Catalonia Square, and Metrosol Parasol in Sevilla, a
shiny, brand new example of iconic architecture from the German architect Jurgen Meyer
(the biggest wooden structure in the world today) which had previously been void of any
significance in the city until the movement took it over.
So you could safely say that nobody expected this; it was very clearly a case of a ‘Black Swan.’3
Not that people would decide to go out on the street and protest, but the fact that they did it in
a fashion that nobody expected: reclaiming public space, rearranging it, reshaping it so that it
 Activism, Protest and Dissent  175
would become a laboratory for discussion and participation. The shape of this movement would
happen through appropriation, redefinition, and reconfiguration of the city.
In this particular case, the debate on whether social media is a tool that empowers citizens
catalyzing decentralized actions, or if this form of “slacktivism” creates a false sense of partic-
ipation that cannot actually replace political action—best expressed in the Shirky-Mozorov
debates4 and in the cultural wars around the Internet’s impact in different social uprisings—is
irrelevant. The important story in this scenario might be not so much if the participants in the
May 15 protests, which would come to be known as the 15M movement, succeed in changing
the political structure, but how they expressed a reimagining of public space, of its role in com-
munity building that was intimately connected to dynamics originating in online space.
At the center of the instant city that became the Puerta del Sol camp, known as
­Acampada Sol, a 21 year old architecture student called Alberto Araico, interested in
sustainable architecture, built a semicircular dome out of pallets. It would become the
information point of the camp, and the closest thing it had to an architectural icon. Look-
ing at the picture published by El Pais, Spain’s most important newspaper, of the dome
with its builder,5 I could not help thinking: what if the Smart City, that image of a clean,
efficient urban environment mediated by technology, would instead, in fact, actually look
like this? Maybe you can build a new sense of public space shaped by technologies that are
not sophisticated sensors, public objects with APIs, energy monitors, and the rest of the
lexicon of smart urban technologies, as hyped by an emerging industry of corporate agents
that want to be involved in the construction of the 21st century Mega Cities. Maybe there
is another Smart City built up by citizens downloading DIY instructions showing them
what they can do with pallets, cheap tools like free, ad-sponsored video streaming ser-
vices, and popular microblogging sites that allow us to coordinate on public space with
unpredictable results.

A protest of many protests

In the months after the events on May 15 many different narratives were proposed and
drafted to create a genealogy of a movement that, with the vague referent of the “Arab
Spring” (arising in radically different circumstances) seemed to come out of nowhere, unite
different agents in the ideological spectrum, and claim no direct parents. Probably the most
exhaustive one was the “Conceptual Map” of Acampada Sol,6 a collaborative mindmap
developed as the events were taking place, trying to connect every specific request, strategy
or action with previous cases in the recent or not-so-recent history of activism. The map
shows how in the previous 2–3 years, different modes of campaigning, different demands,
and different agents gathered in an unlikely common goal in time and space. Many of them
combined online organization with public space occupation.
The first ones were dealing with the protests demanding the right to housing, in the
wake of one of the most extreme real estate bubbles in the West, leaving 3 million empty
houses waiting for a buyer, and hundreds of thousands of young people unable to afford a
house due to the skyrocketing prices created by speculation. “V de Vivienda” (V for Hous-
ing)7 was an important precedent in staging public space protests for the right to housing
before the bubble exploded, from 2006 onwards. Equally important was a protest move-
ment completely focused on what was going on in the Internet concerning the copyright
wars and anti-piracy legislation, a conflict that had essential relevance on online space, but
was also slowly seeping into the street.
[…]
On the night of May 15, one could probably say that the single most important
decision taken that night (willingly or unwillingly) was framing their activity not as
176  José Luis de Vicente
an action, but as a transformation of space. This would not be a protest, but a reshaping
and a redefinition of this very significant public space, to turn it into an open laboratory
to stage experiments in the practice of democracy, and to recover the function of public
space as Agora.
A significant moment takes place when, at that same, assembly the people gathered
decides that they will become an entity and a location. To make this explicit, they
opened a Twitter account, @acampadasol,11 publishing their very first message at 01:55
am. A website would soon follow, Toma la Plaza,12 that will become a communication
hub between different cities as camps started spreading all over Spain, with their own
Twitter accounts and websites. In a matter of days, the movement effectively became a
network.
The members of Acampada Sol understand in an intuitive way that social media is not
only a communication tool but also the arena where their movement is gaining support
and recruiting new members. On the second night at the square, a police intervention dis-
mantled the camp. The permanent narration of the events through Twitter created a strong
popular reaction against the police intervention, multiplying the number of people at the
square ten-fold in little more than 24 hours, consolidating their presence at the square to
the point where it becomes clear the camp will not be easily dismantled.

Riding the algorithm

As the camp at Puerta del Sol grows larger, an increasing number of banners, signs and leg-
ends start to cover up the space of the square. But being aware of the intimate connection
between public space and the space of social media, the movement was as proficient and
prolific in creating hashtags that were retweeted and referenced again and again. At this
point, an inventivestrategy is developed (or accidentally discovered): instead of focusing
on a single hashtag for all messages, it was replaced with a new one every couple of hours.
Because the Twitter algorithm calculating Trending Topics does not consider only the vol-
ume of messages using one hashtag, but the speed of a concept spreading from nowhere, the
effect was a complete monopolization of the full list of Trending Topics on Spain. During
the week following the 15M event, the protest monopolized the national twitter stream,
to the point it was hard to find messages that did not make reference to them or included
hashtags linked to the movement.
The notion of the protests, not as an event but as a spatial intervention, definitely takes
over when maps of the camps started being drawn out as an actual necessity to navigate
the square. The need for basic infrastructure giving support to the hundreds sleeping in the
square and thousands using it during the day, along with the organizational structure of the
protesters that generated commissions and working groups, produced an emerging Instant
City coming out of nowhere within 2 days.
The map of Acampada Sol13 shows how to find their library, made up with hundreds of
books donated by participants and citizens; the legal department, offering legal assistance to
protesters as they follow the evolution of events; a small dispensary for medical attention;
a kindergarten; and the most popular and crowded venue, the kitchen-restaurant, cooking
for the residents of the camp with ingredients donated by citizens (money donations were
consistently rejected). The Twitter account was actively used to organize a chain of supply,
connecting the supporters willing to help with the specific material needs of the camp at
every given moment.
[…]
 Activism, Protest and Dissent  177
Media infrastructures
On the first spontaneous gathering of protesters at the square two days after May 15th, a
young journalist named Juan Luis Sánchez climbed to the top of one of the buildings at
Puerta del Sol and recorded what was going on before any national TV station got there.
This original 40-second clip14 spread in minutes through social media, reaching interna-
tional blogs, and was reproduced hundreds of thousands of times in the following hours. It
would also be the start of a continuous self-organized media coverage of the events at the
square. For the next three days, Juan Luis would stay up there holding his iPhone in his
hand, broadcasting to thousands of viewers daily through a free streaming service.
The unmediated online streams that would broadcast 24/7 the events at Puerta del Sol
would become an essential cohesive element to unite those who were on site and those fol-
lowing the events through social media; it was a back channel that certified and stabilized
the actual presence of the camp. The audiovisual committee of the camp, coordinating
broadcasting efforts, was to play a central role also in the coming months at big demon-
strations organized in June and October 2011 all over the country. Their role was to offer
a testimony of the reality of what was going on, bypassing the distrust and skepticism that
many felt towards mainstream media and their coverage of the protest.
But media devices and their communication infrastructures would fulfill another essen-
tial function for the protesters; it would become a mechanism for defensive surveillance, as
the permanent presence of recording devices would ensure that any event would be regis-
tered from multiple points of view. These videos would provide valuable information, but
also a tool for negotiating the conditions in public space.
[…]

Taken square
One of the most iconic images produced by the 15M movement would be taken in Valencia
on May 20. It depicts two young persons, a man and a woman, climbing up the façade of the
city hall, with a sign in their hands. The picture shows how they are trying to change the
name of the square from “Plaza del Ayuntamiento” (City Hall Square) to “Plaza 15 de Mayo”
(May 15 Square). They would not be alone in this; different street art and activist actions
would become some of the movement’s most iconic sentences and turn them into street signs.
The most memorable one sat at the foot of the equestrian statue at the center of Plaza del Sol.
Installed by art students, it simply said: “We were slept, we woke up. Taken square.”
Like the camp, the placard is not there any longer; it has been installed and removed several
times. It is a reminder, though, that the movement that took over one specific point in the city
was using the language of the city to express a will to the city, a need to bring back the politi-
cal aspect and recover public space as the natural space where public matters can be discussed.
A distinct model of taking over the city to reshape it and reclaim it was in action in Spain
during those three weeks. It is one hybrid model of global participation, taking many ele-
ments of the self-governance of online communities and injecting them into the heart of
the city, reinvigorating it, recovering it as the space for discussing what model of society we
want, to imagine and shape out a new one. And in this exercise of recovering the city, the
weak links of social media, the strategies of peer-production communities, and the mecha-
nisms of emergent organization without strong hierarchies were absolutely central. Beyond
social media activism, the 15M movement became a movement for the shared, spontaneous
creation of space.
178  José Luis de Vicente
Notes
1 The website of ¡Democracia Real Ya!, http://www.democraciarealya.es/ (accessed January 13, 2014).
2 For a detail account of these first hours of the movement, see Juan Luis Sánchez, “The First Forty at
Sol,” Human Journalism, June 6, 2011, http://english.periodismohu-mano.com/2011/06/06/the-first-
40-at-sol/ (accessed January 13, 2014).
3 “An event or occurrence that deviates beyond what is normally expected of a situation and that would
be extremely difficult to predict.” Coined by Nassim Nicholas Taleb. See Nassim Nicholas Taleb, The
Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable (New York: Random House, 2007).
4 Evgeny Morozov and Clay Shirky, “Digital Power and its discontents. Mozorov & Shirky, an Edge
Conversation,” Edge.org, http://edge.org/3rd_culture/morozov_shirky10/morozov_shirky10_in-
dex.html (accessed January 13, 2014).
5 Patricia Gosálvez, “Reportaje: Arquitectura de guerrilla en el 15-M,” El Pais, June 17, 2011, http://
elpais.com/diario/2011/06/17/madrid/1308309860_850215.html (accessed January 13, 2014).
6 The website of Una línea sobre el mar, “Mapa conceptual de la acampadasol,” 2011, http://www.
unalineasobreelmar. net/mapa-conceptual-de-la-acampada/ (accessed January 13, 2014).
7 Sindominio.net, http://www.sindominio.net/v/ (accessed January 13, 2014).
11 The Twitter account of “acampadasol,” http://www.twitter.com/acampadasol (accessed January 13,
2014).
12 The website of Toma la Plaza, http://tomalaplaza.net/ (accessed January 13, 2014).
13 The website of Toma la Plaza, “Plano de Acampada Sol,” May 21, 2011, http://madrid.tomalaplaza.
net/2011/05/21/plano-acampada-so/ (accessed January 13, 2014).
14 “Vista aérea de la concentración en Sol 17M #acampadasol,” YouTube video, 00:40, posted by “Juan
Luis Sánchez,” May 17, 2011 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ar2nmOQZEjw&.
Figure 4.0.3  “Protest Micro City: Mapping Spatial Re-
quirements for Protest in Zuccotti Park.”
A snapshot of the Zuccotti Park enclave as
documented on 15 October 2011 (roughly
one month into the occupation) and on 10
November 2011 (five days before being
dismantled). Produced through extensive
on-site mapping, interviews, and photo
reviews. © Rob Daurio and MIT Depart-
ment of Urban Studies & Planning, 2011.
Courtesy of Rob Daurio.
4.3 Occupying Public Space, 2011: From
Tahrir Square to Zuccotti Park
Karen A. Franck and Te-Sheng Huang
Source: Franck, K. A. and Huang, T. S. (2012). “Occupying Public Space, 2011:
From Tahrir Square to Zuccotti Park,” in Shiffman, R., Bell, R., Brown, L. and
Elizabeth, L. (eds.), Beyond Zuccotti Park: Freedom of Assembly and the Occupation of
Public Space. New York: New Village Press, 3–19.

Over the course of 2011, thousands of people in cities around the world occupied public
space in political protest. In democratic societies and repressive authoritarian regimes alike,
citizens made their concerns internationally known through their extended, joint physical
presence in central urban squares and plazas. In some cases, the demands were specific, such
as the resignation of President Hosni Mubarak in Egypt or the ouster of the monarchy in
Bahrain; in Spain and particularly in the United States, the issues of concern were multiple
and diverse. In nearly every case, local police or the military eventually forced the dem-
onstrators to leave. In all cases, at least some violence occurred and demonstrators were
injured; in the Middle East, demonstrators died. The occupying of public space in 2011 for
political ends at the risk of arrest, injury, and worse, demonstrates how public space can still
become “loose” (Franck and Stevens 2007) or “insurgent” (Hou 2010).
In this essay, we compare four urban spaces that were occupied in 2011: Tahrir Square in
Cairo; Pearl Square in Manama, Bahrain; Plaça de Catalunya in Barcelona; and Zuccotti
Park in New York City. We briefly look at their histories, their design features, and the
activities they hosted in 2011. Then we take a more detailed look at the design and use of
Zuccotti Park in New York City.1 In all four cities, the intensive, creative use of urban
public space as a tool of political action was remarkable. While virtual communication via
social media was essential to the planning and ongoing coordination of the demonstrations,
the presence of significant numbers of demonstrators in a single physical space played an
equally important role, particularly for reaching a much larger, international audience.
While communicating to the public and to each other was essential, occupying public space
over time also required that demonstrators organize the space and the provision of shelter,
food, and security. As shown in the images of Zuccotti Park, communication and the tasks
of daily life occurred side by side.

Four occupied spaces

Of the four public spaces described in this essay, Tahrir Square in the center of Cairo is the
largest, functioning as a transit hub for metro, buses, and cars. A great many streets lead to
the square from different parts of the city. Its form is loosely defined and comprises several
different spaces, including a very busy traffic circle and a large construction site. Significant
buildings—the headquarters of the Arab League and of Mubarak’s National Democratic
Party, the Hilton, and the Omar Makram Mosque—border the space without enclosing it.
A grassy plaza in front of the Egyptian Museum was once a popular meeting place but in
the 1970s was enclosed with a construction fence as a means of subdividing the space and
preventing assembly (Elsahed 2011).
 Activism, Protest and Dissent  183

Figure 4.3.1  Use of Zuccotti Park, New York City, from September through November 2011. Courtesy
of Google Maps, Google Earth, Sagel and Tse 2011, and Franck’s and Huang’s observations.

Inspired by Hausmann’s modernization of Paris, Khedive Ismail established the square as

an open space in 1865 in his efforts to modernize Cairo (AlSayyad 2011). The square has long
been the site of political protest: in 1919, Egyptians demonstrated against British rule and again
in 1946 and 1951. Further demonstrations were held in 1977 against rising food prices, in 2001
in sympathy with the Palestinian Intifada, in 2001 against the US invasion of Iraq, and in 2006
in solidarity with Lebanon under attack from Israel. All these demonstrations involved signif-
icant risk, and many resulted in injuries and death; none lasted long (Taher 2012).
In January 2011, as many as three-hundred thousand demonstrators and possibly more
gathered in the square on particular days and, despite the risks of injury and death, main-
tained their hold on the space. To protect themselves from anti-Mubarak forces, the occupi-
ers barricaded streets to the square and operated checkpoints to review people’s identification
cards and to search for weapons. People waited in two lines to pass through these check-
points: women in one, to be searched by women, and men in the other, to be searched by
men. After newcomers passed through the checkpoint on Ramses Street, occupiers warmly
welcomed them with cheers and singing.2 Since February 11, when Mubarak was ousted,
the square has continued to be the site of demonstrations.
In February 2011, Pearl Square, also called Pearl or Lulu Roundabout, was a grassy traf-
fic circle accommodating four large roads in the heart of Manama, the capital of Bahrain,
located close to the central market, the marina, and a large apartment complex. Its iconic
status arose from the monument built on the traffic circle in 1982 to honor the first summit
184  Karen A. Franck and Te-Sheng Huang
meeting of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) to be held in Bahrain. The towering
Pearl Monument was composed of six curved beams representing the six members of the
council which held, at the top, a large cement pearl symbolizing Bahrain’s history of pearl
cultivation. At the base was a pool. The monument became a symbol of Bahrain, appearing
on its half-dinar coins (Reisz 2011).
On February 14, Pearl Square, as one of Bahrain’s largest and most symbolic spaces, was
a good site for demonstrators to gather and demand the ouster of the country’s monarchy.
After a bloody crackdown by the city police on February 17, the protestors were allowed
to return, staying until
March 16 when Bahrain Defense forces along with military forces from the GCC and
Saudi Arabia evacuated and bulldozed the encampment. On March 18, the monument was
razed; then the traffic circle was removed and replaced with traffic lights, eliminating any
space for gathering that was free of cars. To remove any semantic association between the
former square and the protest movement, the new space was renamed Al Farooq Junction.
On February 14, 2012, security forces prevented marchers from returning to the junction,
which remains cordoned off. Into 2012, subsequent protest marches have filled major streets
in Bahrain but were prevented from reaching the new junction (AJE 2011; Mitchell 2011a).
Like Tahrir Square, Plaça de Catalunya functions as a traffic hub in the center of ­Barcelona,
being the starting point for two of Barcelona’s major streets (La Rambla and Passeig de
Gracia) and hosting a great many bus lines and, below ground, four metro lines and one
regional train station. Also like Tahrir, it was envisioned as part of an urban modernization
plan in the mid-nineteenth century although it was not built until the twentieth century
based on the design idea of Josep Puig I Cadafalch (Permanyer 2011).
Its design, however, is radically different from Tahrir’s, being a clearly defined open
space enclosed by streets and monumental buildings on all sides. These buildings include
the department store El Corte Ingles, banks, hotels, and the historic Café Zurich. Unlike
many European squares, the center of the plaza is open. Fountains and sculptures, mature
trees, and some grassy areas are located around the periphery, leaving the central paved area
empty, encircled by benches.
Starting on May 21, 2011, the plaza, along with public spaces in cities throughout Spain,
became a site of a movement variously called Real Democracy NOW or the Indignants,
which responded to problems of unemployment, increased costs of education, reductions
in social benefits, and political corruption. Plaça de Catalunya is regularly used for political
demonstrations (with permits), and is where thousands of fans of the Barca football team
gather to celebrate victories. It was the expectation of such a celebration on May 28 that
police gave as a justification for forcefully clearing the square of demonstrators on May
27, using rubber bullets and truncheons and injuring many. After the square had been
cleaned, protestors returned and, with signs reading “No to violence,” blocked access to
many rowdy and often violent football fans (Tremlett 2011). Occupiers remained in the
square until police moved them out in late June.
Of these four spaces of revolution, Zuccotti Park, the original site of the Occupy Wall
Street movement, is the smallest and also the one where demonstrators raised the greatest
variety of political, social, and economic issues. Located three blocks north of Wall Street,
the park is bordered by four streets; the two largest are Broadway to the east and Trinity
Place to the west. Zuccotti Park is also the only one of the four spaces described in this
essay that is privately owned. U.S. Steel, the original owner of the building immediately to
the north, built the park in 1968 in order to receive permission from the New York City
Planning Department to add additional floors to the building beyond the existing height
restriction (Kayden et al. 2000). The park, then called Liberty Plaza Park, was a popular
pedestrian route between Wall Street and the World Trade Center, with people sitting there
 Activism, Protest and Dissent  185
in warm weather (Kayden et al. 2000). After being covered in debris from the September
11, 2001 attack on the World Trade Center and then used as a storage area for heavy equip-
ment during the recovery efforts, the park underwent an eight-million-dollar renovation in
2006 funded by Brookfield Properties, the current owner, and was renamed Zuccotti Park.
Subsequently, the park was the site of several 9/11 anniversary ceremonies. It remains a
popular route for pedestrians in Lower Manhattan and now, with many more people living
in that part of town, it is also popular with families (LMCCC 2005).
From September 17, 2011 onward, the park served as a place of demonstration and en-
campment for Occupy Wall Street as well as a launching site for marches to Wall Street,
City Hall Park, Foley Square, and Times Square. The park attracted hundreds of occu-
pants who stayed the night and hundreds more who came during the day. Pedestrian
traffic around the square continued to be heavy. As at Plaça de Catalunya, an officially
stated need to clean the park (from Brookfield Properties) was the justification for the
police’s public announcement that the park would be evacuated on October 14. But un-
der pressure from about twenty New York City council members and New York state
senators, Brookfield cancelled the evacuation. Occupiers then agreed to keep the park
clean and safe themselves (Moynihan and Buckley 2011). On November 15, at 1 a.m.
with no warning, the police cleared all protestors in a very carefully planned raid under
klieg lights, arresting some who resisted; the sanitation department collected anything
left behind; and barricades were placed to limit access to the park (Baker and Goldstein
2011). The next day, a state supreme court judge upheld Brookfield’s regulations against
camping, setting up tents, and lying down (Baker and Goldstein 2011), discouraging any
large-scale reoccupation of the park.

Manner of occupying
The manner of occupying public space for political protest shows many similarities across
the four cities. In all cases, except Zuccotti Park, the installation of a stage, microphones,
and loudspeakers allowed for communicating to the large number of demonstrators
within the space. Tahrir Square had two stages and a TV screen; Pearl Square occupiers
had a satellite TV connection (AJE 2011; Fathi 2011; Mitchell 2011a; Yagopartal 2011).
In New York, the demonstrators, following the police ban on loudspeakers or bullhorns,
adopted their own mic-check system: the speaker paused after every few words, waiting
as the crowd conveyed those words to others on the periphery, through successive waves
of repetition.
Handmade signs and posters were evocative and plentiful. In Tahrir Square, the metal
shutters of retail spaces became the canvases for a “gallery.”3 In Plaça de Catalunya, posters
were hung on slack lines stretched across the square between trees; statues were decorated
with words, clothing, and signs (Yagopartal 2011). In Zuccotti Park, demonstrators pro-
vided materials for people to make signs, which were then carried or held. The three legs
of the red sculpture by Mark di Suvero were decorated with a few signs, but later, after a
protester attempted to climb it, the sculpture was barricaded and remained untouched. On
Trinity Place, the Seward Johnson sculpture was frequently decorated with signs and also
a mask. Both Zuccotti Park and Plaça de Catalunya sported libraries and information desks
(Yagopartal 2011).
Demonstrators’ manner of living day and night in an outdoor public space showed simi-
larities across the four spaces as well. Blue tents and tarpaulins were common everywhere,
even after the city government banned “camping” in Zuccotti Park in October (the reg-
ulation was not enforced until November) (Kayden 2011). In Plaça de Catalunya, demon-
strators stretched hammocks between the trees and built at least one tree house. Free food,
186  Karen A. Franck and Te-Sheng Huang
donated by supporters, was available in all four spaces; in Zuccotti Park, people could also
get free clothing and sleeping bags. Recycling was adopted there, in Tahrir Square, and
possibly elsewhere, and demonstrators organized teams to clean the spaces. Zuccotti Park
was the only occupied space without portable toilets on site, which the city also forbid, so
until November 4, most demonstrators relied on nearby restaurants. Then three portable
toilets were donated to the protestors and installed at a private loading dock four blocks
away (Shapiro 2011). In Tahrir and Pearl Squares, one could get a haircut and receive med-
ical care in the nearby Omar Makram Mosque (Fathi 2011; Filiz 2011; Mitchell 2011b); in
Zuccotti Park, a medical section was set up to provide first-aid and massages.
[…]

Dissent in public space

In all four cities, the spaces of dissent were simultaneously demonstration spaces, demonstration
headquarters, and encampments. The occupying of a physical space gave these political move-
ments international visibility through the transmission of detailed and evocative images in the
media. At the same time, participants could hold planned and impromptu discussions of what
to do next and how to do it. The role that public, physical space played in dissent around the
world illustrates its continued, vital importance in the pursuit of democracy (Parkinson 2012).
Notably, demonstrators made creative use of what features they found in the space. They also
demonstrated organizational skill, and patience, in managing the activities within the space and
communicating to the world, despite the difficulties and serious dangers they faced.
In New York City, demonstrators remained determined to maintain the nonhierarchical
structure of OWS, to make decisions by consensus, and to remain inclusive of all comers
even when the diversity of people living in the space created additional challenges. Occu-
pying a public space over time allowed OWS demonstrators to enact, in public view, what
they believe. They raised public awareness of issues of economic inequity making them
a topic of public discourse, including during the 2011/2012 presidential campaign. Even
though the movement became far less visible once OWS encampments were removed from
public spaces in various cities throughout the country and so received far less attention from
the media, the issue of economic inequity continued to be widely discussed (Schmidt 2012).
OWS’s use of public space is an example of the kind of disorder that Lynn Staeheli (2010)
identifies as a powerful tool for airing conflict and fostering democracy.
The occupation of Zuccotti Park in fall 2011 also exemplifies a historically rooted and
widespread phenomenon in the US: the management of public dissent through laws, regu-
lations, city permits, police practices, and court cases (Mitchell and Staeheli 2005). Demon-
strators were legally able to occupy the space because of existing regulations about its use.
Eventually, new rules were adopted; those rules were upheld by a court decision, and the
police were then able to move the protestors out. The new rules were again challenged in
court in the winter of 2012. The tension between citizens’ use of streets and squares to ex-
press dissent and authorities’ exertion of control to maintain public order will continue—in
public spaces and in courts of law in the US. If anything, Occupy Wall Street has reinvig-
orated this historical conflict.

Notes
1 Information about the foreign cases is taken from published articles and online sources, an interview
with a protestor from Tahrir Square, and Karen Franck’s observations of Plaça Catalunya in late June
2011. For Zuccotti Park, online sources supplement the authors’ own observations from September
through November 2011.
2 Y. El Barry, in discussion with the authors, March 7, 2012.
3 Y. El Barry, in discussion with the authors, March 7, 2012.
 Activism, Protest and Dissent  187
References
Al Jazeera English (AJE). 2011. Bahrain: Shouting in the Dark. Al Jazeera documentary. http://www.you-
tube.com/watch?v=Lmg1N1AKf Fc.
AlSayyad, N. 2011. “A history of Tahrir Square.” Harvard University Press Blog, April 1. http://harvard-
press.typepad.com/hup_publicity/2011/04/a-history-of-tahrir-square.html.
Baker, A., and J. Goldstein. 2011. “After an earlier misstep, a minutely planned raid.” New York Times,
November 15. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/16/nyregion/police-clear-zuccotti-park-with-
show-of-force-bright-lights-and-loudspeakers.html.
Fathi, Y. 2011. “In Egypt’s Tahrir Square: Life is a battlefield.” Abram Online, February 8. http://english.
ahram.org.eg/NewsContent/1/64/5187/Egypt/Politics-/In-Egypts-Tahrir-Square-Life-is-a-battle-
field.aspx.
Filiz. 2011. “Coming back to LIFE at Tahrir Square.” Medicine Words, February 13. http://www.medi-
cinewords.org/2011/02/13/coming-back-to-life-at-tahrir-square/.
Franck, K. A., and Q. Stevens, eds. 2007. Loose Space: Possibility and Diversity in Urban Life. New York:
Routledge.
Hou, J., ed. 2010. Insurgent Public Space: Guerrilla Urbanism and the Remaking of Contemporary Cities. New
York: Routledge.
Kayden, J. S. 2011. “Meet me at the plaza.” New York Times, October 19. http://www.nytimes.
com/2011/10/20/opinion/zuccotti-park-and-the-private-plaza-problem.html?_r=1.
Kayden, J. S. 2000. New York City Department of City Planning, and Municipal Art Society of New
York. Privately Owned Public Space: The New York City Experience. New York: John Wiley.
Lower Manhattan Construction Command Center (LMCCC). 2005. “Liberty Plaza Park Turns Over a
New Leaf.” http://www.lowermanhattan.info/news/liberty_park_plaza_turns_38704.aspx.
Mitchell, T. 2011a. “Part 1: The roundabout clearance.” Blog entry, December 4. http://tonydmitchell.
wordpress.com/2011/12/04/hello-world/.
———. 2011b. “Part 3: Aftermath and social media.” Blog entry, December 8. http://tonydmitchell.
wordpress.com/2011/12/08/garhain-uprising-part-3-aftermath-and-social-media/.
Mitchell, D., and L. A. Staeheli. 2005. “Permitting protest: Parsing the fine geography of dissent in
America.” International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 29 (4): 796–813.
Moynihan, C., and C. Buckley. 2011. “Cleanup of Zuccotti Park is postponed.” New York Times, October
14. http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/10/14/cleanup-of-zuccotti-park-cancelled/.
Parkinson, J. R. 2012. Democracy & Public Space: The Physical Sites of Democratic Performance. Oxford:
­Oxford University Press.
Permanyer, L. 2001. Josep Puig I Cadafalch. Barcelona: Ediciones Poligraf.
Reisz, T. 2011. “Bahrain: A roundabout way to signifying nothing.” Huffington Post, April 5. http://www.
huffingtonpost.com/todd-reisz/bahrain-roundabout_b_844276.html.
Saget, B., and A. Tse. 2011. “How Occupy Wall Street Turned Zuccotti Park into a Protest Camp.”
New York Times, October 5. https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/interactive/2011/10/05/­
nyregion/how-occupy-wall-street-turned-zuccotti-park-into-a-protest-camp.html?ref=nyregion.
Schmidt, M. S. 2012. “For occupy movement, a challenge to recapture momentum.” New York Times,
April 1.
Staeheli, L. A. 2010. “Political geography: democracy and the disorderly public.” Progress in Human Ge-
ography 34 (1): 67–78.
Shapiro, J. 2011. “Occupy Wall Street gets porta-potties.” DNAinfo, November 4. http://www.dnainfo.
com/20111104/downtown/occupy-wall-street-gets-portable-toilets-following-community-com-
plaints.
Taher, M. 2012. “Tahrir Square: Where people make history.” Abram Online, January 20. http://english.
ahram.org.eg/NewsContent/1/64/32175/Egypt/Politics-/Tahrir-Square-Where-people-make-­
history.aspx.
Tremlett, G. 2011. “Spanish police clash with protestors over cleanup.” The Guardian, May 27.
Yagopartal. 2011. “15M–Acampada BCB–Plaza Catalunya.” YouTube video. http://www.youtube.com/
watch?v=4hxRzrO-V1E.

Figure 4.0.4  Occupy Wall Street protest near Zuccotti Park, New York City, September 2011. Photo ©
Jilly Traganou. Courtesy of Jilly Traganou.
188  Karen A. Franck and Te-Sheng Huang
4.4 Choosing a Place
Tali Hatuka
Source: Hatuka, T. (2018). The Design of Protest: Choreographing Political Demonstra-
tions in Public Space. Austin: University of Texas Press, 25–46 and 123.

Public space prototypes and protest cultures

Context plays a key role in planning protests, which makes describing public spaces in
universal terms nearly impossible. However, mapping key urban typologies that have re-
ceived significant attention from architects and town planners—the square, the street,
and the park—serves as a first step in revealing the relationship between distance and the
­socio-spatial engagements that occur during protests. Although these spaces differ substan-
tially from one city to another, exploring their uses, roles, and spatial definitions within a
city can help us better comprehend the challenge of overcoming distance during protests.

The square: Drawing on a place’s symbolic characteristics

Defined as a group of buildings arranged around an open space, the square affords a high
degree of control over an inner space.17 The typology of the square is apparent in residential
developments (with many houses built around central courtyards or atriums),18 but it gained
its reputation as a space for large-scale social gatherings and as a holy place (e.g., the agora,
the forum, and the mosque courtyard). Today, the secular “civic” square, around which
government and cultural buildings are located, is the modern equivalent of a holy place.
These civic squares incorporate architectural elements (e.g., scale, symmetry, monumental
buildings, and symbolic icons) to position individuals within a meaningful social hierarchy
that promulgates implicit power relationships. These physical and design characteristics,
including the unique relationships between the landscape and the built space, play a major
role in the organization of protests. Thus, protests that take place in a square, which is a
pause or extension within the city’s network, tend to generate engagement that uses or
challenges a space’s defined (symbolic/physical) distance. The enclosed space increases the
sense of ritual and solidarity and helps challenge the social distance among participants.
Furthermore, central squares tend to signify a locus of power; thus, using them for action
is a means of communicating with the ruling power(s) or challenging the distance between
the people and the ruling power(s).
Protests that take place in squares tend to be structured events, performances that draw
on a place’s symbolic characteristics. These focal gatherings are often organized events at
which participants abide by an agreed-upon set of activities with known aims and dis-
tinct symbolic meanings. The theatrical dimension includes the manipulation of symbols,
whether existing (with regard to a place or an ideology) or new ones, which link partici-
pants over a discrete time period and help increase social solidarity. However, “focal” or
“symbolic” does not necessarily imply a large scale event; instead, it implies a defined event
that often takes place in a formal, institutionalized public square in an attempt to reduce the
distance between protesters and the ruling power and to achieve high visibility. The scale
 Activism, Protest and Dissent  191
of the focal event plays a crucial role in terms of the distance among participants. Small-
scale events or rituals create more concrete events, while large-scale events transform event
participants into anonymous actors, part of an abstract mass. Although large scale events
are more successful in attracting media attention, they are less successful in challenging the
social distance among participants.
The main square in Mexico City (Zócalo), the Bastille Square in Paris, Martyr’s Square
in Lebanon, Taksim Square in Istanbul, and many others are all public squares that have
hosted major protests. The difference is linked to the way activists use and appropriate the
symbolic and physical attributes of these renowned spaces. Theater, ritual, and reiconization
are different spatial choreographies; although very different in their aims, each tactic uses
squares as a means of reinforcing the political formalization of the space, adding another
layer of symbolic meaning.

The street: Planning accumulative dynamics

Distinct from the enclosed space of the square, which is attractive and often monumental
due to its size and the arrangement of buildings, the street is a functional space that is a
product of a settlement’s expansion. It provides a framework for the distribution of land and
provides access to individual plots.19 Serving as the socioeconomic veins of the city and as
channels for traffic and movement, streets (especially commercial streets) are visually dy-
namic,20 bustling public areas for inhabitants and visitors. Political actions that take place
along city streets are often more dynamic, with active marching. In this type of action,
physical distance is significant (e.g., the length of the path) and symbolic (e.g., exposure to
distant viewers who are not participating in the event); street protests halt and paralyze the
city’s network, enhancing the protest’s impact by attracting viewers and passersby. Protests
that take place on city streets dismantle the physical distance between participants and ac-
tively perform their messages throughout the city (e.g., walking and singing).
Extending beyond a particular focal point, such as a central square or a monument, this
type of protest has a particular logic: its accumulative advantage and its ability to attract
participants along the route and to project its message to viewers. The march’s route is
ideologically meaningful and critical in attracting spectators and additional participants.
As such, marching in the main plaza of a city or passing by government buildings might
indicate the protesters’ intentions to communicate with officials and to challenge or sway
their decisions. Marching in residential areas or gathering at nongovernmental venues out-
side the city center might indicate the group’s intention to protest far from the hegemonic
powers as a counterpoint to them. The spatiality of the processional gathering varies from
vector-shaped (moving from one point to another), to spiraling, to star-shaped processions
(moving from multiple points to a focal gathering point). The differences between the spa-
tial forms are related to the scale of appropriation, the scope of the message, and the range of
participants, with spiraling and star-shaped processions being able to simultaneously extend
the event’s geographical boundaries and appropriate different parts of the city.
“Taking to the streets” is a spatial strategy that includes many different connected routes
across a city. Unlike protests that take place in central squares, processions are named ac-
cording to their goals, as was the case in Pakistan’s Azadi March to overthrow Prime Min-
ister Nawaz Sharif in 201421 and the Peruvians’ campaign to overthrow the dictator Alberto
Fujimori (the March of the Four Directions) in 2000.22 However, in most cases, attention
is given to the spatial configuration of the event as a whole. The most common form of
procession is the vector form, which starts at one point and ends at another, often a central
gathering place in the city.
[…]
192  Tali Hatuka
Clearly, streets or routes (as opposed to squares or parks) exist in all cities. During protests,
a shift occurs in the ways in which streets or routes are used; the target-oriented movement
of the individual is replaced with a target-oriented movement of a collective mass. This
shift is a powerful statement about distanciation and disembedding. However, marches can
take very different forms, and they often manifest themselves in the social structure of the
event. Thus, although all can be regarded as processions, target, conjoining, synchronicity, and
elasticity choreographies are spatially very different. The common element of these chore-
ographies is the rather blurred manifestations of hierarchical power differentiation among
participants and the limited play with existing representations, though protesters might pass
by significant symbolic icons of the ruling power.

Figure 4.4.1  Key features of the Square, the Street, and the Park. Illustration by author.
 Activism, Protest and Dissent  193

Figure 4.4.2  Key attributes of spatial choreographies. Illustration by author.

The park: Creating a constrained island of dissent

Unlike the street and the square, the urban park is a relatively recent development that
emerged in the nineteenth century because of the allocation of royal lands for public use in
Europe and the creation of nonutilitarian, landscaped urban areas with woodlands and pas-
tures, which were designated for public recreation.23 Owned and maintained by the local
194  Tali Hatuka
government, the urban park, with varying uses and on different scales, exists as a modern
typology in cities worldwide. As a piece of nature in the midst of a bustling city, the park
offers unique conditions for protests. Protests that take place in parks are often large-scale
activities and festive events, in which the parks’ enclosed, detached nature creates mini-
mal interference in the daily dynamics of the city. Political action in parks tends to be less
threatening to the government authority and less disruptive to the economy. The beauty of
nature, its loose spatial boundaries, and its recreational character often challenge organizers
in communicating their message. Choosing a park for collective action is about creating
“an island” of dissent, an island that might be geographically central but distant from the
locus of power. However, its key advantage is that it can support long-term events such as
camping.
Over the last decade, camping or occupying public parks has become a popular strat-
egy among protesters. In most cases, the encampment includes an array of tents with the
infrastructure provided at the site (i.e., water and electricity), and (if funded and needed)
additional facilities (e.g., kitchens and toilets) are used to support the daily lives of the pro-
testers. For example, NATO protesters opened a peace camp at Tredegar Park in Newport,
Wales, in August 2014; environmentalists protested at Gezi Park in Istanbul to prevent
its demolition in May 2013; and the Occupy movement spread rapidly in 2011. All these
demonstrations have used this tactic to realize change by creating an “island” of dissent.
Parks have two advantages: flexibility and infrastructure. These advantages allow (1) the
development of a new physical manifestation that suits the activists’ needs and ideas, and
(2) the event’s resiliency in stretching over a significant period of time. As such, parks allow
a range of spatial choreographies, from the more radical and planned, such as city design, to
the more immediate, such as narrative. However, irrespective of the spatial choreography
chosen, parks are often spacious pauses in the urban fabric—distinctly bounded, enclosed
entities. These particular features might present challenges in the quest for political change.
The spatial features of the square, street, and park and the opportunities they provide for
protest events cannot be detached from narration. Protesters respond, contribute, negate, or
change the story of a place, which has evolved in the collective memory of a society. The
physicality of a place and memory should be seen as mutually constitutive.
To be sure, the key spatial typologies explored—the square, the street, and the park—
are abstractions. They provide a general glimpse of the opportunities a particular spatial
typology may offer. Moreover, in exploring the spatiality of protest, it is impossible to ex-
amine city spaces in a vacuum, separate from the buildings surrounding them, which also
mark political distance and hold significant meanings. Public institutions (e.g., government
buildings), transit hubs, private consumption spaces (e.g., malls), labor facilities (e.g., facto-
ries), and their adjacent public spaces often become sites or even targets of contestation. In
some cases, as part of the protest’s performance and the message’s purpose, the design of a
collective action may carry a meaning that runs counter to the representation of the build-
ing or institution. Furthermore, most protests do not follow a pure form; instead, they use
diverse spaces to develop their strategies (e.g., marching through the streets and congregat-
ing in a square in front of a government building).
In addition, the outlined typologies are not apparent in all cultures; in some cities, pro-
tests may primarily occur in the streets and in informal public spaces (open spaces that allow
large gatherings).24 Thus, particular attention should be paid to the social rules and cultural
traditions of a society, which affect the accessibility of public spaces. The laws that govern
public spaces and the use of regulations to define distance and its adjustment during protests
(often through negotiation and permits from authorities) amplify contextual differences.
[…]
 Activism, Protest and Dissent  195
Many public spaces have been modified after protests. Such modifications frequently in-
volve renaming places (e.g., Rabin Square in Tel Aviv and Augustusplatz in Leipzig), rede-
signing a particular object to memorialize a protest (e.g., marking the circle of the Mothers
of Plaza de Mayo in Buenos Aires), or destroying objects. Therefore, although narrations
may be physically manifested in stone and concrete, they are all replaceable; this imperma-
nence is a constant reminder that every act of memory carries a dimension of betrayal and
forgetting.31

Notes
17 Carmona et al., Public Places, Urban Spaces, 142.
18 Krier, Urban Space, 19-20.
19 For further reading, see Loukatiou-Sideris and Ehrenfeucht’s Sidewalks and Mehta’s The Street.
20 Carmona et al., Public Places, Urban Spaces, 146.
21 The Azadi March was a public protest that was held in Pakistan from August 14, 2014, to December
17, 2014. The Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf Party organized this protest against Prime Minister Nawaz
Sharif, claiming systematic rigging by the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) in the 2013
general election. Marches traversed many regions of Pakistan, including Lahore, Islamabad, Karachi,
Multan, Mianwali, Sargodha, Gujrat, Rahim Yar Khan, Nankana Sahib, Sahiwal, Jhelum, Larkana,
and Gujranwala. For further reading, see the Global Nonviolent Action Database, http://nvdatabase.
swarthmore.edu/.
22 The goal of this protest in the streets of Lima was to condemn President Alberto Fujimori’s illegal
third reelection and to remove him from power. About 20,000 demonstrators from the four corners
of Peru, many of whom traveled by bus for several days to participate, peacefully marched down the
streets of Lima to protest against Fujimori’s illegal election to a third term.
23 For further reading, see Low, Taplin, and Scheld, Rethinking Urban Parks; Forsyth and Musacchio,
Designing Small Parks.
24 In Turkey, for example, the equivalent to the square is the meydan, a mundane space, a junction of axes
that joins structures and spaces that were not intentionally designed to define an integrated spatial
entity. Thus, the scale, form, and style of buildings in the meydan are often not correlated with one
another. Moreover, the meydan concerns the flow of both people and space, as opposed to the notion
of control that is reflected in the square. However, this flexibility also makes the meydan changeable.
The intentional planning of meydans in neighborhoods did not exist in Ottoman and Islamic cities
(excluding eighteenth-century neighborhood fountains, which functionally created squares around
them); instead, large mosque courtyards in the proximity of marketplaces were the gathering places
of the masses, as was the case with the Roman forum. Baykan and Hatuka, “Politics and Culture.”
31 Huyssen, Present Pasts, 2.

References
Carmona, Matthew, Tim Heath, Taner Oc, and Steve Tiesdell. Public Places, Urban Spaces: The Dimensions
of Urban Design. Amsterdam and Boston: Architectural Press/Elsevier, 2010.
Forsyth, Ann, and Laura Musacchio. Designing Small Parks: A Manual for Addressing Social and Ecological
Concerns. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley and Sons, 2005.
Huyssen, Andreas. Present Pasts: Urban Palimpsests and the Politics of Memory. Stanford, CA: Stanford Uni-
versity Press, 2003.
Krier, Rob. Urban Space. New York: Rizzoli International, 1979.
Loukaitou-Sideris, Anastasia, and Renia Ehrenfeucht. Sidewalks: Conflict and Negotiation over Public Space.
Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2009.
Low, Setha, Dana Taplin, and Suzanne Scheld. Rethinking Urban Parks: Public Space and Cultural Diversity.
Austin: University of Texas Press, 2005.
Mehta, Vikas. The Street: A Quintessential Social Public Space. New York: Routledge, 2014.

Figure 4.0.5  Madres de la Plaza de Mayo street protest, Buenos Aires, 10 May 2017. Photo © Tati Arregui.
Source: Wikimedia Commons, Creative Commons CC-BY-2.0.
4.5 Claiming the Public Space: The
Mothers of Plaza de Mayo
Suzanna Torre
Source: Torre, S. (1996). “Claiming the Public Space: The Mothers of Plaza de Mayo,”
in Agrest, D. et al. (eds.), The Sex of Architecture. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 241–250.
To my “disappeared” Argentinian classmates, and to their mothers

The role of women in the transformation of cities remains theoretically problematic. While
women’s leadership in organizations rebuilding communities and neighborhoods and their
creation of new paradigms for monumentality are sometimes noted in the press, these in-
terventions have yet to inform cultural discourse in the design disciplines or in the history
and theory of art and architecture.
The largest body of current feminist scholarship on women in urban settings is concerned
with the construction of bourgeois femininity in nineteenth-century European capitals.1
Within this framework, women are seen as extensions of the male gaze and as instruments of
the emerging consumer society and its transformative powers at the dawn of modernity. In
other words, they are described as passive agents rather than engaged subjects.2 When women
have assumed transformative roles, feminist critics and biographers have seen them as excep-
tional individuals or female bohemians, publicly flaunting class and gender distinctions; in
contrast, women in general, and working-class women in particular, are presented as unin-
tentional agents of a collective social project, acting out assigned scripts. As a class, women
share the problematic status of politically or culturally colonized populations. Both are seen as
passively transformed by forced modernization rather than as appropriating modernity on their
own and, through this appropriation, being able to change the world that is transforming them.
From this perspective it is difficult to see the current individual and collective struggle of
women to transform urban environments as anything of cultural significance, or to reeval-
uate the enduring influence of traditional female enclaves originated in the premodern city.
Many of these enclaves continue to serve their traditional functional and social roles, like
the public washing basins in major Indian cities or the markets in African villages, while
others have persisted as symbolic urban markings, like the forest of decorated steel poles
that once held clotheslines in Glasgow’s most central park. Some of these enclaves have even
become a city’s most important open space, like River Walk in San Antonio, Texas, where
women once congregated to wash laundry and socialize.
A literature is now emerging, focused on the participation by marginalized populations
in the transformation of postmodern cities and establishing the critical connection between
power and spatiality, particularly within the disciplines of art and architectural history and
architectural and urban design.3 To these contributions, which have revealed previously
unmarked urban sites as well as the social consequences of repressive urban planning ide-
ologies, should be added feminist analyses of women’s traditional urban enclaves and of
women’s appropriations of public sites that symbolized their exclusion or restricted status.
These appropriations, whether in the form of one of the largest mass demonstrations ever
held on the Washington Mall (in favor of abortion rights) or in the display of intimacy in
very public settings (such as the private offerings and mementos that complete Maya Lin’s
Vietnam Memorial and compose the monumental Names Quilt commemorating AIDS
 Activism, Protest and Dissent  199
victims), continue to establish women’s rights not merely to inhabit but also to transform
the public realm of the city. It is in such situations that women have been most effective in
constructing themselves as transformative subjects, altering society’s perception of public
space and inscribing their own stories into the urban palimpsest.4
As in all instances where the topic of discussion is as complex as the transformative pres-
ence of women in the city—and particularly when this topic does not yet operate within an
established theoretical framework—the main difficulty is to establish a point of entry. In the
present essay I propose entering this territory through the examination of one dramatic case
of a successful, enduring appropriation: the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo in Argentina.5
This small but persistent band of women protesters first captured international attention in
the mid-1970s with their sustained presence in the nation’s principal “space of public ap-
pearance, “ as Hanna Arendt has called the symbolic realm of social representation, which is
controlled by the dominant political or economic structures of society. This case illustrates
the process that leads from the embodiment of traditional roles and assigned scripts as wives
and mothers to the emergence of the active, transformative subject, in spite of—or perhaps
because of—the threat or actuality of physical violence that acts of protest attract in auto-
cratic societies. As we will see, this case is also emblematic of architecture’s complicity with
power in creating a symbolic system of representation, usually of power hierarchies. The
hegemony of this system has been threatened ever since the invention of the printing press
and is now claimed by electronic media and its virtual space of communication. Finally, the
Mothers of Plaza de Mayo’s appropriation of the public square as a stage for the enactment
of their plea is a manifestation of public space as social production. Their redefinition of that
space suggests that the public realm neither resides nor can be represented by buildings and
spaces but rather is summoned into existence by social actions.

The mothers of the Plaza de Mayo

In March 1976, after a chaotic period following Juan Perón’s death, a military junta wrested
power from Perón’s widow, Isabel, in order (as the junta claimed) to restore order and peace
to the country. The first measures toward achieving this goal were similar to those of General
­Pinochet in Chile three years earlier, and included the suspension of all civil rights, the dissolu-
tion of all political parties, and the placement of labor unions and universities under government
control. It would take seven long, dark years for a democratically elected government to be
restored to Argentina, which at last permitted an evaluation of the extent of open kidnappings,
torture, and executions of civilians tolerated by the military. Because of the clandestine, unre-
corded activities of the para­-military groups charged with these deeds, and because many burial
sites still remain undisclosed, agreement as to the exact number of “disappeared” may never be
achieved, but estimates range from nine thousand to thirty thousand. Inquiries to the police
about the fate of detainees went unanswered. Luis Puenzo’s 1985 film, The Official Story, offers
glimpses into the torture and degradation endured by thousands of men, women, and even ba-
bies, born in detention, some of whom were adopted by the torturers’ families.
“Disappearances” were very effective in creating complicitous fear: many kidnappings
were conducted in broad daylight, and the victims had not necessarily demonstrated open
defiance of the military. In fact, later statistics show that almost half of the kidnappings
involved witnesses, including children, relatives, and friends of those suspected of subver-
sion. Given the effectiveness of arbitrary terror in imposing silence, it is astonishing that the
public demands of less than a score of bereaved women who wanted to know what had hap-
pened to their children contributed so much to the military’s fall from power. Their silent
protest, opposed to the silence of the authorities, eventually had international resonance,
200  Suzanna Torre
prompting a harsh denunciation of the Argentinean military, which led, finally, to the de-
mise of state terrorism and the election of a democratic government.
The actions of the “Mothers,” as they came to be known, exemplified a kind of spatial
and urban appropriation that originates in private acts that acquire public significance, thus
questioning the boundaries of these two commonly opposed concepts. Gender issues, too,
were not unimportant. The Mothers’ appropriation of the plaza was nothing like a heroic
final assault on a citadel. Instead, it succeeded because of its endurance over a protracted
period, which could only happen because the Mothers were conspicuously ignored by the
police, the public, and the national press. As older women they were no longer sexually
desirable, and as working-class women they were of an inferior ilk. Nevertheless, their
motherhood status demanded conventional respect. Communicating neither attraction nor
threat, they were characterized by the government as “madwomen.” The result of their
public tenacity, which started with the body exposed to violence, eventually evolved into a
powerful architecture of political resistance.
Plaza de Mayo is Argentina’s symbolic equivalent of the Washington Mall. It is, however,
a much smaller and very different kind of space: an urban square that evolved from the
­Spanish Plaza de Armas, a space that has stood for national unity since Creoles gathered
there to demand independence from Spain in May of 1810. The national and international
visibility of Plaza de Mayo as the space of public appearance for Argentineans is unchal-
lenged. Originally, as mandated by the planning ordinances of the Law of the Indies, its sides
were occupied by the colonial Cabildo, or city council, and the Catholic C ­ athedral. Today
the most distinctive structure is the pink, neoclassical Casa Rosada, the seat of government.
Military exercises, executions, and public market commingled in the plaza until 1884,
when Torcuato de Alvear, the aristocratic mayor, embarked on a Haussmanian remodeling
of the center of Buenos Aires shortly after important civic structures—such as Congress
and the Ministries of Finance and Social Welfare—had been completed. A major element
of Alvear’s plan was Avenida de Mayo, an east-west axis that put Congress and the Casa
Rosada in full view of each other. Such a potent urban representation of the checks and
balances of the modern, democratic state was achieved through selective demolition, in-
cluding the removal of the plaza’s market stalls and the shortening of the historic Cabildo’s
wings by half their original length. Currently, the plaza’s immediate area includes several
government offices, the financial district, and the city’s most famous commercial street,
Florida. This densely populated pedestrian thoroughfare links Avenida de Mayo to Plaza
San Martin, another major urban square. A plastered masonry obelisk, the May Pyramid,
erected on the square in 1811 to mark the first anniversary of the popular uprising for in-
dependence, was rebuilt as a taller, more ornate structure and placed on the axis between
Congress and the Casa Rosada. In this new position, it became a metaphorical fulcrum in
the balance of powers.
The now well-known image of a ring of women with heads clad in white kerchiefs cir-
cling the May Pyramid evolved from earlier spontaneous attempts at communication with
government officials. At first, thirteen wives and mothers of the “disappeared” met one
another at the Ministry of the Interior, having exhausted all sources of information about
their missing children and husbands. There a small office had been opened to “process”
cases brought by those who had filed writs of habeas corpus. One woman well in her six-
ties, Azucena Villaflor de Vicente, rallied the others: “It is not here that we ought to be,”
she said. “It’s the Plaza de Mayo. And when there are enough of us, we’ll go to the Casa
Rosada and see the president about our children who are missing.”6 At the time, popular
demonstrations at the plaza, frequently convened by the unions as a show of support dur-
ing Juan Peron’s tenure, were strictly forbidden, and gatherings of more than two people
were promptly dispersed by the ever-present security forces. The original group of thirteen
 Activism, Protest and Dissent  201
women came to the plaza wearing white kerchiefs initially to identify themselves to one an-
other. They agreed to return every Thursday at the end of the business day in order to call
their presence to the attention of similarly aggrieved women. The Mothers moved about in
pairs, switching companions so that they could exchange information while still observing
the rule against demonstrations. Eventually they attracted the interest of the international
press and human rights organizations, one of which provided an office where the women
could congregate privately. Despite this incentive to abandon the plaza for a safer location,
the Mothers sustained a symbolic presence in the form of a silent march encircling the May
Pyramid. That form, so loaded with cultural and sexual associations, became the symbolic
focus of what started as a literal response to the police’s demand that the women “circulate.”
The white kerchiefs were the first elements of a common architecture evolved from the
body. They were adopted from the cloth diapers a few of the Mothers had worn on their
heads in a pilgrimage to the Virgin of Luján’s sanctuary. The diapers were those of their
own missing children, whose names were embroidered on them, and formed a headgear
that differentiated the Mothers from the multitude of other women in kerchiefs on that
religious march. In later demonstrations the Mothers constructed full-size cardboard sil-
houettes representing their missing children and husbands, and shielded their bodies with
the ghostly blanks of the “disappeared.”
By 1982, the military had proven itself unable to govern the country or control runaway
inflation of more than 1,000 percent per year. The provision of basic services was frequently
disrupted by the still powerful Peronista labor unions, and many local industries had gone
bankrupt due to the comparative cheapness of imported goods under an economic pol-
icy that eliminated most import taxes. Then, in the same year, the military government
embarked on an ultimately ruinous war with Great Britain over the sovereignty of the
Falkland/Malvinas Islands. With the help of the United States satellite intelligence and far
superior naval might, Great Britain won with few casualties, while Argentina lost thousands
of ill-equipped and ill-trained soldiers. The military government, which had broadcast a
fake victory on television using old movie reels rather than current film footage, was forced
to step down in shame by the popular outcry that followed. Following the collapse of the
military government, the Mothers were a prominent presence at the festivities in Plaza de
Mayo, their kerchiefs joyously joined as bunting to create a city-sized tent over the cele-
brants. They have continued their circular march to this day, as a kind of living memorial
and to promote their demands for full accountability and punishment for those responsible
for the disappearance of their husbands and children.
After the election of a democratic government, the military leadership was prosecuted in
civil rather than military court, resulting in jail sentences for a few generals and amnesty for
other military personnel. Although the amnesty was forcefully contested by the Mothers
and other organizations, the protest was seen by many as divisive. Nevertheless, the Mothers
and a related organization of grandmothers pressed on with attempts to find records about
disappearances and fought in the courts to recover their children and grandchildren. Then,
early in 1995, more than a decade after the restoration of democratic government, a retired
lieutenant publicly confessed to having dumped scores of drugged but still living people from
a helicopter into the open ocean, and he invited other military men on similar assignments to
come forth. The Mothers were present to demonstrate this time as well, but now the bunting
had become a gigantic sheet that was waved overhead as an angry, agitated sea.
The Mothers were able to sustain control of an important urban space much as actors,
dancers, or magicians control the stage by their ability to establish a presence that both
opposes and activates the void represented by the audience. To paraphrase Henri Lefeb-
vre, bodies produce space by introducing direction, rotation, orientation, occupation, and
by organizing a topos through gestures, traces, and marks.7 The formal structure of these
202  Suzanna Torre
actions, their ability to refunctionalize existing urban spaces, and the visual power of the
supporting props contribute to the creation of public space.
What is missing from the current debate about the demise of public space is an aware-
ness of the loss of architecture’s power to represent the public, as a living, acting, and self-­
determining community. Instead, the debate focuses almost exclusively on the physical space
of public appearance, without regard for the social action that can make that environment
come alive or change its meaning. The debate appears to be mired in regrets over the
replacement of squares (for which Americans never had much use) with shopping malls,
theme parks, and virtual space. But this focus on physical space—and its ideological po-
tential to encompass the public appearance of all people, regardless of color, class, age, or
sex—loses credibility when specific classes of people are denouncing their exclusion and
asserting their presence and influence in public life. The claims of these excluded people
underscore the roles of access and appearance in the production and representation of public
space, regardless of how it is physically or virtually constituted. They also suggest that pub-
lic space is produced through public discourse, and its representation is not the exclusive
territory of architecture, but is the product of the inextricable relationship between social
action and physical space.

Notes
1 An excellent example is Elizabeth Wilson’s The Sphinx and the City (London: Virago, 1991).
2 See Alain Touraine, Critique of Modernity (Oxford: Blackwell, 1995), especially the chapter entitled
“The Subject.”
3 See Sophia Watson and Katherine Gibson, eds., Postmodern Cities and Spaces (Oxford: Blackwell,
1995).
4 A different approach has been taken by Jennifer Bloomer in her Urban Still Life project, which pro-
poses to replace heroic (male) statues with domestic (female) tableaux, apparently without challenging
the symbolic order of the nineteenth­century city.
5 The Mothers of Plaza de Mayo’s activities have been extensively documented from a human rights
point of view. See Josephine Fisher, Mothers of the Disappeared (Boston: South End Press, 1989), for
interviews with the leaders and bibliographical references.
6 Quoted in John Simpson and Jana Bennett, The Disappeared and the Mothers of the Plaza: The Story of
the 11,000 Argentinians Who Vanished (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1985).
7 Henri Lefebvre, The Production of Space (Oxford and Cambridge, Mass.: Blackwell, 1991).

Figure 4.0.6  Strategies for Subversive Urban Occupation. Taking the street/SKIPS S.C. Seville, 1997 ©
Santiago Cirugeda, Recetas Urbanas. Courtesy Santiago Cirugeda.
4.6 Hacking Urban Space
Marcella Del Signore and Gernot Riether
Source: Del Signore, M. and Riether, G. (2019). “Hacking Urban Space,” in Del
Signore, M. and Riether, G. (eds.), Urban Machines: Public Space in a Digital Culture.
Trento, IT: LISTLAB, 54–69.

Hacking urban space

Hacking is increasingly becoming a tactic used by many spatial practitioners who oper-
ate at the intersection of digital media and urban space. Information technology that has
recently expanded urban systems has initiated new opportunities to hack the city. These
­opportunities—if recognized by the individual citizen—provide a powerful tool for change
through questioning, altering, or subverting an existing system. Rather than waiting for
city officials or private developers to take action, hacking could empower every citizen to
participate in the construction of public space. As hacking has recently become a tool for
a number of projects and organizations that speculate on the development of public spaces
such as “Civic Hackathons,” one can assume that hacking will increasingly develop as a
strategy to empower the individual citizen to intervene in urban environments. This sug-
gests a new form for the citizen to navigate the city, to understand it, and to interact with
it in new and meaningful ways. This will not only change the urban environment but also
challenge urban planners, architects and city officials to rethink the current instruments and
methods used to shape cities.
The term “hacking” became popular in the digital subculture of the 1960s. The motive
of the hacker is generally understood as gaining unauthorized access to a computer system
to destroy data, to access information for personal purposes, or to use the gained access
to distribute messages with social, ideological, or political content. Such actions are often
small manipulations of complex systems leading to great consequences. In the 1980s, the
term was popularized by movies such as Blade Runner, Tron or WarGames. In WarGames, for
example, high-school student David first hacks into the school district’s computer system
to change his grade and later accidentally hacks into an automated missile strike system at
NORAD that almost causes a nuclear war.
Movies like WarGames have contributed considerably to a common understanding of
hacking as a criminal or highly dangerous action usually executed by an individual and
targeted against a large and powerful entity. Since 2001, the War on Terror has changed the
perception of hacking. Now large and powerful government organizations commonly hack
into the space of an individual. The U.S. National Security Agency hacks into security sys-
tems, the Internet and telephone systems all over the world. Similar activities are executed
by other powerful nations that sometimes control activities within these systems. “Public
space” is a victim of the method. In many places, closed-circuit television cameras hack into
the public space and follow, record, and analyze every step of the individual occupying it. It
is the individual hero, such as Jason Bourne,1 who knows how to navigate this new situation
and stay invisible. Who should hack, and for what reason are the issues at stake. The topic of
this chapter refers to how the act of hacking can support and transform public space.
The term hacking does not need to carry a negative connotation. Indeed, computer pro-
grammers often use the term in a positive way. Exploratory programming workshops—called
 Activism, Protest and Dissent  205
Hackathons—team up software developers with communities to develop open source solu-
tions to problems using publicly released data. Looking at the act of hacking in the context
of public space, it is suggested to leave the immediate associations with the term behind
in order to reintroduce hacking as a tactic in a broader sense. In that way, hacking means
gaining access to a system in order to manipulate it. This definition creates a framework
for a body of work from individuals, artists and organizations operating within these new
parameters.
Peter Weibel’s manipulation of visual urban systems and language in the 1960s can be
considered as an early form of hacking into public urban spaces. In one memorable instance,
he held up the words “are lying” next to the “police” sign on a station, intentionally trying
to provoke a reaction from passersby. Such very minimal events can be understood as a
precursor of actions that make alternatives evident by subversion. In the 1970s, many artists
and architects followed Weibel’s vision in transcending the gallery space and hacking into
public space.
Haus-Rucker-Co, a group of Viennese artists, is another example of positive hack-
ing. Their designs for inflatable structures, prosthetic devices and interventions to hack
into public spaces were prototypes installed in an urban space to promote social change,
an experiential theory of space and the destruction of public space and private space for
a new environment. Their temporary installations were called “provisional structures”
to hide them within the legal system. Their ideas—often seemingly impossible—drew
them to use materials considered strange, new, and unusual at the time. One of these
provisional structures was a huge Perspex ball that was cantilevered from the window
of a 19th century building. The Perspex ball extended the private space of the building
into the public space, forming an almost personal oasis suspended 10 meters above the
ground.
Other projects by Haus-Rucker-Co included “Environmental Transformer” and “Mind
Expanders.” Mind Expanders enabled people to sit together in a public space and at the
same time being completely isolated from the outside world. Environmental Transformer,
a bottle green Perspex double bubble head piece with its own power pack was made for
people to wear in public spaces. This head piece not only provided people with a fly’s eye
perspective on the space they occupied, but it was also designed to completely change the
relationship between the wearer and his surrounding environment. In the context of the
current debate on how digital information technology might change the experience of
public space, it is no wonder 1960s artists such as Haus-Rucker-Co have been rediscovered
and celebrated in contemporary exhibitions. Today artists are manipulating digital infor-
mation technology systems to bring our attention to our everyday accepted norms in public
space. The artists—often performing a small change in the system—cause a large impact on
the perception of public space.
In June 2007, the art group Ztohoven hacked a camera used for a live broadcast on CT2
of Czech Television.2 Ztohoven piped a video of a nuclear explosion and a mushroom cloud
onto a live panoramic view of the Krkonose Mountains, a well-known tourist destination.
The project caused calls from a worried TV audience and led to legal action against the
artists. Charged with public gullibility, scaremongering, and spreading false information,
the artists faced prison sentences of up to three years.3 After the judge dismissed charges
against them, citing “public amusement rather than public unrest,”4 Ztohoven received a
prize for Media Reality from the National Gallery of Prague. Its president Milan Knizak
commented: “Ztohoven left the gallery space entering the public space where they provoke
society.”5 The project shows that even the slightest intrusion can appeal to the intellect of
citizens as a reminder that there is a difference between reality and mediated reality, and
that there is a need to question the trueness and credibility of media.
206  Marcella Del Signore and Gernot Riether
Ztohoven recently hacked into Prague’s urban infrastructure, replacing forty eight
Ampelmännchen (symbols of a standing or walking person commonly used as pedes-
trian signals) with their own figures shown in situations such as drinking, urinating,
or being hanged.6 The artist was drawing attention to the way pedestrians unquestion-
ingly obey these figures as they navigate the city streets daily. The artist’s new varia-
tions of Ampelmännchen could only be seen for one day before the city changed them
back. The project was experienced by the public as great fun. The artist was sentenced
to one month in prison.
Even the slightest manipulation of public space can put the individual in conflict with
the legal system. Artists have therefore developed different attitudes about how to navigate
legal boundaries. This is for example demonstrated by the group The Surveillance Camera
Players. By performing, pointing and even appearing to pray to surveillance cameras in
public spaces,7 the group critiques the authority that spies on people in public space but
manages to do so without breaking any laws. In contrast, public space hackers who play
the games Camover and Killcap in Germany clearly run afoul of the law and would face
sanctions if caught destroying government-placed cameras in public spaces. These gamers
film themselves destroying the spy cams and upload their footage onto a website where they
earn points for each destructive act.
After 2010, hacking urban spaces, usually for political or social reasons, became increas-
ingly widespread as an artistic practice. That year, “Hacking the City” was the title of a
project in Essen, Germany, to celebrate the city’s election as the European Capital of Cul-
ture. The intention of the hacking endeavor was to react to the city’s changing structures of
public space, mobility, and communication by reprogramming and alienating urban spaces.
One artist who contributed to the project was Peter Bux8 who staged an apartment move
by piling up boxes and furniture on a sidewalk that over time grew into walls and blocked
traffic. Other contributions included a guerrilla gardening project by Richard Reynolds9
and toilet seats displayed in public spaces by Stefanie Trojan.10
All these projects temporarily physically disrupted urban systems in the city of Essen,
which raises the question of whether hacking can lead to long-term change. In 2007, the
artist Natalie Jeremijenko transformed the “dead” street spaces around fire hydrants [in
New York City] into tiny parks to absorb road-born pollutants and storm-water run-
off. The parks were designed to allow access for the firefighters, making them legally
possible and suggesting that the interventions have the potential to permanently change
streetscapes.
Other artists see themselves as facilitators of citizen action. Architect Santiago Cirugeda’s
interventions hack into the city’s hardware by subverting regulations and laws to improve
the everyday urban space. In his call for action titled “Building yourself an urban reserve,”
citizens are asked to review, reinterpret, and reuse the Seville General Urban Zoning Plan
Ordinance that governs the placement of temporary scaffolding. Citizens then are asked to
use the regulations to their advantage in expanding their buildings using scaffolding in-
stalled on the public space in front of their property. The intervention, a temporary room
connected to the interior has to be accessible from the public space of the street, as it is re-
quired by the law. His practice of appropriation and occupation of urban space understands
people as the creators of urban space, questioning the notion of authorship and control.
Most of his projects are open source: Cirugeda’s “Urban Prescriptions”11 website offers a
user’s manual that enables others to replicate his systems.
A growing integration of wireless tools and infrastructure into the everyday life of a city
can lead to an increase of possibilities to hack into these networks by the individual citizen,
carrying fundamental consequences for the public realm. To enable individuals to hack into
the urban space to appropriate, manipulate, revaluate, and reinvent it, will require making
 Activism, Protest and Dissent  207
public space hack-able for everyone. Only this open-source strategy will enact hacking as
an instrument to improve urban space.
[…]

Open source city

Making systems of hardware and software more accessible in recent years led to citizen
initiatives transforming urban space. Open source concepts allowed for initiatives to realize
urban gardens, community spaces, shared Wi-Fi (WLAN) zones, or projects concerned
about environmental monitoring. ‘Open source urbanism’ develops where citizens gain
access to the information that shapes urban space and turns them into agents. Open source
systems provide the individual with new possibilities to hack and manipulate those systems
to directly inform the urban space.
[…]
In June 2013, during the first National Day of Civic Hacking,22 more than ninety
­Hackathon workshops were organized simultaneously across the United States with the
goal to motivate citizens to contribute in changing their communities through open source,
open data, entrepreneurship and code development. The event brought together citizens,
software developers and entrepreneurs from all over the nation to collaboratively create,
build and invent new solutions using publicly released data, codes, and technology to solve
challenges related to individual neighborhoods, cities, states and the country. In each city
the event addressed different issues depending on local needs. Projects included apps to pre-
dict commute times and apps that help users make financial decisions. Other apps assist ur-
ban farmers in enhancing the experience of farmers markets or create remote and local user
interfaces for data of plants. During the events, expert technologists encouraged anybody
interested to use publicly available data sets to imagine solutions that benefit the everyday
life of the citizens. During the Hackathon, the White House posted on its blog: “This is an
opportunity for citizens in every town and citizens across the nation to roll up their sleeves,
get involved, and work together to improve our society by cultivating an ecosystem for in-
novation and change.”23 The challenge set up by Hackathons is to liberate and democratize
open data to support problem solving in every community.
[…]
The act of hacking is using open source data to move towards more efficient, more re-
silient and more democratic cities. The “Smart Citizen” in this scenario is the empowered
citizen who proposes solutions rather than waiting for the government to resolve problems.
Air Quality Egg,25 a community-led network of sensors, is just one of many examples
of civic empowerment. Using the web and a sensor system-kit, anyone can report on the
air quality. In this example, individual citizens are participating in the production of global
data and at the same time creating a debate about it.
Another project, called “Smart Citizen” is a “do-it-yourself kit” that enables citizens
to be part of mass environmental monitoring.26 In a similar project, a guerrilla group of
citizen-scientists installed sensors in local sewers in New York City to alert citizens when
storm water runoff overwhelms the system, dumping waste into local waterways.
These types of projects, leveraging from democratized technology and open data, enable
the individual citizen to step forward and deploy solutions for improving their communi-
ties. In regard to the process and time for these actions to take place, Anthony Townsend
says, “We need a lot more sustained energy, cohesion and leadership in the civic tech move-
ment for it to have a real long-term impact, and to deliver the innovation potential that is
there.” […] The key will be to dramatically increase the number of hackers from a small
group of artists to the larger citizenry. “I really think it is the key to a more bottom-up,
208  Marcella Del Signore and Gernot Riether
urban design-driven vision of a smart city—not as a place enabled by big smart infra-
structure, but one that accumulates organically from thousands and millions of tiny little
installations.”27

Notes
1 The protagonist of a series of novels by Robert Ludlum that in 2002 was adapted into a feature film.
2 Ztohoven, The Media Reality. Available at: http://www.ztohoven.com/?page_id=45&lang=en (Ac-
cessed: 15 June 2018).
3 Kimmelman, M. (2008) That Mushroom Cloud? They’re Just Svejking Around. Available at: http://www.
nytimes.com/2008/01/24/arts/design/24abroad.html?pagewanted=all&_r=1& (Accessed: 15 June
2018).
4 Van Gelder, L. (2008) Hacker Artists Cleared in Czech TV Stunt. Available at: http://www.nytimes.
com/2008/03/27/ arts/27arts-HACKERARTIST_BRF.html (Accessed: 15 June 2018).
5 ArtLaboratoryBerlin (2009) Ztohoven - Media Reality. Available at: http://artlaboratory-berlin.org/
html/de-ausstellung-14. htm (Accessed: 15 June 2018).
6 Schmidt, V. (2011) Urinierende Ampelmännchen – Künstler verurteilt. Available at: http://www.welt.de/
vermischtes/article13753416/Urinierende-Ampelmaennchen-Kuenstler-verurteilt.html (Accessed:
15 June 2018).
7 The Surveillance Camera Players (2006). Available at: http://www.notbored.org/the-scp.html (Ac-
cessed: 15 June 2018).
8 Bux, P. (2010) Achtung Umzug! Available at: http://www.hacking-the-city.org/artists-and-projects/
peter-bux.html (Accessed: 15 June 2018).
9 Richard Reynolds (2010). Available at: http://www.hacking-the-city.org/artists-and-projects/rich-
ard-reynolds.html (Accessed: 15 June 2018).
10 Stefanie Trojan (2010). Available at: http://www.hacking-the-city.org/artists-and-projects/stefan-
ie-trojan.html (Accessed: 15 June 2018).
11 Cirugeda, S. (2007) Recetas Urbanas. Available at: http://www.recetasurbanas.net/v3/index.php/en/
(Accessed: 15 June 2018).
22 National Day of Civic Hacking (2016). Available at: http://hackforchange.org/ (Accessed: 15 June 2018).
23 Knell, N. (2013) White House Drums Up Support for National Hacking Event. Available at: http://www.
govtech.com/e-government/White-House-Drums-Up-Support-for-National-Hacking-Event.html
(Accessed: 15 June 2018).
25 Air Quality Egg: Community-led sensing network. Available at: http://airqualityegg.com (Accessed: 15
June 2018).
26 Smart Citizen Platform. Available at: https://smartcitizen.me/ (Accessed: 15 June 2018).
27 Dele, B. (2013) Anthony Townsend on Hacking Into ‘Smart Cities.’ Available at: http://nextcity.org/
civic-tech/entry/ interview-anthony-townsend-on-hacking-into-smart-cities. (Accessed: 15 June
2018).
5

Governance and Management

of Public Space
Governance and Management
of Public Space

Public spaces are carriers of messages. The communicative aspects of public space emerge
from myriad apparent factors including design, planning, the uses, and users. Although
location, design, typology, and other visual and formal aspects of public space are para-
mount, one somewhat obscure factor emerges as a key driver—the governance and man-
agement of public space. The mechanisms of governance and management are differently
visible in various public spaces. The regulatory framework and maintenance—how a space
is programmed, regulated, maintained, and cared for—are vital aspects in the percep-
tion of public space and its sustenance. In the twenty-first century, the ubiquitous public-
private-partnerships (PPP) process is able to generate public spaces that are often programmed
and managed for the middle-class citizen. The seemingly high quality of such public spaces
is contingent on meeting multiple bottom lines, one of which is the creation of a “desirable
business climate.” There is also an obsession with security, and many uses and users are un-
welcome or outright driven away by policies and environmental design strategies. If at all
permitted, public practices of vending and street performances are strictly regulated and the
appearance of spontaneity is preprogrammed. As more and more public space is produced
and delivered by the PPP mechanism or the private sector, it becomes critical to examine
their governance and management. The chapters in this section discuss public space in this
context.
New York City showcases a wide cross-section of public space types in all its dimen-
sions from design to use to governance and management. Using the example of Hudson
Yards and Corona Plaza—two public spaces located on the subway Line 7 across New York
City—Mitrašinović chronicles the many disparities in the production, governance, and
care of public space. The two contrasting examples show how the glitzy seductive Hudson
Yards is a result of a narrow perspective of design, production, and management where
forms follow finance, surveillance, and data aggregation. Corona Plaza, on the other hand,
showcases the possibilities of co-creation and management of public space “where form
follows a complex process of community participation.” This chapter highlights the starkly
distinctive parallel processes of production and governance in the creation of public space
and publicness.

Figure 5.0  592 Madison Avenue POPS, New York City, 2004. Photo © Miodrag Mitrašinović.
212  Governance and Management
Chronicling Union Square in New York City, Sharon Zukin describes the well-known
structure of a Business Improvement District (BID) as the governance model for public
space. Structured to maximize the benefits for the rich and the big landlords, BIDs (and
several other similar mechanisms) are empowered to make moral choices to limit or deny
access to the poor and other groups that do not deliver profits. Disguised as “partner-
ships” and “community-based non-profit organizations,” business improvement districts
often present themselves as community organizations committed to creating public good.
Union Square Partnership (USP) is clearly a case in point. Because their policies appeal to
middle-class values and expectations of the broader public, as well as to the needs of their
governing bodies, this model of private management of public space has become an attrac-
tive tool for the governance of public space. Exclusion and strict control of access are not
by-products of its management strategies, but some of the signature achievements. In the
case of Union Square Partnership, the President and Co-Chair of the Board of Directors is
New York University’s Senior Vice President for University Relations and Public Affairs,
while other board members include prominent leaders of the organizations located within
the USP’s jurisdiction.
Describing the legacies of the 1961 Incentive Zoning Law and its subsequent revisions
and additional ordinances, Kayden discusses the power of zoning law in the design and
governance of public space. Employing the 1961 law, the City of New York, created a new
category of public space called “privately owned public space,” now commonly known as
POPS. Today, there are over 500 POPS in New York City and thousands around the world.
When it was invented, the law was understood as an ingenious mechanism for incentivizing
real estate developers to create open spaces at the street level in return for “bonus” square
footage developed beyond the building envelope otherwise allowed by zoning ordinances.
Open space surrounding the buildings is developed for the use by residents, employees in
surrounding office buildings, and visitors alike. By providing access and use to the mem-
bers of the general public, privately owned, managed, and maintained public spaces added
to the city’s assemblage of public space. Kayden points to many shortcomings of the POPS
program, but one aspect which stands out is the following: because of the ad-hoc and
hands-free approach on the part of the city government, and the opportunistic behavior of
developers, POPS ended up being a patchwork of fragmented open spaces and were never
conceived of as a public space system. A systemic approach to POPS, Kayden has argued,
would have added important experiential dimensions but also additional economic and
other opportunities for growth. Kayden and his team conducted a multi-year evaluation
of these spaces following the five categories of POPS—destination space, neighborhood space,
hiatus space, circulation space, and marginal space—showcasing their successes and failures.
In a poignant critique of public space governance, Steven Flusty presents the very ex-
plicit, but now commonplace, exclusionary tactics employed by public space management
agencies. Flusty’s narrative is written from the point of view of an urban explorer, a citizen
attempting to navigate the complexities of privately owned and managed public spaces. The
experiential, first-voice narrative is necessary to understand how sometimes complicated
and hard-to-understand management mechanisms are experienced in flesh. He identifies
five types of tactics, each designed to differently exclude and transform public space into
stealthy space (camouflaged or obscured), slippery space (hard to reach because of contorted,
protracted means of access or missing paths), crusty space (to which access is denied due to
obstructions), prickly space (difficult and uncomfortable to occupy), and jittery space (actively
monitored space that cannot be used without being constantly observed).
Much of Jeanne Van Heeswijk’s work focuses on projects which catalyze and sustain
urban revitalization efforts by strengthening local communities and avoiding displacement.
Her project for the Afrikaans Markt Rotterdam—presented in this volume through a set
 Governance and Management  213
of collages—focused on Afrikaanderwijk, an established working-class, immigrant neigh-
borhood in Rotterdam, The Netherlands, where nearly 80% of the current residents are
foreign-born. The heart of the neighborhood is a public square, Afrikaan Markt, where
local entrepreneurs sell products mostly imported from African and Middle-East countries.
In the early 2000s, as public funding for Afrikaanderwijk and the public space of the market
were diminishing, new developments and major investments in the surrounding neighbor-
hoods began to threaten local immigrant communities. Van Heeswijk’s team developed a
comprehensive neighborhood revitalization program by creating the neighborhood coop-
erative organization which was set up to develop capacities and capabilities of this diverse
community to manage the public space of the market and also sustain and grow its social
and economic structures. Communal workshops and services, skill-building workshops, a
new plan for the market and public spaces, and hundreds of small-scale interventions were
created. In order to sustain itself and to raise the funds needed to manage the market, the
coop diversified the range of products and services offered in the market. They also estab-
lished the Market Council, which brought together for the first time municipal and state
leaders with municipal service providers, market vendor association, coop representatives,
and local residents. Community task forces were created to maintain the market stalls, clean
the square, manage landscaping, take care of safety and security, and more. As a result,
the neighborhood and the public space of the market became a vibrant community and a
resilient mechanism of cultural production and social reproduction, and with a political
and economic might formidable enough to resist the onslaught of the free-market driven
urbanization.
Summing up the various approaches, Carmona, de Magalhães, and Hammond neatly
classify the management of public space into three models of public space management—
state-centered, market-centered, and community-centered. The authors conceptualize
public space management as an activity that involves four key processes: regulation of uses
and conflicts between uses; maintenance; investments into and ongoing resourcing of pub-
lic space; and the coordination of interventions in public space. The state-centered model
is historically the most common model associated with a public service ethos built on the
public interest. The positive aspects of the state-centered model are its accountability by
way of the ability to keep the distinction between public and private interests. At the same
time, in most countries the diminishing budgets of the public sector have limited its ability
to keep up with the contemporary demands on public space. The market-centered model
is the neo-liberal mechanism for the management of public space. Here private entities
take on the responsibilities and the associated control of public space that is assumed as a
commodity to deliver profit. These profits may be directly generated through the public
space, via daily programming or special events, or more substantially in the property val-
ues in proximity to the public space. The market-centered model has been decried for its
exclusionary policies and the mechanism responsible for the commoditization of public
space and diminishing publicness. Although not new, the community-centered model has
become an alternative to the state-centered and market-centered models to manage public
space. Not driven by the profit motive and the exchange-value of public space, the com-
munity-centered management of public space includes some level of grassroots efforts and
focuses on the quality of the public spaces including services primarily for their use-value
to the community of users.

Figure 5.0.1  Coronate Festival, Corona Plaza, June 2019. Photo by Martin Bolivar © The Queens Mu-
seum. Courtesy of Monica Carrillo-Zegarra and The Queens Museum.
5.1 A Tale of Two Public Spaces: Line
7 and the Future of Public Space in
New York City
Miodrag Mitrašinović
Source: This chapter is a compilation of the talk given at The Power of Public Space
in A Digital Age conference held at the United Nations in New York City on 17
October 2019; and Mitrašinović, M. (2020). “Agoraphobia: NYC Public Space in
the Time of COVID-19,” The Journal of Public Space, special edition, “2020: A Year
Without Public Space Under the COVID-19 Pandemic,” at https://www.journal
publicspace.org/index.php/jps

This chapter offers a provisional discussion of two paradigmatic NYC public spaces—­
Hudson Yards and Corona Plaza—and focuses on the role(s) design plays in creating two
radically different visions for the future of public space in New York City.
With the official opening of the Hudson Yards on 15 March 2019, MTA’s Line 7 de facto
became a material and symbolic link between one of the wealthiest and one of the poorest of
the New York City neighborhoods. Stark demographic differences between Hudson Yards
and Flushing/Corona can also be observed in their attitudes towards the conceptualization,
production and use of public space.1 Hudson Yards has often been named “America’s biggest
real estate project”2 and was originally presented as a self-financing development. However,
a number of accounts have recently emerged that document ways in which Hudson Yards
project has used public funds and diverted significant amounts of public resources and will
ultimately cost the city well over US$5 billion.3
Even though early plans for Hudson Yards promised 14 acres of “world-class” public
space, together with the High Line they will soon offer much more: they will cumulatively
form a 1.5-mile-long, uninterrupted linear public space composed of walkways, gardens,
parks, and playgrounds. This aggregate public-private development along Manhattan’s West
Side is a must case study when examining both the genealogy and future of public space
in New York City. The publicly-accessible spaces of the Hudson Yards proper currently
extend from the plaza into the interior of The Shops at Hudson Yards mall to the East,
the High Line to the South and West, and to the public park—Bella Abzug Park—to the
North, currently up to 36th street. In August 2018, the City Council approved additional
$500 million in city bonds to back additional financing by the Hudson Yards Infrastructure
Corp. and to extend Hudson Boulevard and Park to West 39th Street.4 This will be the
most expensive public park ever built in the city, at the price of more than US$124 million
per acre.5 Justifying the investment, Mayor DeBlasio claimed that “every New Yorker
deserves well designed public space […] In a growing neighborhood like Hudson Yards,
three acres of new parks is a vital investment in the wellbeing of residents for generations
to come.”6
Hudson Yards plaza—branded as “Public Square and Gardens”—is at the very center of
this urban enclave (“a city within a city”) because this is where private and public interests,
as well as democratic governance and corporate control, collide at full force.7 Namely, be-
hind this ‘smart city’ project is the partnership between the Related Companies/Oxford
Properties Group,8 and New York University’s Center for Urban Science and Progress
 Governance and Management  217
aimed at creating the “first quantified community” in the United States. All of the “key
physical and environmental attributes” in this “most connected, measured, and techno-
logically advanced digital district in the nation” are continually analyzed, processed, and
employed to optimize daily operations and planning, but also to improve other such smart
developments around the world.9
Notwithstanding the technical and engineering complexity that Thomas Woltz of Nel-
son Byrd Woltz Landscape Architects faced as the designer of this “smartest park ever
built,” the work ended up being an exercise in formalism intended to provide visual and
spatial coherence; or, as he suggested, at creating a “unifying space.”10 The plaza is sup-
posed to facilitate transition between the human scale—that of the visitors’ field of vision
and experience—and the scale of giant towers that frame, what Hudson Yards design team
called, “the void.” Landscape and urban design, as well as architecture, are here clearly
employed as “disciplinary technology” the purpose of which is to enable economic power
to be exercised strategically and differentially, and to subject urban citizens to a view of
citizenship and civility framed by consumption.11 Their role is to bring coherence, order,
and rationality (an “engineering marvel”) to this highly contested and contradictory urban
space.12 The Shops at Hudson Yards—a shopping mall designed by Elkus Manfredi—were
configured to achieve the same result. The true challenge of this ‘public’ space could not
have been resolved by the geometric pattern of intersecting ellipses designed by Woltz, nor
any formal(ist) response whatsoever. The real challenge was to first and foremost “please
a potentate” (Stephen M. Ross), as Davidson astutely puts it, and then also to increase the
length of visitors’ stay thereby ultimately increasing the dollar-per-square-foot ratio.13
The overall design of this publicly accessible “urbanoid”14 environment is thus a pure
commodity form intentionally focused on the most expensive and the most emptied of all
its signifiers: The Vessel, designed by Thomas Heatherwick. Before Heatherwick was cho-
sen for the job, as Davidson reported,
like some fairy-tale monarch, Ross has dispatched his counselors to find an artist capa-
ble of supplying his modern Trevi Fountain […] something monumental enough to fo-
cus the entire project [and] so instantly iconic that people will meet by it, shoot photos
of it, notice it from three blocks away, and recognize it from the cover of guidebooks.15
The Vessel brings the struggle over private-public interests to the fore as it has been at the
center of privacy struggles over individual photographs taken at the site. As in other pri-
vately-owned, public-oriented environments—such as shopping malls and theme parks—
visitors can make photographs but are not allowed to use them for commercial purposes.
In addition, as they share them on social media platforms, The Related Companies can use
their photos and distribute them to third parties for marketing purposes, without author’s
consent, for free, and in perpetuity.16
The only truly visible presence of the massive “urban informatics” operation in the main
plaza are the NYCLinks ‘touch points.’ These stainless-steel columns feature free WiFi, free
domestic calls, charging stations, and access to NYC navigation and emergency services.
Besides the “deceptively clean, shallow interface to the Hudson Yards operating system,”
Shannon Mattern asked, “whose physical architecture, algorithmic operation, and security
we know very little about […] are there opportunities for meaningful citizen participation
in creating the smart technologies that will define Hudson Yards.”17 Indeed, individuals are
here reduced to consumers of products and services, and to objects of constant surveillance
and observation. Just like the financial mechanisms employed in its development, design
and public art mythologize here the notions of ‘the city’ and ‘urbanity,’ as well as of ‘pub-
lic square’ as elite cultural products. After all, the average Hudson Yards and High Line
218  Miodrag Mitrašinović

Figure 5.1.1  The Bella Abzug Park, view towards Hudson Yards “Public Square and Gardens,” September
2019. Photo © Miodrag Mitrašinović.

visitor is reportedly young, educated and likely to have an annual household income of at
least US$100,000.18 The real question here ought to be: why are public funds diverted to
this playground for the wealthy? By perpetuating the totalizing ideology of the corporate,
neo-liberal city, dominant since the days of Mayor Bloomberg, the developers and design-
ers alike instrumentalize urban space as an engine of data and profit19 and fabricate tech-
nocratic visions of well-managed public space (“everything works”20) while aggressively
masking the spatial politics, and repressing social and urban struggle over public resources.
They thus further marginalize social groups excluded by this particular vision of ‘the city’
and its spatial organization, pushing them to find spaces for social (re)production elsewhere.

Corona Plaza21
Twelve miles east of Hudson Yards, riding along the “International Express”22 7 train, one
finds a very different model of public space, at the Corona Plaza/103 street station. Between
2012 and 2018, Corona Plaza went through a few stages of improvements, and in 2018 it re-
opened as a collaborative effort of the NYC Department of Transportation (DOT), Depart-
ment of Design and Construction (DDC), Queens Economic Development Corporation
(EDC), the Queens Museum, and various community organizations in Corona, Queens.
Corona Plaza was reimagined within the auspices of the DOT’s Plaza Program, through
which the department has created over 70 public plazas since 2008 by transforming underused
open spaces and streets into vibrant public spaces.23 The idea behind this initiative has been
to ensure that all New Yorkers—particularly communities of color and working-class neigh-
borhoods—live within a 10-minute walking radius from quality public space. DOT’s com-
petitive application process prioritizes neighborhoods that lack open space, and partners with
local organizations and community groups which commit to operate, maintain, and manage
newly formed pedestrian plazas. In case of Corona Plaza, Queens Museum, Queens EDC, and
 Governance and Management  219
local community organizations stepped up to create a comprehensive, participatory public space
where diverse immigrant communities come together.
In 2006, when the Queens Museum—under the leadership of Tom Finkelpearl—­
employed Naila Caicedo-Rosario as its first Community Organizer, Corona Plaza was a
traffic thoroughfare, a place where developers’ trucks picked up daily laborers, vans parked
under the subway station, and food trucks and street vendors lined up along Roosevelt Av-
enue.24 In the early years, Ms. Caicedo-Rosario used her existing political and community
network in Queens in order to build coalitions with community leaders so that they can
collectively figure out what kind of role could a museum play in the process of community
development. They soon realized that the site for the future Corona Plaza can play the key
role in this effort, and had envisioned it as a catalyst for engaging residents in community
development, a platform for developing and presenting local cultural producers, a site where
community-based organizations could offer and promote social services, and a stimulus to
promote health and well-being in the immigrant communities surrounding the plaza.25
Between 2007 and 2010, the museum’s Heart of Corona Initiative brought together a wide
range of residents and leaders through public events, round tables, and workshops to discuss
local issues, determine what is of shared concern and of common interest, and establish
collective priorities. What emerged was that Corona Plaza would act as a “gateway to the
neighborhood” because members of the differentiated immigrant communities of Corona
had nowhere to come together to “shape their neighborhood.” Much of the early organ-
izing was done through social media platforms, but also through face-to-face interactions.
For many local residents, Sunday afternoons in local laundromats presented opportunities
for building capabilities and dispositions. Later on, both site-specific and participatory art
projects and small-scale community actions spearheaded by the museum—such as planting
flowers, cleaning parks and streets, and block parties—had created further dispositions in
local residents towards building a coalition, but also built symbolic capital needed to attract
political will to Corona Plaza.

Figure 5.1.2  Coronate Festival, Corona Plaza, June 2019. Photo by Martin Bolivar © The Queens Mu-
seum. Courtesy of Monica Carrillo-Zegarra and The Queens Museum.
220  Miodrag Mitrašinović
When DOT started the Plaza Program in 2008, it had identified Corona Plaza as a po-
tential site for a public plaza, and had subsequently approached the Queens Museum—given
its activities in Corona Plaza—as a potential non-profit partner and the anchor institution
for Corona Plaza. The museum became in charge of cultural programming and the design
process, Councilmember Julissa Ferreras’ office provided discretionary funding for program-
ming, while Queens Economic Development Corporation became maintenance partner
having secured funding from the Queens Community Bank for US$60,000 a year, which is
the costs to maintain the plaza. Additional funding for operations and maintenance has been
delivered by OneNYC Plan Plaza Equity Program, through which year-round sanitation
and horticulture services are provided by The Horticultural Society of New York’s Neigh-
borhood Plaza Program working together with the Association of Community Employ-
ment Programs for the Homeless (ACE), and with a community of stewards and numerous
community volunteers in Corona. Unlike the overpriced public spaces of the Hudson Yards
development, Corona Plaza cost the city US$5.5 million in capital construction costs. In
August 2012, Corona Plaza officially became a part of the DOT Plaza Program, and at that
time it was closed off to vehicular traffic, provisionally paved, and supplanted with mobile
chairs, tables, and planters.
In parallel, DOT initiated the design process to configure a permanent version of the plaza
while NYC DDC selected RBA Partners26 for professional urban and landscape design ser-
vices. Between 2012 and 2014, the process involved numerous activities, among them inter-
views with various stakeholders at Corona Plaza, official public workshops aimed at designing
and revising plans for the plaza, community engagement projects, community input meetings,
RBA’s presentation of the plans to the community, and more. A case in point was a series of
art and design projects organized as part of the “Corona Urban Studio” led by urban designer
Quilian Riano and urban planner Aurash Khawarzad in collaboration with Queens College.
One of them, “A Shared Plaza” organized in February 2013, was a gaming workshop designed
to bring together residents and organizations in Corona to collectively develop a cohesive set
of values and a list of shared priorities for Corona Plaza’s development.27 As Alexandra García,
Queens Museum’s Community Organizer and the Corona Plaza Programs Coordinator at the
time, suggested “a dignified public space for immigrants gives more than it takes and offers
opportunities of engagement and entertainment that inspire people as creators and participants
rather than recipients of services or consumers.”28 The values, attributes and criteria for design
developed through community and public engagement process were delivered to RBA as a set
of recommendations,29 and based on them RBA delivered three different design options for
the 30,000 square feet plaza. The options were presented at a community festival in Corona
Plaza where DOT and RBA, through translators, explained design proposals and solicited
feedback. After the final design was approved by the Community Board and then Public De-
sign Commission in 2014, and after the bidding process and general contractor was selected,
the construction of the permanent plaza finally started in 2016. The Plaza opened to public in
2018. Today, Corona Plaza is a vibrant public space with year-long programming of a variety
of cultural events.
As much as Hudson Yards is a place where forms follow finance, surveillance, and
data aggregation and analysis, Corona Plaza is a place where forms follow a complex
process of community participation. It suggests how differentiated, multiple publics in
Corona can come together in this location, and by doing so transcend the limitations
of isolated communal spaces by creating in the process a true public space. As to the
role of ‘design’ in the case of Corona Plaza, one can here begin to sketch out expanded
definitions of design, as a collaborative creative process through which professionals
 Governance and Management  221
and non-professionals alike take part, on equal footing, to configure new ways of be-
coming public.

The thing that seems to put people on the same page, on common ground [in Corona
Plaza], is what the kids need. This is why people came to this country. Most want to
find a better way of life for their children.
José Serrano-McClain30

Notes
1 Just a quick look at the differences in demographics reveal a stark contrast: Hudson Yards’ average
income is US$161K while 84% of its residents are US citizens, and 67% are US born. Corona’s average
income is US$45K and of its 115K residents only 39% are US born citizens, and 22% are naturalized
US citizens, meaning that 61% were born abroad. Source: https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/
table/newyorkcitynewyork/PST045218 (Last accessed on 30 June 2020).
2 Fortune Magazine named it “America’s biggest real estate project, ever” on the cover of the 16 Septem-
ber 2013 issue. Hudson Yards is the largest real estate development in US history by a single devel-
oper, Stephen M. Ross of The Related Companies, a global real estate development firm.
3 Fisher, B. (2015). ‘The myth of self-financing: The trade-offs behind the Hudson Yards redevelop-
ment project.’ Schwartz Center for Economic Policy Analysis and Department of Economics, The
New School for Social Research, Working Paper Series 2015-4. See also: Capps, K. (2019). ‘Another
reason to hate Hudson Yards: The billion-dollar luxury real estate project in Manhattan is exploiting
a cash-for-visas program meant for the poor,’ in The New York Times, 16 April 2019. At: https://www.
nytimes.com/2019/04/16/opinion/hudson-yards.html. (Last accessed on 30 June 2020). The widely
circulated figure of US$5.6 billion includes the extension of Line 7 from Times Square to Hudson
Yards at a cost of approximately US$2.7 billion.
4 See: https://gothamist.com/news/hudson-yards-has-45-billion-in-taxpayer-money-will-we-ever-
see-it-again (Last accessed on 30 June 2020).
5 See: https://www.crainsnewyork.com/article/20180906/REAL_ESTATE/180909976/at-125m-an-
acre-hudson-yards-park-would-be-city-s-costliest. (Last accessed on 30 June 2020).
6 See: https://www.metro.us/news/local-news/new-york/hudson-yards-new-park-space. (Last ac-
cessed on 30 June 2020).
7 As Justin Davidson wrote in 2012, “The plaza is the node where the site’s conflicting forces reveal
themselves: the tension between public and private, between city and campus, between democratic
space and commercial real estate.” Davidson, J. (2012) ‘From 0 to 12 million square feet,’ in New York
Magazine, 15 October 2012. See: http://nymag.com/nymag/toc/20121015/15 October 2012. (Last
accessed on 30 June 2020).
8 Oxford Properties Group is the real estate arm of the Omers Pension Fund for retired police officers
and city clerks in Ontario, Canada, and the largest investor in the Hudson Yards project.
9 This information is derived from the press releases and promotional material available on the web site
of New York University’s Center for Urban Science and Progress. See: https://cusp.nyu.edu/press/
nyu-cusp-related-companies-oxford-properties-group-team-create-first-quantified-­community-
united-states-hudson-yards/. (Last accessed on 30 June 2020).
10 See: https://www.nbwla.com/projects/park/public-square-and-gardens-hudson-yards. (Last ac-
cessed on 30 June 2020).
11 For further discussion see: Mitrasinovic, M. (Ed.) (2015). Concurrent Urbanities: Designing infrastructures
of inclusion. New York: Routledge, 4.
12 Deutsche, R. (1996). Evictions: Art and spatial politics. Chicago, IL: Graham Foundation for Advanced
Studies in the Fine Arts; and Boston, MA: MIT Press, 77-78.
13 Current average length of stay on the High Line for its eight million visitors a year is 94 minutes;
developers of Hudson Yards expect to increase the overall volume of visitors to twenty million, and
the average length of stay by 20%. See: Katz, L. and Basin, K. (2019). ‘Hudson Yards bets $2 billion
a New Manhattan mall can succeed.’ In Bloomberg, 7 March 2019. At: https://bloomberg.com/%2F-
news%2Farticles%2F2019-03-07%2Fhudson-yards-bets-2-billion-a-new-manhattan-mall-can-suc-
ceed&usg=AOvVaw0344o32au3ika4gqFkbWEL. (Last accessed on 30 June 2020).
222  Miodrag Mitrašinović
14 Goldberger, ‘P. (1996). ‘The rise of the private city,’ in Vitullo-Martin, J. (ed.) (1996). Breaking away:
The future of cities. New York: Twentieth Century Fund.
15 Davidson, 2012.
16 See Terms & Conditions at: https://www.hudsonyardsnewyork.com/discover/vessel/terms-condi-
tions. The terms of use were changed slightly on 1 July 2019, after much public and media pressure.
(Last accessed on 30 June 2020).
17 Mattern, S. (2016). ‘Instrumental city: The view from Hudson Yards,’ in Places Journal, April 2016.
At: https://doi.org/10.22269/160426. (Last accessed on 30 June 2020).
18 Katz and Basin, 2019.
19 Mattern, 2016, 20-22.
20 Promotional information from Related’s website: https://www.hudsonyardsnewyork.com/. (Last ac-
cessed on 30 June 2020).
21 Data and information used below has been derived from public sources, media coverage, author’s
conversations with various protagonists, as well as: Mogilevich, V., Mogilevich, M., Reddy, P, et al.
(2016). Corona Plaza es para todos: Making a dignified public space for immigrants. New York: Queens
Museum.
22 Tonnelat, S. and Kornblum, W. (2017). International express: New Yorkers on the 7 train. New York:
Columbia University Press.
23 See: https://www1.nyc.gov/html/dot/html/pedestrians/nyc-plaza-program.shtml. (Last accessed on
30 June 2020).
24 See: https://queensmuseum.org/2009/11/reflections-from-naila-rosario-qmas-community-organ-
izer-2006-09. (Last accessed on 30 June 2020).
25 Mogilevich et al., 2016.
26 RBA is now NV5. See: https://www.nv5.com/projects/corona-plaza/. (Last accessed on 30 June
2020).
27 Riano, Q. (2016). ‘Gaming the system: Role-playing spatial and political change,’ in Archinect, 1
September 2016. At: https://archinect.com/features/article/149966016/gaming-the-system-role-
­
playing-spatial-and-political-change. (Last accessed on 30 June 2020).
28 Mogilevich, et al., 2016, 39.
29 The recommendations included the following: keep most spaces as open as possible; minimize fixed
furniture to allow for multiple uses, including larger performances when needed; focus on movable
elements that can cover the open spaces when not used for programming; place green spaces to pro-
vide shade on the Roosevelt Avenue side of the plaza; and, develop a well-lit plaza to ensure safety of
people at night and to discourage drinking. For more see: Mogilevich, et al., 2016, 70.
30 Mogilevich, et al., 2016, 66.
Figure 5.0.2  Union Square, New York City. Photo © Miodrag Mitrašinović.
5.2 Union Square and the Paradox of
Public Space
Sharon Zukin
Source: Zukin, S. (2011). “Union Square and the Paradox of Public Space,” in
Zukin, S., Naked City: The Death and Life of Authentic Urban Places. Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 125–158.

Union Square is typical of the public spaces in city centers that since the 1980s have been
taken in charge by private associations of local businesses and rich patrons with a vested
interest in renovating them and restoring their civility. In New York City, where some
of the biggest, most prominent associations of this type thrive, they take several different
forms, from Business Improvement Districts to Local Development Corporations and park
conservancies, depending on the type of space they oversee. The Union Square Partner-
ship, which was the first Business Improvement District to be set up in New York State, in
the early 1980s, is both a BID and an LDC; by either name, it is a private organization of
commercial property owners that carries out public functions of financing, maintaining,
and governing public space.1
The purpose of all these organizations is to keep shopping streets, commercial districts,
and public parks clean and safe at a time when city government budgets are grasping for
funds and city dwellers are repelled and frightened by the litter, odor, panhandling, and
other nuisances they find when they step outside their front door. To pay for the pro-
gram, BID members agree to assess themselves a small percentage of their local property
taxes over and above what they owe the city government; the city government collects the
self-imposed assessment with the other local taxes and returns it to the BID. Most impor-
tant, if rarely stated, these associations work to raise property values in and around public
spaces, which cannot be done if homeless men and women sleep on park benches, muggers
threaten shoppers, walls and lampposts are covered with graffiti, and Cities fail to provide
the basic services of street cleaning, trash collecting, and policing on which the urban pub-
lic, including the businesses that rent commercial real estate, relies. The vitality of Union
Square is a sign of the city government’s defeat by the public’s expectations. In this defeat
the public both gains the use of a clean safe space and loses control over it.2
Most people who use Union Square don’t see the situation this way. They like the feeling
of security and order that such a public space offers, a result of the privately hired guards and
cleaners that the Union Square Partnership pays for. Not only do the Partnership’s members
tax themselves to do so, but they also raise revenue by renting space in the park to private
promoters for outdoor product demonstrations, photo shoots, and festivals. These entrepre-
neurial sources of income, added to the budget allocation of the city’s Parks Department,
which still owns the place, also pay for spring flower planting, reseeding the grass, food
tastings prepared by local restaurant chefs, concerts performed by local bands, and public art
installations, all of which make the experience of using the park more pleasant and broaden
its user base. Many people come to Union Square to shop at the four-day-a-week Green-
market. Though the Union Square Partnership did not invent this attraction, the BID
and farmers’ market have enjoyed a productive synergy since they began independently
in the mid-1970s. The other elite public parks that are managed by BIDs, such as Bryant
Park and Madison Square, offer somewhat different amenities, but they all aim to make
the place they manage a destination. And all of them operate by the same rules of private
 Governance and Management  227
management, public ownership, and public access. What exactly are these rules? Critics
argue that the very idea of private management betrays the public’s trust; that private or-
ganizations control public spaces more severely than government dares to do; and that these
control strategies exclude social groups—usually homeless people, pushcart vendors, street
artists, and the young—who have no other place to go. Exclusion from public space liter-
ally means expulsion or eviction, giving tangible, violent expression to the property rights
more often identified with private property. Privatized public space, in other words, tends
to reinforce social inequality. Exclusion of some social groups from public space weakens
the diversity of experiences and contacts that define urban life. It makes the centers of cities
more like the premier privately owned public space of our time, the suburban shopping
mall: clean, safe, and predictable.3
Privatized control would seem, then, to reduce the traditional authenticity of public
spaces whose origins are not in a modern shopping mall but in the agora of ancient Athens
and the forum of ancient Rome, places where many different kinds of men and women
gathered for politics and commerce. Those ancient cities excluded women and slaves from
citizenship and also from meaningful political participation. But they still gave us an ideal
of public space, in contrast to the ancients’ bathhouse or banquet hall, that is open to all
and, for this reason, democratic. In modern times the idea of political democracy has been
worked out, in large part, by gradually opening public spaces to everyone. In the eighteenth
century, before the French Revolution swept away social class distinctions, the market-
place of the Palais Royal in the center of Paris allowed men and women, aristocrats and
commoners, the respectable and the criminal to mingle in ways they could not do in pri-
vate spaces. In nineteenth-century London and New York public libraries, museums, and
parks made the city’s cultural wealth freely available to all before all groups got the right
to vote. Though the rich often thought of these urban public spaces as instruments for im-
proving the minds and behavior of the lower classes, and didn’t design them for everyone’s
needs, the ideal of open access confirmed the spaces as “authentically” public and helped to
define the modern public as well. Public parks, museums, and libraries broke down tradi-
tional barriers that excluded women, the poor, and children from taking their place in the
same public space as everyone else.4
“Authenticity” in this case means democracy, which in politics as well as physical space
can often be loud, unruly, and unpredictable. And also dangerous: allowing the bodies of
strangers or members of unlike groups to mingle arouses fears of danger. Though recent
decreases in crime have reduced fear of physical harm in public spaces, many people still
have such deep fears of being bothered by forces beyond their control that spitting, begging,
drinking alcohol, and sleeping in a public place are felt to be as nasty as an outbreak of moral
pollution, the first steps down a slippery slope toward chaos. Like the broken windows or
subway turnstile-jumpers who experts believe will lead to violent crimes if left unchecked,
these “distasteful, worrisome encounters” are signs of a fragile social order. They offer
a much darker vision of urban life than Jane Jacobs’s when she praised storekeepers and
housewives for enforcing sidewalk safety with their “eyes on the street.”5
Distasteful behavior in public spaces has been the moral scourge of urban revival in many
times and places, and certainly in New York since the 1970s. Panhandling and prostitu-
tion in Times Square, drug dealers in Union Square Park, and vandalism in neighborhood
parks—too numerous to mention: these have provided the visible signs of both a more
permissive, narcotized society and a widespread alienation from the dual disciplines of the
work ethic and state power. They also signal a city, or a neighborhood, on the skids, where
men and women can’t find good jobs in the mainstream economy, property owners can’t or
won’t maintain their buildings, and businesses pack up and leave. What begins as an “image
crisis” of a derelict city leads, on the one hand, to middle-class outrage about the quality of
228  Sharon Zukin
urban life and, on the other, to business people’s anxiety about the investment climate. This
outrage and anxiety are the cultural sources of the current era of privatization.6
You cannot understand the struggle for authenticity in Union Square without relating
the park, and the streets around it, to economic arguments for privatization when the gov-
ernment’s resources are stretched thin. But you must also look at the cultural sources of this
struggle in a general anxiety that the city is out of control. You must see Union Square in
relation to its own contradictory history of political expression and real estate development,
to the changing neighborhoods around it, to other elite parks that are managed by BIDs,
and to commercial spaces of civility such as Starbucks. Most important, though, you must
understand Union Square as a living contrast to Lower Manhattan’s most prominent yet
entirely different public space: the World Trade Center site. If, despite privatization, Union
Square is the most “authentic” public space in New York City today, it is because of the
attack on the Twin Towers on September 11, 2001. Jane Jacobs rested her argument about
authentic public space on microsocial rules of interactive behavior: the ballet of the street.
But looking at Union Square in a broader framework shows that its authenticity also reflects
other levels of governance, from social norms of political control and capital investment
to metasocial norms of citizenship and national identity. A public park is much more than
green space and wooden benches. Its experience of “authenticity” is produced by local cul-
ture and national power.
[…]
Neither as visually coherent as a theme park nor as hard to access as a gated community,
Union Square nonetheless forms a part of the “archipelago of enclaves” that the Dutch ur-
banists Maarten Hajer and Arnold Reijndorp described as typical of the new public spaces
that cities have constructed since the 1980s. Offering special events in pleasant surround-
ings, with a low risk of “worrisome encounters,” these places set up islands of calm in a
turbulent world, re-creating urban life as a civilized ideal. Even if they don’t require paying
an entry fee, and indeed, city parks do not, they use both explicit and subtle strategies to en-
courage the docility of a public that, by now, is used to pay for a quality experience. These
places break with the past not just by passively relying on city dwellers’ civic inattention
when they calmly ignore the stranger sitting on the next bench, but by actively enabling
them to avoid strangers whom they think of as “aliens”: the homeless, psychologically dis-
oriented, borderline criminal, and merely loud and annoying.25
Business Improvement Districts direct a new kind of governance of public places by
creating “discretely manicured spaces” as playgrounds for adult consumers who have inter-
nalized norms of proper behavior and keep watch over others to make sure they conform to
the rules. In an implicit bargain for the power to exercise control, BIDs provide quality ser-
vices that show users they are being catered to: cleanliness, safety, well tended flower beds,
poetry readings. Policy experts support this bargain for controlling crime and “return[ing]
to an earlier set of values.” It is not clear, though, what values they are referring to or whose
those values are. A “return” implies nostalgia for the 1950s or early 1960s, just before the
social movements for civil rights, women’s rights, and gay rights made it possible to shed
many historical inhibitions on public displays, before the Supreme Court held the police
to more stringent standards of engagement with civilians, and before massive increases in
major crimes reduced official attention to minor ones—a return, in other words, to when
people behaved in “civil” ways. Of course, values of civility, such as politeness and mutual
respect, are widely shared and are especially welcome to groups who are likely to be bullied.
But norms of civility are also important to elite groups who seek to “civilize” others. In the
nineteenth century the public museum was a place where exhibits set out the nation’s moral
history, lower classes were expected to learn proper rules of behavior from their social bet-
ters, and all visitors were held to a prescribed way of looking and walking, under the gaze
 Governance and Management  229
of others. There are remarkable parallels with BID-managed public spaces today, shaped by
Whyte’s idea of mutual surveillance and Jacobs’s “eyes on the street.”26
The BIDs’ enforcement of good behavior in public spaces turns the circumstantial case
against them into a strong argument against privatization. Shifting control from ourselves
and public employees such as the police to private groups of property owners and their
employees places great power in their hands. Power to deny people the use of public space
may take away their basic rights—freedom of speech and assembly—with no laws to hold
the BID accountable. Critics connect privatization since the 1970s to the rise of neoliberal
ideas and practices, with an increasingly repressive state enforcing market norms against
unionized workers, the unemployed, and welfare recipients. In fact, since they began, the
BIDs have hired nonunion workers at lower wages than for city government employees
who perform the same tasks; they also provide jobs to participants in welfare-to-work
programs who directly replace unionized government employees. BIDs equally respond
to other unwelcome trends: the fear of living in a more diverse society, which calls for
uniformed authorities to keep groups apart, and the influence of consumer culture, which
breeds an acceptance of public spaces that are organized around standardized shopping ex-
periences. As Union Square suggests, BIDs translate these broad social and cultural changes
into a set of market-driven strategies to reduce vacancies and increase rents, make up for
the inadequate financial resources of city government agencies, and create a local “brand
identity.” Privatization through BIDs, in short, speaks through the goal of local economic
development to a social, political, and moral crisis, in which the state gives up its respon-
sibility to private groups. “There is something profoundly wrong,” says Darren Walker, a
vice-president of the Rockefeller Foundation, speaking at the panel discussion “Has New
York Lost Its Soul?,” “when government cannot deliver basic services and private individ-
uals take it upon themselves to carve out communities that pay additional taxes and receive
additional services.”27
[…]
For the most part, the public does not object to BIDs. The alternative to private control,
at least in most New Yorkers’ imagination, is a return to the bad old days when public
spaces were overrun by homeless people, the least privileged, most “alien” group in the city.
Many New Yorkers still remember with dismay the homeless encampments in Tompkins
Square Park in the East Village from 1988 to 1991, political support for them by punks,
squatters, and some other neighborhood residents, and the resulting police violence. It
wasn’t just Tompkins Square where New Yorkers felt embattled. In the summer of 1994,
when homeless men and women built camps in public parks, BIDs cooperated with the
NYPD in demolishing the shelters, closing the parks, and intensifying policing to make
sure the homeless would not return in any organized form. Robert Walsh, who directed
the Fourteenth Street–Union Square BID at that time, even provided barricades for nightly
curfews. But he was responding to the domino effect, as the New York Times called it,
of the homeless being pushed out of other nearby parks and then congregating in Union
Square. “When I started seeing tents and a hundred people one night like an outdoor shel-
ter, I became frightened,” Walsh told the Times. “We’re just trying to protect our own turf.
With the other parks closed, you really have no choice.” Residents may have felt sympathy
for the homeless, but they supported clearing them out of public space to enable broader
public use.30
Yet BIDs are, as early critics charged, “unequal partnerships.” They are unequal, though,
in different ways. On the one hand, they embody the private sector’s growing role as both
a moral and a practical authority, which many people believe to be more effective than
government in every way. As Heather McDonald, a neoliberal policy expert, wrote about
BIDs after the fall of communism in Eastern Europe, “They provide a vital and dynamic
230  Sharon Zukin
West Berlin to city governments’ sclerotic East Berlin.” On the other hand, BIDs are an
oligarchy; they embody the norm that the rich should rule. First, because big corporations
and landlords have more money than the public sector, they have been granted the respon-
sibility of planning and paying for basic services. Second, because voting rights within
each BID reflect the total taxable value of each member’s land, owners of the most valuable
properties have the most power. If there is a difference of opinion in a BID, for example, on
whether property owners should rent to chains rather than to locally owned stores, the big
landlords will prevail over those who own only one building, and landlords will overpower
small retail tenants.31
There is also a serious inequality of resources among BIDs that reinforces other social
and economic inequalities. Because self-assessments are based on commercial property val-
ues, BIDs in areas of the city with high values can raise more revenue and carry out more
ambitious programs than BIDs in poor areas. Recent annual budgets vary, for example,
from a low of $53,000 in the 180th Street shopping district in Jamaica, Queens, to a high
of $11.25 million in the Lower Manhattan financial district near the World Trade Center
site. Not surprisingly, this inequality of resources reflects social class and educational differ-
ences among BIDs, with corporate lawyers and executives predominating on the boards of
directors of the richest BIDs, as well as income differences among residents, with the richest
BIDs operating in areas where the richest households live.32
Besides maximizing benefits for the rich and minimizing benefits for the poor, the BIDs
reinforce inequality in the exercise of social control. Homeless people are the tip of the
iceberg. While the police make sure they cannot build permanent shelters for the night,
the BIDs’ security guards prevent them from stretching out on park benches during the
day and rooting through trash cans for aluminum cans and glass bottles they can return for
recycling deposits. At Union Square the police have arrested and chased away skateboarders
who liked to practice on the park’s wide front steps and in the open paved area on the north
side. In truth these are crowded areas, where skaters risk crashing into pedestrians. Besides
targeting the homeless and skaters, though, the selective exercise of control is not so easy to
predict. In Madison Square Park one afternoon, a young woman in a two-piece gym outfit
exercises around a decorative fountain, but Parks Department rangers and BID employees
ask another woman who is sunbathing on the grass to pack up her towel and leave. In the
evening at Bryant Park, despite Parks Department rules against consuming alcohol outside
the restaurants and refreshment stands, the BID’s security guards permit men and women
waiting for the weekly movie presentation to drink cocktails while they picnic on the grass,
an upscale image of leisurely consumption. Meanwhile the police harass men and women
drinking beer out of cans hidden in brown paper bags.33
[…]
Despite the inequities of BIDs, their heavy load of surveillance, and the commercial-
ization of public spaces under their control, Union Square emerged after the September
11, 2001 as the city’s most significant public space. Almost immediately after the attack on
the World Trade Center, New Yorkers gathered in the park to mourn the dead. They also
flocked there to be in public, to surround themselves with other people, to learn the latest
news after most TV and radio stations’ antennas had been destroyed with the Twin Tow-
ers, and to demonstrate what could only be called solidarity with other people around the
world. They posted handwritten signs calling for peace and justice in different languages
around the park, including a greeting that scrolled along an extremely long, white fabric
in memory of the airplane crew that died on United Airlines Flight 93 under the hijackers’
control. In the hours after the Twin Towers fell, the ground beneath George Washington’s
statue filled with lighted candles, flowers, and penciled messages of an impromptu shrine;
the flames burned for more than two weeks while more flowers and candles were piled
 Governance and Management  231
high. Some messages were even scrawled on the base of the statue, looking remarkably like
graffiti, but during these few weeks no one cleaned them off or arrested the writers. Police
officers stood respectfully on the sidewalk before the park entrance, watching, chatting,
but not trying to force people to move on. Time stopped. People strolled around the park,
reading the signs, talking softly. It was a provisional community—spontaneous, temporary,
mobile—but at a moment of crisis it created the sense of an “authentic” public. The au-
thorities did not control the space; it was our agora, our forum, and our park. Why did this
happen at Union Square? To some degree it was a matter of geography. After the terrorist
attack the police closed Lower Manhattan south of Canal Street to everyone except local
residents. They permitted only rescue workers to get close to the World Trade Center site.
As the largest public space near that location, though two miles to the north, and the most
convenient to mass transit, Union Square was a logical gathering place for New Yorkers
who could not go to ground zero. The park may also have been living up to its embedded
tradition of political protest. Most important, however, was the persistent difference be-
tween New Yorkers’ feeling that they were constructing “authenticity” at Union Square
and that they were shut out of decisions about the World Trade Center site.
The special circumstances of the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center in 2001—
the shock of an aircraft attack on civilians in the United States, the targeting of one of the
most recognizable symbols of U.S. power, and the location in New York, a global media
capital—made the site a public space like no other in the city. Unlike Union Square, which
even today could be described as a neighborhood park, the WTC site was immediately tied
to national identity. Media commentators and elected officials from the president of the
United States to the mayor of New York, as well as leaders in every town and county in
the country, spoke of it in the same terms as people speak of the battlefield of Gettysburg
and the naval base of Pearl Harbor: it was both ground zero as a military target and sacred
and hallowed ground where heroes died to preserve the nation. The WTC site was treated
with more reverence than the Pentagon, also attacked by terrorists on 9/11, and the field
in Pennsylvania where Flight 93 came to a fiery end. In contrast to the Pentagon, few of
the almost three thousand men and women who died at the WTC site worked for a U.S.
government agency, a fact that dramatized the loss of innocent lives. Moreover, unlike rural
Pennsylvania, the WTC’s location in New York City guaranteed that it would become a
major tourist attraction. Despite many differences between Union Square and the World
Trade Center site, some of the same trends shaped both as public spaces. First, even at the
World Trade Center site, governance is fragmented between public ownership, private
management, and public use. As at Union Square, public use is subject to strict controls in
order to provide a general sense of security from an unnamed foe. Also like Union Square,
the costs of building and maintaining the space exceed the government’s means, requiring
dependence on the private sector. In both cases, the site’s program—the amenities that it of-
fers, the narrative that it unfolds, and the public that it serves—reflects a continuous struggle
among different groups of private sector stakeholders. These are all strong similarities. Of
course there are differences. Most important, the more or less commercial use of Union
Square as a place of leisurely consumption contrasts with the ideological uses of the World
Trade Center site. Despite the social controls on behavior the BID imposes, its privatization
is more benevolent than the state’s authoritarian controls over the WTC site.
[…]
Security and surveillance, on the one hand, and festivals and shopping, on the other,
help to keep the square open to broad public use. But which are the most important factors
that make Union Square, unlike the World Trade Center site, a truly public space? Is it the
falling rate of crime throughout the city, or the BID’s financial resources, or the ability of
the park’s users to keep an eye on others? Or is it perhaps a calming vision of social order
232  Sharon Zukin
in which a contentious public yields control to the benevolent power and authority of the
private sector? The conflicts over the rebuilding of the World Trade Center site, the way
the state shut the public out of the decision-making process, and the fortifications around
the place do not suggest a better alternative. The paradox of public space is that private
control can make it more attractive, most of the time, to a broader public, but state con-
trol can make it more repressive, more narrowly ideological, and not representative at all.
Our willingness to fight the violence of terrorism and crime with more violence takes us
far beyond the capabilities of the urban village’s microsocial order. The scale of public in-
teractions today demands a degree of trust among strangers that we no longer command.
One democratic alternative to both private control and control by the state would create
different systems of stewardship. These would encourage collective responsibility for pub-
lic space among ordinary city dwellers rather than corporations, and small businesses and
stores rather than commercial property owners or city agencies. Improbably a model for
this kind of stewardship comes not from powerful stakeholders in Manhattan but from the
immigrant food vendors of Red Hook Park.

Notes
1 The difference between the two organizations that manage Union Square is their geographical ju-
risdiction: the BID is responsible for Fourteenth Street between First and Sixth Avenues and the area
around Union Square Park; the LDC is responsible for the park-centered Union Square area, includ-
ing Seventeenth and Eighteenth Streets, to the north of the park.
2 Developed under this name in New York City and State, BIDs are a special form of the tax-increment
financing (TIF) districts that local governments in Canada and the United States began to use in the
1960s as a way of funding specific areas, espe­cially in troubled downtown business districts, without
raising taxes or devoting a disproportionate share of overall revenue. Similar self-financed districts
have been put in place in several European countries as well as in Australia, South Africa, and Japan.
See, for example, Kevin Ward, ‘“Policies in Motion,” urban restructuring and state management:
the trans-local expansion of business improvement districts,’ International Journal of Urban and Regional
Research 30, no. 1 (2006): 54-75; Malcolm Tait and Ole B. Jensen, ‘Travelling ideas, power and place:
The cases of urban vil­lages and business improvement districts,’’’ International Planning Studies 12,
no. 2 (2007): 107-28. Because of their high visibility, use of the media to promote their cause, inevi-
table association with the quality-of-life policing strategies publicized by the Giuliani administration,
and deliberate international outreach, New York City BIDs have become the preeminent model of
this form of organization in a period of worldwide pressure for privatization.
3 See Setha Low and Neil Smith, eds., The Politics of Public Space (New York: Routledge, 2006); Don
Mitchell, The Right to the City: Social Justice and the Fight for Public Space (New York: Guilford, 2003);
and Sharon Zukin, The Cultures of Cities (Oxford: Blackwell, 1995); also see Rosalyn Deutsche’s aptly
titled Eviction: Art and Spatial Politics (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1996). Judges’ rulings in various
states from the 1940s on have tried to limit private owners’ control over political demonstrations,
boycotts, handing out of political leaflets, and other expressions of free speech in shopping malls, but
there is neither a federal law nor a consistent state standard that determines whether shopping malls
are, in this sense, public space.
4 This is a different genealogy of public space than we get from Jürgen Habermas, who traces the
modern public sphere back to the gatherings of more elite groups (educated middle-class men) in
a paid consumption space, the cafe. See Kevin Heth­erington, The Badlands of Modernity (London:
Routledge, 1997), pp. 1-19; Tony Bennett, The Birth of the Museum (London: Routledge, 1995); Roy
Rosenzweig and Elizabeth Blackmar, The Park and the People: A History of Central Park (Ithaca, NY:
Cornell University Press, 1992). Though today attention often focuses on racial and religious differ-
ences, struggles have been waged over every social group’s right of access to “public” space, including,
if we can imagine it, granting permission to use public libraries to children under the age of fourteen
or sixteen a century ago.
5 Broken windows, turnstile jumpers: this refers to the theory, developed by the criminologist George
Kelling in New Jersey around 1980 and made famous by New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani
and Police Commissioner William Bratton in the 1990s, that the smallest signs of disorder and
 Governance and Management  233
misbehavior will, if left uncorrected, lead to widespread perceptions of decline and to worse behav-
ior. “Distasteful ... encounters”: George L. Kelling and James Q. Wilson, ‘The Police and Neighbor-
hood Safety: Broken Windows,’ Atlantic Monthly, March 1982, www.theatlantic.com/docfl982o3/
broken-windows. “Eyes on the street”: Jane Jacobs, The Death and Life of Great Amer­ican Cities (New
York: Random House, 1961).
6 “Image crisis”: Miriam Greenberg, Branding New York: How a City in Crisis Was Sold to the World (New
York: Routledge, 2008).
25 Maarten Hajer and Arnold Reijndorp, In Search of New Public Domain (Rotterdam: NAI, 2001), p. 53;
“aliens”: Lyn H. Lofland, The Public Realm (New York: De Gruyter, 1998), p. 167.
26 “Manicured spaces”: Ole B. Jensen, “the bids of New York: Power, place, and the role of business im-
provement districts”; paper presented at the eighteenth AESOP Congress, Grenoble, July 1-3, 2004,
p. 10; “an earlier set of values”: Heather MacDonald, “Why business improvement districts work;”
Civic Bulletin, no. 4, May 1996, www.manhattan-institute.org/html/cb_4.htm; Bennett, Birth of the
Museum, p. 24. Certainly the use of surveillance for social control takes many modern forms, begin-
ning with Jeremy Bentham’s panopticon and leading up to today’s closed­circuit TV and biometric
screening.
27 Darren Walker quoted in Sewell Chan, http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/I0/04/has-new-
york-lost-its-soul/, October 4, 2007.
30 Bruce Lambert, “Neighborhood report: Union square; confronted by the homeless domino effect,
another park cracks down,” New York Times, June 12, 1994. For a contrasting, highly critical view,
see Neil Smith, The New Urban Frontier: Gentrification and the Revanchist City (New York: Routledge,
1996).
31 Gregory Squires, ed., Unequal Partnerships: The Political Economy of Urban Redevelopment in Postwar
America (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1989); MacDonald, “Why business im-
provement districts work.”
32 Ingrid Gould Ellen, Amy Ellen Schwartz, and Ioan Voicu, “The Impact of Business Improvement
Districts on Property Values: Evidence from New York City;” Brookings-Wharton Papers on Urban
Affairs 8 (2007): 1-31; New York City Department of Small Business Services, Introduction to Busi-
ness Improvement Districts, www.nyc.gov/html.sbs/downloads/pdf/bid_brochure.pdf, accessed July
2008.
33 Cara Buckley, “Ah, the heat, the crowd, the park, and the booze,” New York Times, July 16, 2008.

Figure 5.0.3  Sony Wonder POPS, New York City, 2004. Photo © Miodrag Mitrašinović.
5.3 Using and Misusing Zoning Law to
Design Cities
Jerold Kayden
Source: Kayden, J. S. (2001). “Using and Misusing Zoning Law to Design Cities: An
Empirical Study of New York City’s Privately Owned Public Spaces” (Part 1). Land
Use Law & Zoning Digest 53(2), 3–10.

In 1961, the City of New York, employing the device of law, inaugurated a new category
of public space, “privately owned public space, “for use by its residents, employees, and vis-
itors. Through a legal innovation subsequently known as incentive zoning, the city granted
floor area bonuses and other valuable regulatory concessions to office and residential devel-
opers who would agree to provide plazas, arcades, atriums, and other outdoor and indoor
spaces at their buildings. Private ownership of the space would reside with the developer
and successor owners of the property, access and use with members of the public, hence the
appellation “privately owned public space.” Cities across the country followed New York
City’s lead, encouraging their own contributions to this distinct category of urban space.1
[…]

Legal framework
Privately owned public space is law’s oxymoronic invention. “Privately owned” refers to
the legal status of the land on which the building in which the public space is located. The
nature of the space’s “publicness” is legally determined by New York City’s 1961 Zoning
Resolution, as enacted and subsequently amended, as well as by implementing legal actions.
The zoning establishes the framework within which developers and designers exercise their
creative abilities. Enumerated standards have incorporated diverse visions of public space
held by publicly and privately employed designers and planners, civic organizations, elected
and appointed officials, and members of the public, as well as by developers and owners.
Sometimes, the applicable law is amazingly detailed, other times it is remarkably terse. The
design standards have changed over time, reflecting an evolution in thinking about what
makes public space succeed or fail, and how demanding and precise legal standards need to
be in order to secure good outcomes.
Over the past 40 years, the Zoning Resolution has defined 12 discrete legal types of
privately owned public space, including plazas, arcades, urban plazas, residential plazas,
sidewalk widenings, open air concourses, covered pedestrian spaces, through block arcades,
through block connections, through block gallerias, elevated plazas, and sunken plazas. In
addition, the zoning has enumerated spaces that are geographically tailored to specific needs
within special purpose zoning districts, and has allowed or, more precisely, not expressly
disallowed, permit- and variance-granting bodies such as the city planning commission and
the board of standards and appeals to make the provision of “customized” public spaces not
otherwise described in the Zoning Resolution a condition of sought-after approval.
Although the level of detail and clarity vary greatly, the zoning provisions governing each
public space type have specified design standards, the legal process through which the space
is to be approved, the operational responsibilities of owners, and the rights of members of
the public to use the space. Sometimes the provisions have established mechanisms of en-
forcement to encourage owner compliance with the law. A set of legal actions, including
 Governance and Management  237
discretionary special permits and authorizations, ministerial “as-of-right” approvals, and
a “halfway” administrative measure called certification, has implemented the obligations
governing each of the privately owned public spaces. The Zoning Resolution has usually
reserved the discretionary process for those public spaces thought to require the highest
level of case-by-case review, the certification process for spaces requiring a middle level of
review, and the “as-of-right” process for spaces requiring minimal review. In short, to grasp
fully the “law” for a given space, it is necessary to scrutinize relevant express provisions in
the Zoning Resolution, as well as implementing legal actions incorporated in individual
resolutions and approved plans elaborating specific requirements for the space.

Incentive zoning for Privately Owned Public Space

To obtain the 503 public spaces, the city principally has relied upon a voluntary approach,
known as incentive zoning, through which a private developer is able to construct a building
larger or different than that otherwise permitted by the zoning if, in return, the developer
provides a city-specified privately owned public space.2 The social rationale for this exchange
is that the public is better off in a physical environment replete with public spaces and bigger
buildings than in one with fewer public spaces and smaller buildings.3 Redolent of Nollan v.
California Coastal Commission, 483 U.S. 825, 107 S.Ct. 3141, 39 ZD 226 (1987) and Dolan v. City
of Tigard, 512 U.S. 374, 114 S.Ct. 3141, 46 ZD 232 (1994), the legal rationale is that public space
is “density-ameliorating” (although it may be more accurate to say “density-mitigating”) in that
it counteracts the negative impacts, such as street and sidewalk congestion and loss of light and
air, potentially caused by larger buildings.4 For the developer, the real estate economics rationale
is that when the value of the incentive equals or exceeds the cost of providing the public space,
the transaction becomes financially attractive.
The Zoning Resolution declares the nature and extent of the incentive for each type of
public space. The primary incentive has been the floor area bonus, usually measured in re-
lationship to a square foot of provided public space. For example, a developer may receive a
floor area bonus of 10 square feet for every square foot of plaza, so that a 5,000 square foot
plaza would generate an extra 50,000 square feet of buildable zoning floor area.5
Although the bonus multiplier for the different types of public space ranges from three
to 14 bonus square feet for every square foot of public space, proposed developments always
have been subject to a bonus cap limiting the total bonus floor area earned from all pro-
vided public space to a percentage, usually 20 percent, of the base maximum zoning floor
area. For example, a residential development could increase its floor area ratio (FAR)6 from
10, the maximum base for residential buildings, to 12, while a commercial office building
could increase from 15 to 18, and, in limited circumstances, from 18 to 21.6, the highest
expressly authorized FAR in New York City.7 The Zoning Resolution also has authorized
for developments on large lots the use of nonfloor area incentives, such as waivers of appli-
cable regulations affecting the height and setback of a building or how much of the lot the
tower portion covers, to encourage the provision of public space.
The metrics of incentives are conceptually straightforward. To attract developers, in-
centives must convey a financial benefit sufficient at least to cover the cost incurred in
providing the privately owned public space. Floor area bonuses and nonfloor area incen-
tives benefit developers either by increasing income or reducing overall building cost. For
example, a floor area bonus increases a building’s cash flow or value through rental or sale
of the extra space. Frequently, the ability to develop extra space allows the building to be
taller, and the higher story floors may be rented or sold at premium rates. Height, setback,
and tower coverage rule waivers may allow a building design that is more in keeping with
the tastes of the market or may decrease construction costs.
238  Jerold Kayden
In return for the incentive, the developer agrees to allocate a portion of its lot or building for
use as a privately owned public space, construct and maintain the space according to standards
articulated by the zoning and implementing legal actions, and allow access to and use of the
space by members of the public. In effect, the developer “pays” for its bonus floor area or non-
floor area incentive by agreeing to these obligations. Although the privately owned public space
continues, by definition, to be “privately owned, “ the owner has legally ceded significant rights
associated with its private property, including the right to exclude others, and may no longer
treat this part of the property as if fully privately owned. As de facto third-party beneficiaries,
members of the public participate in the exchange by gaining their own rights to this private
property, even as they endure the extra congestion and loss of light and air that may result from
the grant of bonus floor area or other regulatory concession.
[…]

Qualitative evaluation
Although the quantity of public space produced under the program was impressive, the
qualitative record was disappointing. Based on a comprehensive, empirical evaluation, the
study found that more than four out of 10 spaces were marginal, meaning that they did not
serve any public use. The study classified the 503 privately owned public spaces according
to five use-oriented definitions, including destination, neighborhood, hiatus, circulation,
and marginal space.11

1 Destination space is defined as high-quality public space that attracts employees, resi-
dents, and visitors from outside, as well as from the space’s immediate neighborhood.12
Users socialize, eat, shop, view art, or attend a programmed event, although they also
may visit the space for sedentary, individual activities of reading and relaxing. The
design supports a broad audience; spaces are well proportioned, brightly lit if indoors,
aesthetically interesting, and constructed with first-class materials. Amenities are var-
ied and usually include a combination of food service, artwork, regular programs,
restrooms, retail frontage, and water features, as well as seating, tables, trees, and other
plantings. From time to time, a single amenity such as a museum will be so compelling
that it alone transforms the space into a destination space. The space is well maintained,
and public use is generally steady.
2 Neighborhood space is high-quality public space that draws residents and employees on
a regular basis from the immediate neighborhood, including the host building and
surrounding buildings within a three-block radius. Users go to neighborhood space
for such activities as group socializing, taking care of children, and individual reading
and relaxing. Neighborhood spaces are generally smaller than destination spaces, are
strongly linked with the adjacent street and host building, are oriented toward sunlight,
are made with good construction materials, and are carefully maintained. Amenities
typically include seating, tables, drinking fountains, water features, planting, and trees,
but not food service and programmatic uses typically found at destination spaces.
3 Hiatus space is public space that accommodates the passing user for a brief stop, but never
attracts neighborhood or destination space use. Usually next to the public sidewalk and
small in size, such spaces are characterized by design attributes geared to their modest
function, and include such basic functional amenities as seating.
4 Circulation space is public space that materially improves the pedestrian’s experience
of moving through the city. Its principal purpose is to enable pedestrians to go faster
from point A to point B, and/ or to make the journey more comfortable by providing
weather protection for a significant stretch. Circulation space is sometimes uncovered,
 Governance and Management  239
sometimes covered, and sometimes fully enclosed. It is often one link in a multiblock
chain of spaces. Size, location, and proportion all support its principal mission. Func-
tional amenities that provide a reason to linger are not taken into account when classi-
fying a space as a circulation space.
5 Marginal space is public space that, lacking satisfactory levels of design, amenities, or
aesthetic appeal, deters members of the public from using the space for any purpose.
Such spaces usually have one or more of the following characteristics: barren expanses
or strips of concrete or terrazzo, elevations above or below the public sidewalk, inhos-
pitable microclimates characterized by shade or wind, no functional amenities, spiked
railings on otherwise usable surfaces for sitting, dead or dying landscaping, poor main-
tenance, and no measurable public use.

[…]

Law as a primary determinant of quality

The record of outdoor privately owned public spaces (plazas, urban plazas, and residential
plazas) convincingly demonstrates the power of law to fashion good and bad outcomes. The
study revealed a chronological fault line in the quality of space created before and after the
mid-1970s, when the city adopted significant legal reforms to the original 1961 Zoning
Resolution plaza legislation.
To this day, most of the plazas of the 1960s and early 1970s are unusable, unaesthetic,
or illsituated. Of the 167 plazas, 105 (63 percent) are marginal spaces, 37 (22 percent)
are hiatus spaces, and none is a neighborhood or destination space. The 1961 Zoning
Resolution bears primary responsibility for this result. Although the original intent of
the plaza legislation included promotion of light and air and public use,16 the adopted
plaza definition privileged the former and ignored the latter. The minimal legal stand-
ards required only that the space be open and accessible to the public, be no more than
five feet above or 12 feet below curb level, be larger than a specified minimum size, and
be unobstructed except for expressly listed objects. In sum, the law permitted office and
residential developers to install paving around the base of their buildings, call it plaza,
and collect the 10:1 or 6:1 floor area bonus as a matter of right. The record of these pla-
zas unequivocally demonstrates how they could concurrently satisfy the “letter of the
law,” yet fall dramatically short of creating usable public places. Outdoor spaces rising
above letter-of-the-law performance, either in initial execution or subsequent upgrad-
ing, proved to be the exception to the rule.17
[…]

Improved law, improved spaces

On the heels of zoning amendments in 1975 and 1977 that created new categories of public
space-urban plazas and residential plazas-and that prescribed new, detailed design require-
ments for plazas, including criteria governing location, orientation, shape, proportion, el-
evation, functional and aesthetic amenities, and public identification, the quality of new
spaces dramatically improved. Developers began to provide spaces that looked more like
urban rooms than leftover strips or superfluous expanses.28
[…]
Not surprisingly, use of post-1975 outdoor spaces is substantially greater than use of
pre-1975 spaces. Of the 89 urban and residential plazas, the study classified 35 (39 percent)
as neighborhood spaces, 39 (44 percent) as hiatus spaces, and only six (seven percent) as
240  Jerold Kayden
marginal spaces.34 This contrasts sharply with the 63 percent of original plazas the study
deemed marginal.

Notes
1 See TERRY LASSAR, CARROTS & STICKS: NEW ZONING DOWNTOWN (1982), 17-18
(for Hartford, Seattle); Peter S. Svirsky, San Francisco: The Downtown Development Bonus System,
in THE NEW ZONING: LEGAL, ADMINISTRATIVE, AND ECONOMIC CONCEPTS AND
TECHNIQUES 139-158 (Norman Marcus & Marilyn W. Groves, eds., 1970) (for San Francisco);
Jumrn GETZELS & MARTIN JAFFE, ZONING BONUSES IN CENTRAL Clms, Planning Ad-
visory Service Report No. 410 (Sept., 1988), 3-4; MARYA MORRIS, INCENTIVE ZONING:
MEETING URBAN DESIGN AND AFFORDABLE HOUSING OBJECTIVES, Planning Advi-
sory Service Report No. 494 (Sept., 2000), 9-28.
2 The City of New York also has used incentive zoning to obtain other types of public benefits, includ-
ing affordable housing, subway station improvements, and legitimate theaters. New York City Zon-
ing Resolution, Sections 23-90 (housing); 76-634 (subway station improvements); 81-00 (theaters).
3 Implicit in this rationale is that alternative methods for securing small public spaces, such as buying
them with money from a city’s capital budget, would be less worthwhile or simply unrealistic. Indeed,
incentive zoning is credited with being a marvelously creative solution for obtaining public benefits
without expenditure of taxpayer dollars, at a time when public sector budgets are increasingly con-
strained. See GETZELS & JAFFE, opt.cit. I.
4 The U.S. Supreme Court has never stated that incentive zoning, nominally a purely voluntary trans-
action between a city government and a private developer, would be subject to the Nollan-Dolan line
of Fifth Amendment just compensation clause analysis. It is nonetheless heartening to be able to argue
that there is, indeed, an “essential nexus” between the legitimate public interest in reducing conges-
tion and a condition that secures density-ameliorating amenities, as well as a “rough proportionality”
between the public space condition and any harmful impact caused by the bonus floor area. See Jerold
S. Kayden, Hunting for Quarks: Constitutional Takings, Property Rights, and Government Regula-
tion, in 50 WASH. U. J. URB. & CoNTEMP. L. 125, 135,-137 (1996).
5 Zoning floor area is a defined term in the Zoning Resolution. See New York City Zoning Reso-
lution, Section 12-10. The amount of zoning floor area in an office building is usually less than the
amount of “net rentable floor area,” as that latter term is used by New York City’s real estate industry.
6 The floor area ratio (FAR) is defined as the total zoning floor area on a zoning lot, divided by the area
of the zoning lot. Thus, a 10 FAR building is 10 stories if it completely covers the zoning lot and rises
straight up on all sides, is 20 stories if it covers half of the zoning lot and rises straight up, and so forth.
7 An FAR of 21.6 has been achieved in the past, for example, in the Special Theatre and Special Fifth
Avenue zoning districts.
11 Public space studies employ a variety of lenses to classify public space, and use is one of the most
common. See, e.g., CLARE COOPER MARCUS & CAROLYN FRANCIS, EDS., PEOPLE
PLACES: DESIGN GUIDELINES FOR URBAN OPEN SPACE 20 (1998, 2nd ed.); STEPHEN
CARR, MARK FRANCIS, LEANNE G. RIVLIN, & ANDREW M. STONE, PUBLIC SPACE
79-86 (1992).
12 For this definition, the immediate neighborhood is considered to be the host building and other
buildings within a three-block radius. See WILLIAM H. WHYTE, THE SOCIAL LIFE OF SMALL
URBAN SPACES 16 (1979) (describing an effective market radius for public spaces of three blocks).
16 See VOORHEES, WALKER, SMITH & SMITH, ZONING NEW YORK CITY: A PROPOSAL
FOR A ZONING RESOLUTION FOR THE CITY OF NEW YORK (August, 1958), x (referring
to light and air and usable open space).
17 Examples include 747 Third Avenue (for initial quality) or One Penn Plaza (for voluntary, self-­
initiated upgrading).
28 See, for example, the urban plaza at 535 Madison Avenue and the residential plaza at 200 East 32nd
Street.
34 In addition, owners of five·’ as-of-right” plazas have ameliorated conditions at their spaces-bringing
them closer to an urban or residential plaza-as a condition for securing approval for a nighttime clos-
ing or installation of an open air cafe. See, for example, the plazas at 810 Seventh Avenue and 1370
Avenue of the Americas.
Figure 5.0.4  Pershing Square, Los Angeles, California. Photo © Miodrag Mitrašinović.
5.4 Building Paranoia
Steven Flusty
Source: Flusty, S. (1997). “Building Paranoia,” in N. Ellin (ed.), Architecture of Fear,
New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 47–59.

My parents still live in that same suburban house, purchased twenty-eight years ago. For
eighteen of those years, the house remained much the same. I would pass through a front
yard open to the street, unlock and rotate the doorknob, and walk in. Over the past decade,
however, the simple act of entering the residence has grown dauntingly complex. Next to
the door is a small metal plate with an illuminated red L.E.D., warning of the presence of
an activated alarm. Upon disengaging the dead bolt and opening the front door, I have
thirty seconds in which to deactivate the alarm by entering a sequence of digits into a small
keypad in the entry hall. Should I forget the number, or should the hall be too dark to work
the keypad within the prescribed time, a shrieking siren wakes the neighborhood. Next,
the dead bolt must be reengaged and a separate switch, located elsewhere in the house, must
be tripped to deactivate pressure pads strewn beneath the floor and contacts embedded into
the interior doorways. At that point the house’s interior becomes safe for passage and the
alarm may be safely reactivated as a perimeter defense. At any time, the alarm may be in-
tentionally activated by hitting “panic buttons” sprinkled throughout the house at strategic
locations. The exterior of the house, once illuminated only by a porch light, now basks in
the glare of multiple 150-watt security lights in the back and side yards, switched on from
dusk to dawn by photoelectric sensors.
My parents’ house is one of the neighborhood’s less obtrusively secured. Many feature
lawn signs cautioning passersby of armed response. Some include security lights controlled
by motion detectors set to blind anything that moves on the adjacent sidewalk and street.
A few have installed spike-topped perimeter fences with remote-controlled, chain-driven
gates to allow automobile access without having to exit the vehicle. Patrol cars carrying pri-
vate security officers pass through the street late at night, watching over only those homes
whose owners pay an additional service fee.
This neighborhood transformation did not occur all at once. It was a long, incremental
process that only after some ten years has become obvious. A few residences took action
in response to specific incidences. Most, however, have reacted to a pervasive sense of
insecurity. It is an insecurity at odds with the neighborhood watch maps showing this
portion of Police Reporting District 1091 largely free of the X’s and R’s marking sites of
residential and street burglaries. Meanwhile, three blocks away, people in ragged clothes
sleep in the bushes by the side of the freeway and eat from garbage cans behind the
supermarket.
“Blockhomes,” my term for secured residents like my parents’, are one component in the
ongoing remaking of L.A.’s landscape as an intrusively nervous place. As we safari through
this landscape of elite communities over the next few pages, I will point out a number of
these components and try to come to some conclusions about how they add up. Despite the
fact that we will be wandering around Los Angeles, the things we will observe could be
in Sao Paulo, Manila, indeed any of the long-established colonial cities or newly emerging
world cities. Specifically, we will be hunting down interdictory spaces—spaces designed to
 Governance and Management  245
intercept and repel or filter would-be users. To date, I have found it convenient to distin-
guish five species:
Stealthy space—space that cannot be found, is camouflaged or, more commonly, is ob-
scured by such view impediments as intervening objects or grade changes (for example, the
Poets’ Walk Garden of Citicorp Plaza at Seventh and Figueroa streets, concealed behind an
office tower, a department store entrance kiosk, and a flight of escalators).
Slippery space—space that cannot be reached, due to contorted, protracted, or missing
paths of approach. Such a strategy is costly, as it may require obfuscating numerous routes of
access extending well beyond any single site. Justifying this expense, slippery space provides
public-relations benefits in that it may be blamed on preexisting topographical constraints
as a means of defraying criticism (for example, California Plaza’s Watercourt at 2nd–4th
streets and Grand Avenue, looming over Olive Street with no readily apparent means of
access from the streets below).
Crusty space—space that cannot be accessed, due to obstructions such as walls, gates, and
checkpoints (for example, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art’s grounds and sculpture
garden at Hancock Park, once open to one another and the surrounding greenswards but
now encircled within a series of high wrought-iron and chain-link fences).
Prickly space—space that cannot be comfortably occupied, defended by such details as
wall-mounted sprinkler heads activated to clear loiterers or ledges sloped to inhibit sitting
(for example, the 380-square-foot park wedged into a southwest-facing pocket between the
sidewalk and the Ronald Reagan State Office Building at Third and Spring streets, boasting
sparse shade, a highly reflective pavement, and backless benches with seating heights at a
leg-numbing twenty-four inches).
Jittery space—space that cannot be utilized unobserved due to active monitoring by rov-
ing patrols and/or remote technologies feeding to security stations (for example, the Biddy
Mason Pocket Park in the Broadway-Spring Center, a secured through-block connection
featuring guarded rest rooms and seventeen video cameras monitoring the park’s sitting
areas and public sidewalks abutting the park entrances).
In the field, of course, we are unlikely to spot these spaces in isolation. Rather, they tend to
be deployed simultaneously, so as to form distinctly unfriendly mutant building typologies. The
“blockhome,” for instance, is often embedded in an extended jittery perimeter of alarms, video
observation cameras, and security lighting. Fast becoming the Angeleno residence of choice,
blockhomes are most apparent in gentrifying areas, where new wealthier residents feel threat-
ened by the established poorer community. Venice Beach is dotted with blockhomes forced into
compact bunker and tower forms by the expense of beach-adjacent property. The high-style
architectural tastes of the area’s new residents have resulted in oddly angled concrete walls, Cor-
Ten steel gates, and tall, tilted courtyard enclosures collaged of stucco and frosted glass. Witty
references to the preexisting community, such as a miniature white picket fence set before a
windowless corrugated metal studio/house (as in Dennis Hopper’s house) and a home stealthily
retrofitted into the unrestored shell of an existing dilapidated house (complete with an address
number spray-painted like graffiti across the housefront), abound.
This trend is not confined to locations in flux. In established and affluent foothill neigh-
borhoods like Royal Oak, neighborhood homes sprout such features as crenellated walls
and fences comprised of unsealable vertical piping. Some homes include exterior video
cameras to communicate the identities of visitors prior to admission through remotely
controlled driveway gates. Others employ prickly plantings in “security-oriented gardens”
beneath windows and surrounding the property. In areas such as this, the entire neighbor-
hood may be rendered slippery and jittery.
Just five blocks west of my parents’ house, Calabasas is an affluent residential community
priding itself on its “old west” charm. Most of publicly accessible Calabasas, though, is
246  Steven Flusty
not somewhere to linger in but to pass through, as the streets are a pointedly inhospitable
place to sojourn. Throughout the past decade, these hills have been covered with over 800
homes contained within four walled and gated residential complexes, or “luxury laagers.”
The public roads of Calabasas Park are confined within a continuous lining of cinder-block
walls punctuated only by occasional guardhouses and remotely activated gates. As the lux-
ury laagers face private internal streets, little effort has been made to landscape the public
rights-of-way, leaving the spaces between the laagers very prickly—unshaded, hot, and
forbiddingly barren. We would see the same thing in all the new hillside developments
ringing the L.A. Basin.
These developments sell exclusion. Advertisements tout security features with the Drag-
netian brevity of “gated with twenty-four-hour drive-by security” (an entirely novel use of
the ominous “drive-by” moniker) or florid prose like, “as you drive through the wrought-
iron gates, past the uniformed guard, and over the rushing stream, you will be transfixed
by…” There is also novelty, like one moated development’s “deep twenty-five-acre lake
provides total security for the owners of the spacious high-rise condominium homes.”
Jittery beneath a crusty shell, sealed luxury laagers with checkpoint entries and private
internal security patrols may now be found throughout the L.A. area and beyond. This
proliferation has led to an explosion of typological permutations providing high-security
residential units in a wide range of prices. High-density multiple-building apartment com-
plexes are refitted with metal fencing stretched between the structures to block access to
internal streets. Medium-density stealthy suburban town houses are set atop tall berms
landscaped so heavily that you would never know there were houses up there. Back in Cal-
abasas, low-density clusters of exurban mansions are accessed by passing through sentried
forecourts augmented by video cameras to record visitors’ license plates.
One thing we have probably noticed since our walk began is the eerie absence of peo-
ple, like in one of those “Twilight Zone” episodes where some poor rube wanders around
a depopulated theme park. We could try to find ourselves some locals to hang out with.
Unfortunately, we are not likely to find any in the very few open spaces we have passed.
Public open space has come under assault as privatization has reacted opportunistically to
public sector penury. The Proposition 13 property tax “revolt,” declines in sales tax due to
consumers’ loss of purchasing power, the late 1980s collapse of the local real-estate market,
and reduced federal assistance have created a state budget deficit of $11 billion, reflected in
Los Angeles as a budgetary shortfall of $500 million. As a result, legislators have called for
the discontinuation of fiscally burdensome functions of public space and the transfer of po-
tentially profitable functions to the private sector. Such public facilities as parks and libraries
have been debilitated by shrinking tax revenues and declining income from user fees, first
losing programs, then maintenance, and finally closing entirely.
Traditional public spaces are increasingly supplanted by privately produced (although
often publicly subsidized), privately owned and administered spaces for public aggrega-
tion,1 that is, spaces of consumption or, most commonly, malls. In these new, “post-public”
spaces, access is predicated upon ability to pay. People without purchasing power, goods
that cannot be mass marketed, more-than-passive activities, and ideas narrowly perceived as
inimical to the owner’s sensibilities (and profit margin) are unaccommodated or ejected by
private security as quickly as they are manifested. Exclusivity rules here, ensuring the high
levels of control necessary to prevent irregularity, unpredictability, and inefficiency from
interfering with the orderly flow of commerce.
The first thing we notice is a new running fence enclosing the mall parking lot, limiting
points of access. Spaces of consumption cannot seal themselves off completely, as they are
dependent upon customer access for sustenance. Even so, they have imposed tight con-
trols over use, becoming “strong points of sale.” The smallest strip mall is a tightly nested
 Governance and Management  247
series of crusty, jittery, and prickly spaces. The fenced parking lot itself is watched over by
armed security guards. Pay phones have been removed to discourage vagrants, and some
convenience stores have installed exterior speakers blaring Muzak to drive away adolescent
head-bangers. Fast food outlets, equipped with video cameras at pay stations and drive-
through windows, feature outdoor eating/playground areas surrounded by outward curv-
ing steel bars. Loading docks large enough to enclose delivery vehicles whole are accessed
through steel doors set into concrete parapets and watched over by guard towers.
The interior promenades of some larger malls are unremittingly jittery, remotely mon-
itored by both private security and police in on-site substations. One mall substation in
Baldwin Hills serves as a base for 200 police officers; another bay immediately across the
promenade houses a municipal courthouse. These substations have become central institu-
tions in affluent suburban malls, where the role of shopping as community social focus has
provided a site for police contact with the general public. Here, the substations serve as the
public hub for community policing and neighborhood watch operations.
[…]
I would take us up Bunker Hill, but the hill’s designers are not too keen on pedestrians
coming up from down below (except as janitors), so we cannot get there from here. The
entire hill is slippery, separated from the adjacent city by an obstacle course of open freeway
trenches, a palisade of concrete parking garages, and a tangle of concrete bridges linking
citidel to citidel high above the streets. Every path we try confronts us with the blank un-
dersides of vehicular overpasses, towering walls studded with giant garage exhausts, and
seating cleverly shaped like narrow sideways tubes so as to be entirely unusable. We could
attain the summit from the south, but only by climbing a narrow, heavily patrolled stair
“plaza,” studded with video cameras and clearly marked as private property. But ignoring
the fact that, in the world beyond this text, we would probably find ourselves inadvertently
walking onto a freeway offramp (I know I have), we will traverse the plaza on the hill.
The plaza reflects both a shared consciousness between developers and public institutions
of the value of user-friendly urban designs and a differing conception of to whom those
benefits should accrue. By providing spaces where “office workers will find outdoor areas
for noontime relaxation,”2 attractive site amenities are seen as integral to this competi-
tion. Municipal agencies, meanwhile, see plazas as developer-funded additions to the city’s
open space inventory. Thus attempts are made to extract plazas from private developers in
exchange for subsidies provided through below-market-rate land sales or leases, tax abate-
ments, and density bonuses. In negotiations with developers, municipal agencies have been
successful in linking public subsidies to the provision of habitable open spaces, in no small
part because such spaces enhance the value of the project to the developers. Municipal agen-
cies have not, however, been terribly concerned with assuring right of public access to these
spaces. Thus, public subsidies have often been expended to create plazas accessible only at
the discretion of private owners; plazas sit stealthy behind hedgerows and grade changes,
jittery with blue-blazered private security. Most have small bronze plaques at the property
line reading, “Private property. Right to pass by permission, and subject to control, of
owners. Sec. 1008 civil code.” Inside the plazas we would find malls uniformly equipped
with eateries, express mail posts, dry cleaners, and gift shops to relieve office workers of
the need to leave the premises. The malls are lushly planted and ornamented with water
features. They are graced with high-art plaza-turds signed by some of the best plop-artists.
And, once again, they are nearly inaccessible to us.
[…]
We also have not bothered to look closely at the lampposts, freeway signage, and trans-
mission towers, despite the fact that they have been looking at us. Video cameras have
become standard equipment at major intersections across the city. Set in bulletproof casings
248  Steven Flusty
more than forty feet above street level, the cameras are equipped with remotely controlled
pan, tilt, and zoom capabilities. They feed to a control center beneath City Hall. These
cameras are part of the $300 million Automated Traffic Surveillance And Control (ATSAC)
system undergoing installation citywide. ATSAC cameras are presently used to determine
the specific cause of traffic delays indicated by in-pavement sensors. Police spokespersons
and the mayor’s office, however, have been careful not to deny an interest in using the
cameras to keep watch over the streets, sidewalks, and adjacent properties. This is not
surprising, given that the local police department increasingly shares the rest of the city’s
love affair with electronic media. Cameras, video recorders, and computer terminals are
being installed in LAPD patrol vehicles, enabling mobile street-level surveillance and the
instantaneous gathering and transmission of such intelligence as video still images. In es-
sence, the entire region has become jittery space. So how should we read these symptoms,
visible to any peripatetic? Diagnoses require consideration not just of what has happened
to us over the course of our excursion, but also of what has not. In all likelihood, we have
not been run over or mugged. We have not been verbally abused by beggars, shot by gang
members, or had our throats slit in our own driveways by some disgruntled ex-athlete.
What we have experienced is ex-aerospace workers pan handling in front of pastel mar-
ble-clad office buildings, vendors of pirated cassettes and chili’d mangos on the sidewalks in
front of overcrowded Spanish revival apartments, billboards and store signs plastered with
Spanish, Hangul, or Amaric, and a handful of streets in very poor neighborhoods partially
obstructed by unattended police barricades.
[…]
Reflecting patterns of human displacement throughout the emerging world system,
L.A.’s demographic globalization has been a fundamental aspect of its population increase.
Los Angeles is the affluent world city most frequently and widely represented (and misrep-
resented) in electronic media, and the fastest growing on the American continent’s West
Coast since the 1980s. It has thus become the destination of choice for a disproportionate
slice of the planet’s estimated one billion immigrants, drawn from regions arrayed around
the Pacific Rim and beyond.
[…]
Rising population in a limited area, concentrating wealth and poverty (what I like to call
the “new world bipolar disorder”), and increasing cultural segmentation at regional and
neighborhood levels are producing in Los Angeles, as in other world cities, a densely packed
heterogeneous population manifesting dramatic juxtapositions of privation and opulence.
This has served to erode the spatial and ideological dominance of an aging, predominantly
white “native” elite. The resultant drastic shift in the balance of cultural influence is com-
plicated by the fact that no other group has yet emerged with a sufficient preponderance of
members and/or resources to establish itself as the new majority. Lacking such a majority,
no one group is empowered to determine new behavioral standards.
With the decay of previously established cultural standards, and the absence of widely ac-
cepted new ones, a wealth of differing ways of life has surfaced, each with its own rules gov-
erning spatial use and interpersonal contact. The result is a fluid urban matrix in which likely
outcomes of encounters are unpredictable and territorial clues are misread or ignored, causing
social friction as individuals and groups continuously encroach upon one another. In response to
the uncertainties of a fragmented and dynamic urban milieu, social groups form into “defended
neighborhoods” in order to segregate themselves from “danger, insult, and the impairment of
status claims.”3 The defended neighborhood is characterized by a homogeneous social group
exerting dominance within its boundaries in reaction to perceived threats of territorial violation
by outsiders. Street gangs use spray paint while homeowners associations use neighborhood
watch signs; either way we are talking informal militias.
 Governance and Management  249
In short, the security obsession now pervading our cities is fueled in large part by fears
of complex social change and inequitable resource distribution. The concomitant Angeleno
“war on crime” may be interpreted as a means of forcibly maintaining, reconstituting, or at
least salvaging a challenged and possibly collapsing social consensus while simultaneously
protecting the perquisites of that consensus’s established beneficiaries. Segmentation of the
socio-spatial realm is the critical means to this end.
The luxury laager may thus be seen as the territory of a social group possessing the con-
siderable resources required to assert its spatial claims with walls and mercenaries. Luxury
laagers are therefore not intended to exclude merely crime, but a wide range of behavior
deviating from the community norms. This overriding concern with conformance to be-
havioral standards is demonstrated by the fact that residents are subject to covenants, con-
ditions, and restrictions (cc&R’s) forbidding such “low class” deviations as painting one’s
home a color objectionable to the architectural committee, working on one’s vehicle out-
side of one’s garage, using overstuffed or other indoor furniture on patios or front lawns, or
putting one’s garbage cans out early.
[…]
Taking a broad perspective on these proliferating spaces of control, it becomes apparent
that the sites in which daily life and face-to-face interaction take place—the streets, parks,
bazaars, and plazas—are being sacrificed to redundant zones of oversight and proprietary
control. This threatens the free exchange of ideas engendering a progressive society. It cre-
ates an impediment to the cross-cultural communication necessary to knit together diverse
publics. It is a rejection of the individual’s right to space in which to be.
In my opinion, what is most ominous about the places we have visited is this: one’s
permitted passage inside or willingness to step outside is determined by one’s actual or
apparent affluence. Thus, by employing space as the medium for securing status, we are
building material barriers between individuals on the basis of wealth. As the world eco-
nomic system constitutes a commercial society, access to wealth in the world city is largely
a function of professional occupation. Thus, the physical segregation of the world city by
criteria of affluence functions to divide society into rigid groups reflecting and reinforcing
the local division of labor, while simultaneously impeding mobility and contact between
these groups. Therefore, we are not merely witnessing the installation, component by com-
ponent, of infrastructure restructuring the city into electronically linked islands of privilege
embedded in an erratic police state matrix. We may also be observing a warning sign that,
in the emerging world cities, class is solidifying into caste.

Notes
1 Herbert I. Schiller, Culture, Inc.: The Corporate Takeover of Public Expression (New York: Oxford Uni-
versity Press, 1989).
2 Promotional brochure for Metropolitan Structures West’s California Plaza.
3 Gerald D. Suttles, The Social Construction of Communities (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1972).
5.5 Freehouse: Radicalizing the Local
Jeanne Van Heeswijk
Source: Van Heeswijk, J. (2016). “Freehouse: Radicalizing the Local,” in Alkens, N.
et al. (eds.), What’s the Use? Constellations of Art, History, and Knowledge. Amsterdam:
Valiz, 298–311.
Governance and Management  251
252 Jeanne Van Heeswijk
Governance and Management  253
254 Jeanne Van Heeswijk
Governance and Management  255
256 Jeanne Van Heeswijk
Governance and Management  257
258 Jeanne Van Heeswijk
Governance and Management  259
260 Jeanne Van Heeswijk
Governance and Management  261
262 Jeanne Van Heeswijk
Governance and Management  263
5.6 Public Space: The Management
Dimension
Matthew Carmona, Claudio de Magalhães and Leo Hammond
Source: Carmona, M., de Magalhães, C., and Hammond, L. (2008). Public Space:
The Management Dimension. London: Routledge, 71–80.

What is public space management?

All public spaces, no matter how inclusive, democratic and open require some form of man-
agement so that they can fulfil their roles effectively. […] Linked to these various roles are
a wide array of stakeholders who are concerned that public spaces meet their own require-
ments as, for example, providers of infrastructure, motorists, pedestrians, retail operators,
park users, etc. The potential for conflicts of interests in the daily usage of public space is
therefore quite significant, and, in a sense, inextricably linked to the very ‘publicness’ of
such spaces. Public space management is therefore:

The set of processes and practices that attempt to ensure that public space can fulfil all
its legitimate roles, whilst managing the interactions between, and impacts of, those
multiple functions in a way that is acceptable to its users.

This is a very broad definition, and there are clear issues here concerning who legitimises
the different roles of public space, what is acceptable and what is not, and who decides; as
well as with who are the users—the owners, defined groups, or wider society. […]
Public space management is the governance sphere where stakeholder demands on, and
aspirations for public space are articulated into sets of processes and practices. Given the
multifunctionality of public space, the variety of stakeholders whose actions contribute to
shape its overall quality and the plurality of elements that constitute it—the ‘kit of parts’.
[…] [I]t is clear that the management of public space is a complex set of activities that often
goes well beyond the remit of those organisations, public or private, formally in charge of
delivering it.
[T]he management of public space is conceptualised into four key interlinked delivery
processes:

1 The regulation of uses and conflicts between uses: the use of public spaces and the con-
flicts between uses have always been regulated, either formally through byelaws, and
other prescriptive instruments, or informally through socially sanctioned practices and
attitudes (see Ben-Joseph and Szold 2005 and Madanipour 2003). Regulation sets out
how public spaces should be used, sets a framework for solving conflicts between uses,
determines rules of access and established acceptable and unacceptable behaviour. How
regulation is conceived, adhered to, and how it adapts to changing societal needs is a
vital dimension of public space management.
2 The maintenance routines: these ensure the ‘fitness for purpose’ of the physical com-
ponents of public space. Public spaces and the infrastructure, equipment and facilities
vested in them need to be maintained in order to perform the functions that justify
their existence. This concerns anything from ensuing that public spaces are usable,
uncluttered, clean and safe, maintaining the surfaces of roads, street furniture, lighting,
vegetation and facilities of all sorts; to remove anything that might deface or offend the
 Governance and Management  265
symbolism invested in civic spaces; to occasional capital intensive replacement of parts
of the public realm.
3 The new investments into and ongoing resourcing of public space: regulating uses
and conflicts and physically maintaining public spaces requires resources, financial and
material. The degree to which regulatory instruments and maintenance routines can
be effective is linked to the amount of resources devoted to those activities. Moreover,
resources can come from several sources, each of them with a different combination of
limitations and possibilities. This involves both ongoing revenue funding, for day-to-
day management tasks, but also significant capital funding from time to time as and
when significant redesign and redevelopment is required.
4 The coordination of interventions in public space: because regulation, maintenance
and resourcing are likely to involve directly or indirectly a wide array of people and
organisations, there is a necessity for coordinating mechanisms to ensure that the agents
in charge of those activities pull in the same direction. This need for coordination ap-
plies equally to units within an organisation, such as departments of a local authority,
as it does to different organisations. As some of the case studies in Part Two will show,
the need for coordination has been made all the more pressing by the fragmentation of
the ‘command and control’ state and the emergence of ‘enabling’ forms of urban gov-
ernance (Leach and Percy-Smith 2001: 29).

Public space policies and aspirations

Regulation Investment Maintenance

Actions, uses and Finance, Routines,
conflicts between redevelopment, practices
uses skills and
experties

Coordination
Interventions, actions, aspirations

Management of public space

Public space quality

Figure 5.6.1  Public space management and its key dimensions. Source: The authors.
266  Matthew Carmona et al.
These four dimensions apply whether public space management activities are undertaken
primarily by public-sector agencies, by voluntary bodies or community organisations, or by
private-sector companies […] What might intuitively appear as the normal or ‘natural’ form
of public space management, defined by direct state ownership and management, captures
only one moment in the history of that set of practices, freezing in time what is essentially
a dynamic process.[…]

Public space management, a public good?

The idea of public space and public space management are normally associated with the
public sector, and more specifically with local government. There are strong reasons for
this coming from history and also from the economic dynamics of modern societies. In
a capitalist economy, goods and services tend to incorporate the character of commodity;
something with value and a price, traded in the marketplace. It follows that provision is
determined to a large extent by demand and supply relationships between buyers and sellers
competing in the market. Some argue that the history of capitalism is the history of an ever
increasing part of social life being subsumed under the category of commodity (Watts 1999,
Thrift 2000).
However, not all goods and services are equally suited to the commodity character and
to market relationships, even if they are vital to the functioning of the economy and soci-
ety. The provision of such goods cannot therefore depend entirely on markets, and relies
instead, at least partly, on alternative forms of provision, often involving the state. Public
space is of this type, as it exhibits the characteristics of what economists call ‘public goods’
(see Cornes and Sandler 1996). Just like clean air, defence or policing, public spaces are
goods that, once produced, can be enjoyed by more than one consumer simultaneously
without affecting the utility derived by any of them. It is difficult and/or onerous to ex-
clude from consumption anyone who wishes to benefit from those goods and, therefore, it
is equally difficult to charge at the point of consumption.
This possibility of free consumption makes market provision of such goods unlikely
as there is no incentive for it, even if demand is high. As with other public goods,
public spaces have been historically provided and managed by philanthropy or collec-
tive organisations—as opposed to private, prof it-seeking ones—and more recently the
state through general taxation. This public-goods character of public space underpins
much of the history of state involvement in its provision and management in modern
societies.
In most Western countries, the progressive codification of the roles of the state during
the twentieth century, and its takeover of the roles of previous collective and philanthropic
organisations, led to the provision and management of public spaces becoming a public ser-
vice, along with health, education, social housing and welfare. Vital functions performed
by public spaces (linkage between places, traffic corridors, leisure, meeting and ceremonial
spaces, health enhancing, etc.) became accepted as key to the well-being of modern soci-
eties and thus part of the array of goods and services whose adequate provision should be
secured by the state. In most countries, the essentially local character of most public spaces
and the functions they perform have resulted in their management becoming the responsi-
bility of local government.
[…]
 Governance and Management  267
The management models
[…]

The state-centred model

The first model centres on the state-centred provision of public space management, which
was the dominant form of public space services in most countries for most of the twentieth
century. It relies on public-sector institutions to plan and deliver an array of services that
make up public space management, with minimum use of external input from either pri-
vate contractors or the voluntary sector. Its key characteristics are:

• Hierarchical structures of planning and delivery;

• Clear vertical lines of accountability both upwards to policy makers—the politicians
who set up public space policy whether explicit or implicit—and downwards to service
users;
• Clear separation between service and use;
• A public service ethos based on the impartiality of the officers and a commitment to the
public interest.

In some cases this model can be regarded as inertial, a mere continuation of public space
management practices and cultures developed over decades. This carries on despite the
challenges posed by contemporary demands on public space and its quality and despite
the sort of problems widely associated with this model, including: service specialisation
caused by strong departmental cultures and professionalisation; clear separation of policy
conception and service delivery leading to a fragmentation of the different components of
public space management; rigidity in dealing with varying contexts, including the ability
to deliver fine-tuned variation of basic services; a disjuncture between, people’s percep-
tion of issues and those of specialised service deliverers; issues of costs and cut-backs;
and a lack of responsiveness to changing needs and demands (Audit Commission 2002a,
ODPM 2004). It was precisely the growing realization of those negative consequences of
the traditional model of public space management that raised the need to re-think man-
agement systems.
However, this model can encompass attempts to tackle those negative aspects of tradi-
tional practice in ways that still retain the positive elements of state-controlled public ser-
vice delivery with its public-service ethos and democratically accountable system. Indeed,
the main strength of this model is that it is based on visible and widely acceptable lines of
accountability, service planning and delivery are directly subject to established mechanisms
of elected local democracy. Moreover, it maintains clear lines of demarcation between the
public and private spheres and therefore sets clear, easily understood framework of respon-
sibilities, of property rights, ownership, and of public rights and duties. […] [I]n many other
countries the pressures to reform public services management and delivery has not been as
intense as in the UK, local services funding has not been so eroded and the costs of this tra-
ditional model have not as yet offset its benefits to the point of demanding radical change.
[…]
268  Matthew Carmona et al.
Devolved models
The other two emerging models share the common characteristic that they imply the trans-
fer of responsibilities for provision and management of public space away from the state and
towards other social agents. More than a rearrangement of responsibilities, they suggest a
redefinition of what public space is or should be, and how its public character should be
kept. This is a part of what are referred to in the literature as process of privatisation of pub-
lic space. In practice it comprises widely differing practices that go from the provision and
management of public space by corporate organisations as part of the process of securing
control upon externalities that might affect the performance of their business, to the take-
over of public spaces by community organisations or interest groups, whose own interests
become equated with the ‘public interest’.
This retreat of the state from its responsibilities over public space should not be confused
with, or restricted to, the transfer of ownership of public spaces, although it is certainly
linked to it. The real issue for public space management is how ‘devolved’ public spaces
are managed and maintained, which also has a bearing on how ‘publicness’ is defined.
Thus spaces owned and maintained by the embodied representation of the public inter-
est (i.e., the elected state machinery) are intuitively ‘public’ and belong to all citizens,
whereas spaces owned by private agents and managed by them will have their public
status secured through contracts, legal instruments and regulated practices and might
feel (and actually be) less ‘public’, even exclusionary. These devolved models imply a
definition of property rights over public space management, separate from the issue of
ownership of such spaces.
Therefore, what characterises these models is not necessarily the transfer of ownership of
public spaces such as those produced through private property development in the UK or
the US (see Kayden 2000). It is rather the transfer of management responsibilities (i.e., those
of coordination regulation, maintenance and investment) to others away from the public
sector; to a variety of collaborative arrangements with other social agents with a shared
interest in their outcomes. […]

The market-centered model

The first and more common model of the devolved type is the transfer of management responsi-
bilities over public spaces, whether publicly or privately owned, to private entities. This involves
the transfer of rights and obligations for managing public spaces, and in some cases the power
to define management objectives. This is done either through straightforward service delivery
contracts, or as part of a development agreement in which private provision and/or management
of public space results from negotiations around the conditions for, and outcomes from, private
property development. The contracting out of street cleaning or park maintenance services,
common in the UK, are examples of the former, whereas the public-private spaces in the US are
examples of the latter. In both cases, these arrangements involve a business, profit-making logic
on the part of the contractor (the agent), either directly profiting from a management/mainte-
nance contract, or indirectly profiting from the performance of the development of which the
public space is a part, and, in part, because of it.
Contracts in one form or another are an essential part of this process, and are more clearly
expressed in terms of a principal-agent or client contractor relationship (Sullivan and Skelcher
2002: 82–4). In these, one part—usually a public-sector agency—defines the services to be de-
livered and sets the standards of delivery, policy obligations and legal requirements. The other—
normally a private agent—delivers those services in return for financial gain. For the private
sector, even when not imposed by planning, zoning or other urban policy regulations, such
 Governance and Management  269
collaborative relations can be justified by the characteristics of public space and public space
management as commodities from which profit can be made and, given the externalities created
by public space, by its potential to maximise the utility derived from ownership of surrounding
property. For the public sector, they represent a way to fund public services by means other
than the public purse. The rationale here is the same one underpinning the development of
public-private partnerships (see Bailey 1995; Harding 1998):

• increasing public service budgets by tapping into private resources;

• bringing in skills and expertise not available to public-sector agencies;
• securing levels of service in excess of those normally provided by the public sector;
• creating more responsive, user-led management strategies for business-sensitive public
spaces.

Although private management of public space is not a new phenomenon, its re-emergence
as a practical policy option in post-welfare state societies runs contrary to many accepted
notions of the direction of social progress. It is more established in the US, but it is rapidly
gaining ground in other industrialised societies, especially in Europe, in spite of concerns
about some of its implications. This is precisely the process denounced in the increasingly
vast literature on the ‘death of public space’.
[…]

The community-centred model

The third model is perhaps the least developed of the three, although not necessarily the
most recent. It constitutes another form of devolution of responsibility for the provision
and/or management of public spaces and related services, but to community organisations,
including associations of users of public spaces, interest groups organised around public
space issues, and so forth. A fundamental difference from the previous model is that the
organisations to which public space management is devolved are in principle not structured
according to market principles of profitability and competitiveness. They do not exist to
provide public space services for a fee or to maximise economic returns on investment in
or surrounding public space, and instead have a direct interest in the quality of the public
spaces and related services primarily for their use value.
In these cases, the ‘public interest’ dimension that characterises public services is
therefore not confined to one side of the devolved arrangement, although this coin-
cidence of interests might be very localised. In real life these distinctions are more
nuanced, and communities residing around a public space might have an interest in its
quality also because it affects the capital value of their homes. However, this is unlikely
to be the main or only purpose of the organisation, and even if it were, it would not
operate according to market rules. These organisations do not belong either to hierar-
chical (the state) or market (private-sector) modes of social governance, and are more
closely linked to ‘network’ governance (Rhodes 1997) in that they exert influence and
pursue their objectives by developing formal and informal horizontal linkages with
other similar organisations and with the public and private sector.
As with the previous model, this approach can be seen as a result of the retreat or
‘hollowing out’ of the state (Rhodes 1994), weakened by the reshaping of the economy
and society since the mid-1970s. It can also, and perhaps more positively, be explained
by the trend towards the co-production of public services with the users (Sullivan and
Skelcher 2002, DTLR 2001). The need for flexibility to match services to a variety
of needs, for local knowledge to understand very localised demand, coupled with the
270  Matthew Carmona et al.
effort to redefine the relationship between the state and citizens in mature democracies
has led to an erosion of the separation between provision and use. Co-production (i.e.,
user engagement in the provision of public services) has been seen as the most effective
way to tackle diversified and complex demands brought forth by the increase in wealth
and the variety of lifestyles and associated needs (Goss 2001). This applies to a whole
gamut of public services, from health and education to social housing and urban re-
newal, as well as to public space management.
This model is also a rediscovery and extension of a long-established tradition of involve-
ment of charities and the voluntary sector in welfare delivery, which pre-dates state provi-
sion and was never fully replaced by it. Charitable organisations have long been associated
with the provision and management of public services.
[…]

Conclusions
In this chapter three models of managing public space have been put forward which have
emerged as a response to perceived problems of the more traditional approach. From the
discussion it should be clear that although there are clearly identifiable rationales underpin-
ning each model, in practice they do not constitute entirely separate approaches to public
space management. […] How they combine these models is determined by the nature of
public space issues, political contexts, local social and economic factors, and so forth.
There is no moral or practical superiority of one model over the others. In both theory
and practice approaches centred on state action, or on private sector effort, or in direct com-
munity participation, can all provide solutions to particular public space challenges in the
particular contexts in which they are applied. These models have their own intrinsic advan-
tages, from the clear accountability or the public interest ethos of the state-centred model;
to the ability to draw resources from a much wider constituency and more sensitivity and
responsiveness to changes in demand in the market-centred model; to the sensitivity to user
needs and the commitment of the community-centred approach.
They also have their own potential disadvantages too, from the potential bureaucracy
and insensitivity of the state-centred model, to the very real risk of exclusion and commod-
ification of the market-led approach, to the fragmentation, lack of strategic perspective and
inequality of a community-centred model.

References
Audit Commission (2002a) Street Scene, London, Audit Commission.
Bailey, N. (1995) (with A. Barker and K. MacDonald) Partnership Agencies in British Urban Policy, London,
UCL Press.
Ben-Joseph, E. and T. Szold (2005) Regulating Place: Standards and the Shaping of Urban America, London,
Routledge.
Cornes, R. and T., Sandler (1996) The Theory of Externalities, Public Goods and Club Goods, Cambridge,
Cambridge University Press.
DTLR (Department for Transport, Local Government and the Regions), (2001) Strong Local Leadership –
Quality Public Services, London, DTLR.
Goss, S. (2001), Making Local Governance Work: Networks, Relationships and the Management of Change,
­Basingstoke, Palgrave.
Harding, A. (1998) ‘Public-private partnerships in the UK’, in J. Pierre (ed.) Partnerships in Urban Govern-
ance: European and American Experience, Basingstoke, Macmillan.
Kayden, J. (2000) Privately Owned Public Space: The New York City Experience, New York, John Wiley.
Leach, R. and J. Percy-Smith (2001) Local Governance in Britain, Basingstoke, Palgrave.
 Governance and Management  271
Madanipour, A. (2003) Public and Private Spaces of the City, London, Routledge.
ODPM (Office for the Deputy Prime Minister) (2004) Living Places: Caring for Quality, London, RIBA
Enterprises/ODPM.
Rhodes, R. (1994) ‘The hollowing out of the state: The changing nature of the public service in Britain’,
Political Quarterly, 65(2): 138–151.
Rhodes, R. (1997) Understanding Governance: Policy Networks, Governance, Reflexivity and Accountability,
Milton Keynes, Open University Press.
Sullivan, H. and C. Skelcher (2002) Working Across Boundaries: Collaboration in Public Services, Basingstoke,
Palgrave.
Thrift, N. (2000) ‘Commodities’, in R. Johnston, D. Gregory, G. Pratt and M. Watts (eds) The Dictionary
of Human Geography, Oxford, Blackwell.
Watts, M. (1999) ‘Commodities’, in P. Cloke, P. Crang and M. Goodwin (eds.) Introducing Human Geog-
raphies, London, Arnold.
6

Public Art and Public Culture

in/of Public Space
Public Art and Public Culture
in/of Public Space

The social and political context in which public art in/and public space are defined, and
acquire meaning, is often based on the idea that both ought to affirm the existing social
contract. In public discourses and in policy-making circles alike, the way to achieve such
an objective is either by building or by reinforcing social consensus, sometimes through
coercion. In her book Evictions (1996), Rosalyn Deutsche argued that public art, architec-
ture, and urban design are often employed as “disciplinary technology” whose purpose is
to enable economic power to be exercised strategically and differentially, to fabricate con-
sensus, mask conflicting nature of urban politics, and to subject urban citizens to a view of
citizenship framed by consumption.
Critical scholarship on public art has since 1970s argued that the meaning of “public art”
and “art in public space” is always contingent on historical circumstances and should not
be found through a search for the origins—of neither public space nor public art—but be
continuously questioned in the context of present circumstances, and through democratic
contestation. On the other hand, in cities around the world, much of the public discourse
on public art today has centered on the regressive understanding of the role of public art
in the “beautification” of streets and squares. Whether fueled by neo-liberal urban devel-
opment or not, the decorative, scenographic, spectacularizing, and normatively symbolic
approach to public art prevails in most urban development and urban renewal schemes.
At the same time, in recent decades artists and art collectives have been engaged in inno-
vative approaches to creating long-term art interventions in relation to public space. More
often than not, this kind of work is done collaboratively with local communities, be it in
South Africa, Ecuador, The Netherlands, or Hong Kong. Participatory and co-­production
approaches have been widely employed to build critical capabilities and capacities in im-
migrant and under-privileged communities in order to enable the appropriation of public
space for economic sustenance and cultural growth. The work of Jeanne Van Heeswijk
in Rotterdam (see Section 5) is the case in point. Through their work, public art has ac-
quired a critical, political perspective and yet it has simultaneously enabled processes of
care, re-mediation, healing, communication and negotiation, mutual aid, and a variety of
forms of solidarity and conviviality.

Figure 6.0  Clifton Fest Street Festival in Cincinnati, Ohio. Photo © Vikas Mehta.
276  Public Art and Public Culture
Deutsche, who has written about the relationship between urban development, public
art, architecture, and urban design since the 1980s, makes a crucial distinction: ‘a public’ is
different from ‘an audience,’ and it is established when citizens engage in political discus-
sion. Public art ought to enable the emergence of a political space, help constitute a public,
and by extension render public space as the realm of politics. In this view, public space is not
limited to parks, squares, or streets and other institutional, normative ‘public spaces.’ The
concept of public sphere—which Deutsche elaborates following the work of Fraser, Young,
Lefort, Mouffe, and Laclau—suggests that public space should also be understood as a space
where citizens and noncitizens alike engage in debate and democratically-constituted con-
testation. Since exclusion is constitutive of urban space and conditions of its production—“a
strategy of distinction” (Fraser 1992)—public art and public space must embrace, as their
central task, to render exclusions visible and therefore contestable.
As an extension of Deutsche’s argument vis-à-vis the ideological underpinnings of the con-
cepts of “beauty” and “utility” so often employed in developing and designing public spaces,
Kristine Miller explores the now legendary events surrounding the removal of Richard Serra’s
1979 Tilted Arc sculpture from the Federal Plaza in New York City. This work of public art was
in 1992 replaced by a seating arrangement designed by Martha Schwartz, when the plaza was
also renamed to Jacob Javits Plaza. In Miller’s and Deutsche’s view, Tilted Arc—which quickly
became one of the most controversial public art works in the United States—operated precisely
by engaging citizens in a political conversation about the power of the Federal State, the role of
democratic institutions, and after all the nature of citizenship. Because of its scale, COR-TEN
material, and imposing presence, the sculpture threatened public officials. The “utility argu-
ment” was enacted by arguing that federal employees needed a pleasant place to eat lunch, and
that the sculpture disabled the main function of the plaza. Subsequently, in 1992, it was replaced
by benches and tables organized in semi-circular patterns together with grass-covered mounds,
and bounded by large, anti-terrorist bollards. Water fountains, garbage cans, purple-and-black
paving, and “Central Park lights” complete Schwartz’s design. By its physical and symbolic
presence, as well as its strategic spatial disposition, Schwartz’s design disabled any political en-
gagement whatsoever, and de facto rendered plaza attendees as “users.” Political engagement of
potential publics was strategically preempted.
The work of Krzysztof Wodiczko departs from the recognition that democratic process is
contingent upon the freedom of speech and expression in public space. The capacity to have
a voice and the capability for “speech” are for many a matter of bitter struggle which usu-
ally plays out in public space. Wodiczko’s work attempts to enable the inclusion of voices of
those who are “speechless”: the homeless, the immigrants, abused women and children, and
many others whose traumas are not officially acknowledged. Through his art interventions
in public space, their personal experiences and individual traumas are rendered as “speech
acts” through which they make their demands for visibility, recognition, and identity, and
as such enter the public sphere and political space alike. Working off Mouffe’s concept of
agonistic politics, Wodiczko’s projections, installations, and instruments employ public art
as the medium for the creation of dissensus aimed at “giving a voice to all those who are
silenced within the framework of the existing hegemony” (Mouffe 2007). Wodiczko’s 1990
Homeless Vehicle was a public art project co-developed with a community of homeless
New Yorkers. It converted used shopping carts into a mobile urban vehicle which used the
language of efficiency to make the homeless visible and normatively “productive.” In the
words of Rosalyn Deutsche, the project proposes an oppositional public sphere and offers a
counter-organization of urban space in order to support the right of the homeless to refuse
marginalization (Deutsche 1996: 106–107).
A different way in which an artist has engaged a previously “speechless” community
is evident in Marjetica Potrč’s work in Ubuntu Park in Soweto, Johannesburg, South
Africa. A site of long-term abandonment, struggle, and trauma under the apartheid,
 Public Art and Public Culture  277
the Park became grounds for healing and for communal coming together. During the
apartheid, Black citizens had no public presence and were legally banned from public
spaces. Potrč’s work here exemplifies a participatory and co-production methodology
characteristic of many public art and co-design projects today. Namely, the listening
and observation sessions are followed by a co-development of “the plan,” to be followed
by the construction process which involves the voluntary work by local residents, and
importantly utilizes the local knowledge of materials, technology, and construction. In
parallel with the process of construction, a larger process of creating a social network
of support for the new site of collectivization is developed. This effort is meant to
sustain the process of programming, maintenance, management, and utilization of the
new public space. This approach has also been called “infrastructuring” (Mitrašinović
2006). The focal point of the Park is a platform stage, what Potrč calls “a relational
object.” What appears to be a simple, concrete-made object, is in fact a complex stage
upon which the drama of becoming, of social and political transformation takes place.
The Park works as a catalyst through which the local community both organizes and
recognizes itself, and simultaneously makes claims to visibility and recognition in the
public realm. Potrč frames the dilemma present in many community-organized public
spaces around the world: how does one define boundaries between community space
and public space? The Ubuntu Park community embraced the fact that by coming to-
gether in this site they indeed form a public and take part in larger discourses of identity
formation and political negotiations around what matters.
For Chantal Mouffe, critical public art and cultural practices produce spaces for resist-
ance through agonistic interventions. The aim of such counter-hegemonic practices is to
undermine the social imaginary necessary for the reproduction of oppressions generated by
hegemonic systems, one of which is neo-liberal capitalism. Mouffe does not make a distinc-
tion between political and non-political art, because critical public art scrutinizes the sym-
bolic ordering of social relations and is therefore implicitly political. The crucial point of
Mouffe’s argument is that public space is essential for sustaining democratic politics because
it acts as a medium for the confrontation of conflicting points of view through democratic
means, without a possibility for final reconciliation. The objective thus of producing ago-
nistic public spaces via critical public art practices is the creation of an ongoing dissensus.
The most critical dimension of public art and public space ought to be to initiate a complex
process of transformation of political identities, a process that mobilizes public art to scruti-
nize dominant processes of identification and socio-spatial systems which naturalize them.

References
Deutsche, R. (1996). Evictions: Art and Spatial Politics. Chicago: Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies
in the Fine Arts and Boston: MIT Press.
Fraser, N. (1992). “Rethinking the Public Sphere: A Contribution to the Critique of Actually Existing
Democracy,” in Calhoun, C., ed., Habermas and the Public Sphere. Boston: MIT Press, 109.
Mitrašinović, M. (2016). Concurrent Urbanities: Designing Infrastructures of Inclusion. New York: Routledge.
Mouffe, C. (2007). “Artistic Activism and Agonistic Spaces,” Art & Research 1, no. 2 (Summer 2007).
http://www.artandresearch.org.uk/v1n2/mouffe.html (Last accessed on 27 June 2020). Also published
as: Mouffe, C. (2013). “Agonistic Politics and Artistic Practices: Agonistic Public Spaces,” in Mouffe, C.,
ed., Agonistics: Thinking the World Politically. London: Verso, 85–105.

Figure 6.0.1  Jaume Plensa’s Crown Fountain, Chicago Millennium Park, 2004. Photo © Vikas Mehta.
6.1 The Question of “Public Space”
Rosalyn Deutsche
Source: Deutsche, R. (1998). “The Question of ‘Public Space.’” Lecture at the Amer-
ican Photography Institute National Graduate Seminar. New York: The Photography
Institute.

[I will] offer an—admittedly selective—introduction to the discourse about “public space”

and focus on some of the ways in which this term is currently deployed and with what
consequences. Discourse about “public art” is a major site of this deployment. Inevitably,
statements about public art are also statements about public space, whether public art is
construed as “art in public places,” “art that creates public spaces,” “art in the public in-
terest,” or any other formulation that brings together the words “public” and “art.” My
critical method in this talk can be traced back to a shift that took place in art criticism in
the 1970s. Craig Owens characterized this shift as “a displacement from […] a criticism
concerned primarily or exclusively with the abstract truth or falsehood of statements, to one
which deals with their use in specific social circumstances.” This method is “genealogical”
in that it makes no attempt to find some essential, unchanging meaning of a concept but,
rather, tries to show that meanings are conditional, formed out of struggles. Exploring the
ways in which the concept of “public space” has been constituted and used does not pre-
clude supporting a particular use, proposing a different one or taking a position in debates
about the meaning of public space. On the contrary, it is precisely the abandonment of the
idea that there is a pre-given or proper meaning of public space that necessitates debate. A
genealogical approach does mean, however, that in these debates, no one can appeal to an
unconditional source of meaning—a supreme judge. We must take seriously the idea that
public space is a question […].
Why is public space such a ubiquitous and pressing question today? Why do debates rage
over this question? Why do we care? […] What political issues are at stake? What are the
political functions of rhetoric about public space? How have these changed in recent years?
Over the last decade or so, I have started looking for answers to these questions by not-
ing that nearly all proponents of public space and nearly all advocates of “public” things in
general—public parks, public buildings and, most relevant here, public art—present them-
selves as defenders of democracy. The term “public” has democratic connotations. It implies
“openness,” “accessibility,” “participation,” “inclusion” and “accountability” to “the peo-
ple.” Discourse about public art is, then, not only a site of deployment of the term public
space but, more broadly, of the term democracy. For example, when arts administrators
draft guidelines for putting art in public places, they use a vocabulary that invokes the prin-
ciples of direct and representative democracy, asking: “Are the artworks for the people? Do
they encourage participation? Do they serve their constituencies?” Public art terminology
also alludes to a general democratic spirit of egalitarianism: Do the works avoid “elitism?”
Are they “accessible?” On the day Richard Serra’s “Tilted Arc” was removed from the
Federal Plaza in Lower Manhattan, the administrator of the federal government’s Art-in-­
Architecture Program declared that, “This is a day for the city to rejoice because now the
plaza returns rightfully to the people.” Advocates of public art often seek to resolve con-
frontations between artists and other users of space through procedures that are routinely
described as “democratic.” Examples of such procedures are “community involvement” in
 Public Art and Public Culture  281
the selection of works of art or the so-called “integration” of artworks with the spaces they
occupy. Leaving aside the question of the necessity for, and desirability of, these procedures,
note that to take for granted that they are democratic is to presume that the task of democ-
racy is to settle, rather than sustain, conflict.
Yet democracy itself is an extremely embattled concept. Indeed, the discourse about
public space that has erupted over the last decade in art, architecture, and urban studies is
inseparable from a far more extensive eruption of debates about the meaning of “democ-
racy”—debates taking place in many arenas: political philosophy, new social movements,
educational theory, legal studies, mass media, and popular culture. The term “public
space” is one component of a rhetoric of democracy that, in some of its most widespread
forms, is used to justify less than democratic policies: the creation of exclusionary urban
spaces, state coercion and censorship, surveillance, economic privatization, the repression
of differences and attacks on the rights of the most expendable members of society, on
the rights of strangers and on the very idea of rights—on what Hannah Arendt called
“the right to have rights.” The term public frequently serves as an alibi under whose
protection authoritarian agendas are pursued and justified. The term, that is, is playing a
starring role in what Stuart Hall, in another context, called “authoritarian populism,” by
which he meant the mobilization of democratic discourses to sanction, indeed to pioneer,
shifts toward state coercion. Adapting Hall’s concept, we might say that the term public
has become part of the rhetoric of conservative democracy, which may well be the most
pertinent political problem of our time. By “conservative democracy,” I mean the use of
democratic concepts such as “liberty,” “equality,” “individual freedom,” “activism” and
“participation” for specifically rightwing ends. Public space is another democratic con-
cept, one that is central to discourse about cities, where it is used to support a cruel and
unreasonable urbanism.
I have been interested in public art discourse not because I seek a type of art that is located
in some universally accessible site, but because the discourse about public art is itself a po-
litical site—a site, that is, of contests over the meaning of democracy and, importantly, the
meaning of the political. I cannot stress this second point strongly enough and I will return
to it. It is repeatedly claimed that public art, by contrast with non-public art, is “political.”
But is not the category of the political itself politically constituted? Avoiding the question
of this constitution—treating the category as self-evident—turns “the political” into a tool
for forcing certain social issues, social groups, and types of art into the realm of the politi-
cally irrelevant. Even worse, unexamined notions of the political can lead to the notion that
certain issues, groups and artworks divert attention from political issues and are therefore
complicit with power and politically dangerous. This, I fear, is one result of the leftist dis-
course about public art, which has become a site of the deployment of the adjective political.
In this regard, it seems to me that the problems with discourse about public art have
changed since the 1980s, when I first wrote about it. In that decade, talk about public space
and public art intensified. The context of this acceleration was massive urban redevelop-
ment. Redevelopment and its residential component, gentrification, formed part of a global
spatial restructuring that facilitated new capitalist relations of oppression and exploitation
and transformed cities in the interest of private profit and state control. Redevelopment
helped destroy the conditions of survival—housing and services—for residents no longer
needed in the city’s economy, and its most visible symptom was the emergence of a large
population of homeless residents. Nonetheless, art that took part in designing redeveloped
spaces, or which served some practical or beautifying function within those spaces, was
touted as serving the essential needs of a unified society. It was presupposed that the con-
cepts of “beauty” and “utility” lie beyond politics. I argued, however, that precisely because
it was shielded by the alibis of beauty and function, the dominant type of public art—what
was then called “the new public art”—actually performed a political function: it conferred
282  Rosalyn Deutsche
democratic legitimacy on redevelopment and helping to suppress the social conflicts, the
relations of oppression that were actually producing new urban spaces. The new public art
engaged in and concealed what Marxist geographers called “the politics of space”—a phrase
that refers not only to the struggles taking place inside spaces but, more importantly, to the
struggles that produce and maintain those spaces.
Artists and critics who were dissatisfied with public art’s legitimating role and committed
to art as a critical social practice tried to unmask the politics of conservative definitions
of public space and to redefine public art. Some people, myself included, found a valuable
resource in the concept of “the public sphere,” a historical category first analyzed by Jürgen
Habermas as a set of institutions in which private citizens gather to formulate public opin-
ion that may be critical of the state. A public, then, differs from an audience. It is formed
when citizens engage in political discussion. Of course, the meaning of the public sphere
itself has been the object of intense debate, spawning a lengthy and important bibliography.
But without going into this debate, we can note that the category of the public sphere was
useful to art discourse because it replaced the idea of public space as that which lies outside,
and must be protected from, politics with the idea of public space as the realm of politics.
Introducing the concept into art criticism, people redefined public art as art that enters or
helps create such a political space. This redefinition shatters mainstream categorization of
public art for, within its terms, public art is no longer conceived as work that occupies or
designs physical spaces and addresses pre-existing audiences; public art is an instrument
that constitutes a public by engaging people in political discussion or by entering a political
struggle. Any site has the potential to be transformed into a public space. And with the in-
troduction of the concept of the public sphere, the admonition to make art public became
a demand for art’s politicization.
It is important, then, to recognize that since the 1980s, discourse about public art has
changed. Yet it seems to me that it has only partially changed. For if discourse about public
art once tended to gloss over the question of public space, today it simultaneously acknowl-
edges and disavows the fact that public space is a question.
[…]
Something similar can be detected in many discussions of public art that define public
art as political and/or social. Frequently, participants in these discussions state that we are
not sure what public art or public space is. At the same time, they act as though we are sure.
Articles, conferences, journals and lectures begin by announcing that we don’t know what
it means for art to be public. Still, they refer to certain traits as the sine qua nons, the essen-
tial qualities of public art. The most common example is the way in which it is taken for
granted that to qualify as public—that is, political—art must be located in spaces outside of
museums or galleries. “Outside the museum” is considered the necessary, if not sufficient,
condition of art’s publicness. There, it is assumed, we find or at least hope to achieve a pub-
lic space understood as a realm of universal accessibility, that is, of wholeness and plenitude.
“Inside the museum,” one falls into partiality and therefore into privacy. The vehicle of the
disavowal, the tool that generates the rigid inside/outside or public/private division, is an
unexamined notion of the political as a realm of unified struggle, a notion that might be
called phallocentric in its orientation toward completion. Why use the term public to up-
hold rather than problematize the public/private division? Why use it to restrict, rather than
proliferate, political spaces? Why use it to support the fiction that the museum is isolated
from society? Are these uses politically productive?
Because I think that the answer to this final question is “no,” I am neither devoted to
nor an expert on public art, at least as the term is conventionally defined. It is true that
my critical writing has developed in dialogue with artworks that are categorized as “pub-
lic”—Krzysztof Wodiczko’s slide projections on buildings and statues, for example. I do
 Public Art and Public Culture  283
not, however, honor any strict opposition between this work and works such as, say, Hans
Haacke’s “MoMA Poll” of 1970 or Barbara Kruger’s photomontages of the early 1980s,
works that in my opinion question the closure of the museum and gallery spaces they oc-
cupy, bring out the social struggles taking place in these apparently neutral spaces and, thus,
“make” a public space, just as Wodiczko’s does. All these practices rest on the assumption
that public space, far from a pre-given entity created for users, is, rather, a space that only
emerges from practices by users. As Vito Acconci puts it, public art either makes or breaks
a public space. In my view, the crucial issue is not whether but how an artist enters a space.
“Public space” in this view does not simply refer to already existing, physical urban sites
such as parks, urban squares, streets or cities as a whole. Of course, parks, squares and other
elements of the built environment can be public spaces. But they are not self-evidently
public nor are they the only public spaces. The concept of the public sphere makes it clear
that public space cannot be reduced to empirically identifiable spaces. Public space can also
be defined as a set of institutions where citizens—and, given the unprecedented mixing of
foreigners in today’s international cities, hopefully noncitizens—engage in debate; as the
space where rights are declared, thereby limiting power; or as the space where social group
identities and the identity of society are both constituted and questioned.
In part, public art discourse has treated public space in a restrictive manner because it
has tended to neglect the term “space.” Other keywords of public art discourse, such as
“art,” “public,” “the city,” “urbanism,” “the urban” have been problematized, at least to the
extent that it is routinely noted that they are in need of definition and subject to historical
variation. Space, however, is largely ignored, as though it is obvious in its clarity. It is pre-
supposed to be a purely physical entity or it is defined as social insofar as it is a container
of social processes or the material expression of socioeconomic relationships. In both cases,
space is seen as a purely objective field that is independent of any discursive intervention.
The object of the discourse—space—is simply accepted as “real.” Indeed, one is accused of
abandoning “reality” if one takes seriously the idea that space itself is a social relationship in
the sense that it is discursively constituted or if one treats discourse as a space and interro-
gates the space of the discourse about space, if, that is, one asks: What are the foundations of
the discourse? What are its boundaries? How are they constituted? By and for whom? One
is accused of trading in “unreality.” The real/unreal division also leads to the belief, held
by many spatial theorists today, that we must defend traditional, so-called “real” spaces—­
urban squares and streets, for instance—against new spatial arrangements—cyberspace,
mass media, shopping malls—which are dismissed as “unreal.” This dismissal, like the
dismissal of the museum as a public forum, is, I think, politically counterproductive, since
it prevents us from paying attention to the real political struggles that produce all spaces and
thus keeps us from extending the field of spatial politics.
[…]
Space is not an entity but a relationship. And if a space is something that has been made
room for, “namely within a boundary,” then in laying down the boundaries that mark off a
space something is cast outside. Thus, the architecture historian, Mark Wigley, claims that
“there is no space without violence and no violence that is not spatial.” This means that
space is political since it is constructed through the force of exclusion. But it also means
that, in a certain way, space is fragile. For the perception of a coherent, closed space cannot
be separated from a sense of what threatens that space—of what it tries to exclude but can-
not because the exclusion is constitutive.
Paying attention to the boundaries and exclusions which produce spaces can help us chip
away at some of the most calcified ideas about what it means to attach the adjective “pub-
lic” to the word “space.” “Public space” is commonly assumed to be a space which is, pre-
cisely, non-exclusionary—which is fully inclusive or at least potentially fully inclusive, all
284  Rosalyn Deutsche
embracing, and universally accessible. But if boundaries constitute space, then public space
only has meaning in relation to something that is excluded—a space excluded as private.
No matter how much it is touted as inclusionary, public space is, as the political philosopher
Nancy Fraser writes about the public sphere, “a strategy of distinction.” Indeed, the invoca-
tion of “public space” is a powerful tool for dismissing certain issues, ideas and social groups
by relegating them to the realm of the merely private. This exclusion is one of the term’s
principal functions. So, those of us who are committed to nurturing a democratic public
space are faced with the problem of dealing with exclusions in a way that is compatible with
democratic values. I’ll return to this problem. For now, I will simply suggest that treating
exclusions as though they are dictated by nature or reality itself or by the essential needs of a
society is incompatible with democratic values since it renders exclusions invisible and makes
them unavailable for questioning. To be democratic, we must acknowledge what exists.
So here I am enclosing the term “public space” in quotation marks. This is not to say
that public space doesn’t exist or to cast doubt on the importance of the concept. Rather,
I want to denaturalize it. The purpose of the quotation marks is to designate that the
term “public space” is a site of contest, which is to say, fully political. The remarks I’ve
made so far are not abstract, theoretical considerations that can be detached from the
so-called “real” political struggles over the so-called “real” public spaces. These consid-
erations cannot be discarded as mere discourse divided from concrete or material reality.
After all, any struggle over the use of some empirically observable public space—let us
say, an urban square or park—is a struggle between the competing meanings assigned
to the space, between, that is, competing representations of public space. This, by itself,
dispenses with any easy divisions between real and unreal, material and discursive space.
Of course, the most shopworn, if still effective, strategy in urban spatial contests is to act
as though the meaning of public space is self-evident and, in this way, to seal off that space
from political debate.
[…]
What, in contrast, might an ethical and democratic urbanism mean? To help us search for
an answer, I asked the members of this seminar to read two essays by Claude Lefort, a French
political philosopher who in the early 1980s framed ideas that have since become key points
in discussions about radical democracy and public space. Lefort proposes that the hallmark of
democracy is the disappearance of certainty about the foundations of social life. Uncertainty, he
says, makes democratic power the antithesis of the absolutist monarchical power it destroys. In
Lefort’s view, the French bourgeois political revolutions of the eighteenth century inaugurated
a radical mutation in the form of society, a mutation he calls “the democratic invention.” The
democratic invention was one and the same event with the Declaration of the Rights of Man,
an event that shifted the location of power. The declaration states that all sovereign power resides
within “the people.” Previously, it had lived elsewhere.
[…]
With the democratic revolution, state power was no longer referred to an external source.
Now it derived from “the people” and was located inside the social. But when references
to an outside source of unity disappeared, an unconditional origin of social unity also van-
ished. The people are the source of power but they, too, are deprived in the democratic
moment of their substantial identity. The social order, like the state, has no pre-given basis.
Rather, it is “purely social” and therefore an enigma, an unsolved problem. Power is linked
in the democratic moment to what Lefort calls “the image of an empty place.” “In my
view,” he writes,
 Public Art and Public Culture  285
the important point is that democracy is instituted and sustained by the dissolution of
the markers of certainty. It inaugurates a history in which people experience a funda-
mental indeterminacy as to the basis of power, law and knowledge, and as to the basis
of relations between self and other.

Democracy, then, has a difficulty at its core. Power stems from the people but belongs to
nobody. Democracy abolishes the external referent of power and refers power to society.
But democratic power cannot appeal for its authority to a meaning that is immanent
in the society. Instead, the democratic revolution invents what Lefort calls “the public
space.” Lefort’s public space is the social space where, in the absence of a foundation,
the meaning and unity of the society is negotiated, constituted and put at risk. What
is recognized in public space is the legitimacy of contest about what is legitimate and
what is illegitimate. Contest is initiated with the declaration of rights, which themselves
are deprived of an unconditional source. Although rights are declared in the name of
nature, the democratic invention actually relocates rights from a transcendent to a po-
litical realm. The essence of rights is to be declared. This means that, whether or not
they are made in the name of nature, they are coextensive with, not prior to, politics.
Etienne Balibar defines human rights as the “universal right to politics,” equal freedom
to engage in political struggle.
Democracy and democratic public space appear when the idea that society is unified by
a substantial basis is abandoned. The social order and our common humanity become an
enigma and are therefore open to contestation. Of course, social questions are settled—this
point is frequently misunderstood. But no question can be forever excluded from politics.
Nor can the problem of society itself ever be finally settled. To be democratic, society and
public space must remain a question. For Lefort, public space, the question at democracy’s
heart, implies an institutionalization of conflict as, through a limitless declaration of rights,
the exercise of power is questioned. Like Henri Lefebvre, who invented the notion of “the
right to the city,” Lefort entangles public space with rights. He makes the two inseparable
and this challenges the ease with which those who, traveling under the slogan of an im-
proved “quality of life,” express hostility toward rights yet present themselves as guardians
of urban public space.
[…]
I have tried to distance myself from the category [of public art], insofar as it is defined
as the privileged space of real aesthetic politics by casting other art practices into privacy
and unreality—insofar, that is, as it takes shape at the expense of others. I do, however,
fully support the efforts of artists and critics to use visual objects—including the things of
the city, such as statues, monuments, parks, and buildings—to help create public space, to,
for instance, allow the homeless person to emerge from her consignment to an ideological
image and declare her right to the city, which is to say, her right to politics. More broadly,
I fully support the deployment, or re-deployment, of visual objects to, as Acconci writes,
“break” spaces that have been ordained as public or “make” public spaces in which the
foundations of social unity and of power can be questioned. The reservations I have ex-
pressed about current uses of the term “public art” spring from my belief that it is important
to proliferate public spaces, to join struggles to make many different kinds of spaces public,
to displace the boundary between the public and the private, and, in so doing, to enlarge,
rather than limit, the space of politics.
286  Rosalyn Deutsche
References
Vito Acconci, Making Public: The Writing and Reading of Public Space (The Hague: Uitgever, 1993). This
publication accompanied “Vito Acconci: Models, Projects for Streets, Squares, and Parks; an exhibition
at Stroom: The Hague’s Center for Visual Arts, 1993.
Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism (San Diego: Harcourt Brace & Company, 1948): 296.
Etienne Balibar, “‘Rights of Man’ and ‘Rights of the Citizen’: The Modern Dialectic of Equality and
Freedom” in Masses, Classes, Ideas: Studies on Politics and Philosophy Before and After Marx, trans. James
Swenson (New York: Routledge, 1994).
Nancy Fraser and Linda Nicholson, “Social Criticism without Philosophy: An Encounter between Femi-
nism and Postmodernism;” in Andrew Ross, ed., Universal Abandon? The Politics of Postmodernism (Uni-
versity of Minnesota Press; Minnesota Archive Editions, 1989).
Nancy Fraser, “Rethinking the Public Sphere: A Contribution to the Critique of Actually Existing De-
mocracy,“ in Craig Calhoun, ed., Habermas and the Public Sphere (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1992): 109.
Jürgen Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois
Society, trans. Thomas Burger with the assistance of Frederick Lawrence (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1989);
originally published as Strukturwandel der Öffentlichkeit (Darmstadt: Hermann Luchterhand V ­ erlag,
1962).
Jürgen Habermas, “The Public Sphere: An Encyclopedia Article (1964), “ New German Critique (Fall
1974): 44–55.
Claude Lefort, “Politics and Human Rights,” in The Political Forms of Modern Society: Bureaucracy, Democ-
racy, Totalitarianism (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1986).
Claude Lefort, Democracy and Political Theory (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1989).
Craig Owens, “The Discourse of Others: Feminists and Postmodernism,” in Hal Foster, ed., The Anti-
Aesthetic: Essays on Postmodern Culture (Port Townsend, Wash.: Bay Press, 1983): 57–82.
Craig Owens, “The Yen for Art,” in Hal Foster, ed., Discussions in Contemporary Culture, No. 1 (Seattle:
Bay Press, 1987): 23.
Mark Wigley, “Editorial,” Assemblage 20 (April 1993): 7.
Figure 6.0.2  Public art in the High Line Park, New York City. Photo © Vikas Mehta.
6.2 Art or Lunch? Redesigning a Public
for Federal Plaza
Kristine F. Miller
Source: Miller, K.F. (2007). “Art or Lunch? Redesigning a Public for Federal Plaza,”
in Miller, K.F. (ed.), Designs on the Public: The Private Lives of New York’s Public Spaces.
Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 23–44.

The history of Federal Plaza/Jacob Javits Plaza shows how government officials, artists,
designers, and critics engage in ongoing processes of design, critique, and redesign.1 These
processes define and redefine public space and public life. In 1979, artist Richard Serra
physically changed the plaza by installing his sculpture Tilted Arc. He created Tilted Arc
based on the idea that public art on a government-owned site should be confrontational
and never complicit. Government officials did not share Serra’s values. They viewed the
sculpture as an eyesore and a threat, and they actively and successfully sought to have the
sculpture removed. The values of the government officials were not shared by art critics
Rosalyn Deutsche and Douglas Crimp, who viewed Federal Plaza without Serra’s sculp-
ture as emblematic of what public space and public life should not be: actively controlled
by a few powerful and determined people. The values of the art critics were not shared by
landscape architect Martha Schwartz, who redesigned Federal Plaza [in 1992] in accord-
ance with the wishes of the government agency that hired her. At this time, the plaza was
renamed Jacob Javits Plaza.
[…]
Serra’s Tilted Arc was a massive COR-TEN steel minimalist sculpture inserted within a
pre-existing plaza. Schwartz’s project, which remains in place today, involved a complete
plaza redesign, from building edge to sidewalk: new purple paving, swirls of back-to-
back bright green benches, blue enamel water fountains, curlicue handrails, streetlights
double their normal height, and giant mounds of grass that give off puffs of water vapor.
Whereas Tilted Arc was minimal, sober, and massive, Schwartz’s plaza is elaborate, jaunty,
and colorful.
The ongoing history of Federal Plaza, including Serra’s and Schwartz’s designs and the
debates that led to the demolition of Serra’s Tilted Arc and to the construction of Schwartz’s
redesign, expose more about the politics of public space than does either event on its own.
What is surprising in the Federal Plaza case is not simply that discourse and design are part
of the same processes of cultural production—processes that determine the relationship
between a public space and its public spheres—rather, it is astonishing that they are in
many instances not clearly recognized as such by those people engaged in the very physi-
cal transformation of public space. The Federal Plaza case is an example of the inability or
unwillingness of design criticism and practice to engage with public spaces as the sites and
subjects of active public spheres.

Tilted arcs and curving benches

While the fate of Tilted Arc may be familiar to many, two important aspects of the story are
less obvious. First, this story offers a graphic example of how physical changes are made to
spaces based on arguments about who the public is and what is in their interest. Second, the
 Public Art and Public Culture  291
sculpture and its subsequent removal spurred political and academic discussions about issues,
including the importance of public spaces tied to public buildings, the role of public art, and
what constitutes public process. Together, these factors create a second story about Tilted Arc
and its site, a story about diverse constituencies intervening in the creation of a public space.
In other words, because of its removal, Tilted Arc generated a kind of public sphere.
[…]
When the plaza was originally designed [in 1967], it had a large working fountain and its
paving was patterned after Roman designs—in particular, Michelangelo’s work at the Cam-
pidoglio in Rome.4 While creating a European-style plaza may have been the architects’
intention, commentators on Federal Plaza found the plaza lacking.5 In a 1985 New York Times
article, Paul Goldberger described the plaza as “an ugly space bordered by undistinguished
buildings and centered, more or less, by an empty pool and dry fountain,” adding,

in a city of bad plazas in front of bad skyscrapers, this is one of the worst. Federal Plaza
is a dreary stretch of concrete, punctuated by a poorly placed and poorly designed foun-
tain; it was no urban oasis by a long shot.6

Because it was built over the top of a parking garage whose structure could not bear the
additional weight, the plaza had no trees. The fountain proved difficult to maintain, and
was eventually turned off altogether. It may not have been a place where people wanted to
linger, particularly after the fountain broke, because of the wind in the winter or the heat
in the summer. The space was large and open enough, however, for protests and demonstra-
tions. In 1971, for example, federal employees rallied there to protest a Nixon wage freeze.7
In this way, the plaza’s openness was an asset. It allowed the space to be used as the site for
certain public spheres.
In 1979, through the GSA’s Art-in-Architecture program, the U.S. General Services
Administration (GSA) commissioned Richard Serra to design a sculpture for 26 Federal
Plaza.8 Under this program, one-half of one percent of the cost of any new building or
building under construction is required to be set aside for the incorporation of fine art.
[…]
Because of its style, scale, material, and position, it’s not surprising that Tilted Arc drew
such criticism and became one of the most controversial works of public art in the United
States. The piece consisted of a long slab of steel that stretched across the plaza in a shal-
low curve. Unlike many sculptures in public spaces in New York City, Tilted Arc was not
representational; it did not depict a historic moment or figure. Tilted Arc was, therefore,
difficult to view and to interpret as art. Though these features were in keeping with the
sculpture’s minimalist style, even within the genre of minimalism Tilted Arc stood out. The
very material it was made out of also caused unease. COR-TEN steel is fabricated to rust,
a finish most equate with scrap metal or waste, not with fine art. Tilted Arc also appeared
uncontained. It did not sit on a pedestal, but rather appeared to come out of the plaza itself.
It did not even stand upright, but rather angled in toward its concave side, giving passersby
the feeling that it might somehow fall and crush them while at the same time appearing
firmly rooted to the plaza’s surface. Because of its shape and position, the sculpture looked
very different depending from which side of the plaza you viewed it. From one angle, its
entire length appeared; from another, the thinness of the slab and the shape of the curve
became more visible.
[…]
Tilted Arc quickly became one of the most controversial works of public art in the United
States. Serra’s most vocal and powerful detractors, whose combined efforts led to the sculp-
ture’s dismantling, were Judge Edward D. Re, chief judge of the U.S. Court of International
292  Kristine F. Miller
Trade, and Ronald Reagan-appointee William Diamond, the GSA’s New York regional
administrator. In August 1981, the same year that Tilted Arc was installed, Judge Re sent a
letter to GSA Administrator Gerald Carmen, calling the sculpture “the rusted steel barrier
in front of our courthouse.” Re argued that it “destroys not only the beauty and spacious-
ness, but also the utility of the plaza, which has been used for ceremonies.”14
In 1985, Diamond convened a hearing to decide whether or not Tilted Arc should be re-
located in order to increase what he called the “public use” of the plaza.
[…]
In his hearing testimony and in later interviews, [Douglas] Crimp argued that the GSA
pushed the “use” versus “sculpture” argument to develop a false sense of divisiveness be-
tween government workers and the artists who lived and worked in the neighborhood.
He wrote, “I believe that we have been polarized here in order that we not notice the real
issue: the fact that our social experience is deliberately and drastically limited by our public
officials.”31 Crimp went on to argue that part of the merit of Tilted Arc is that it brought
these issues to light:

I urge that we keep this wall in place and that we construct our social experience in
relation to it, that is, out of the sights of those who would conceive of social life as
something to be feared, despised, and surveyed.32

Crimp elaborates Serra’s position that art can change social habits. Left in place, Serra’s
sculpture might challenge us to walk, act, think differently. But to Crimp the “publicness”
of public space is tied neither to aesthetics nor government designation. Neither artists nor
officials make public space.
[…]
Criticism was central to the history of Tilted Arc. Criticism defined, challenged, and re-
defined public space. Criticism influenced physical changes at Federal Plaza and positioned
the history of Tilted Arc within larger debates about the politics of public space. For Serra, it
was more important that Tilted Arc be confrontational than pleasing, since the purpose of the
sculpture was to criticize political power. To Re and Diamond, the purpose of public art and
public space was to provide comfortable settings for relaxation, not to challenge the power
of government institutions. Hearing participants developed critical strategies to argue against

Figure 6.2.1  Jacob Javits Plaza, November 2000.  Photo @ Kristine F. Miller.
 Public Art and Public Culture  293
Re’s and Diamond’s assertions. Crimp and Deutsche developed standpoints on the role of
public art and public space based on a critical appraisal of the sculpture and the rhetoric that
prefigured its destruction. The next iteration of Federal Plaza and its history constitute an
additional set of critical responses and physical changes to the site. These responses did not,
however, take into account the central questions framed by Tilted Arc. Rather, they seem
to have accepted the GSA’s static framing of public space as a place where people engage in
prescribed sets of activities. As a result, when Federal Plaza was transformed into Jacob Javits
Plaza, it was not conceived of as the potential site or subject of public spheres.

Jacob Javits Plaza and the use of public space

In 1992, the GSA hired Martha Schwartz to redesign the plaza. At this time, the site was
renamed Jacob Javits Plaza in honor of a former U.S. senator. Schwartz completely trans-
formed the space. What was once an open, if inhospitable, area is now filled with oversized
furnishings bordered at the building edge by a broad path and antiterrorist bollards. In the
main portion of the plaza, six swirls of bright green benches and six giant grass-covered
mounds create a kind of broad maze. The mounds were designed to give off mist on hot
days. The mounds and benches take up much of the surface of the plaza, which is also dot-
ted with blue enamel water fountains, orange mesh garbage cans, and tall black lights. The
surface is covered with swirls of purple-and-black paving. Around the edges of the plaza
nearest the sidewalk Schwartz installed a series of steps where the sidewalk was lower. The
steps’ handrails end in huge black metal curves.
[…]
With so much attention being paid to how Federal Plaza could have been a place that
people could “use,” it is ironic and perhaps shocking that the final design prescribed such a
narrow program. In actuality, only one use is described by Schwartz: eating lunch:

“At first I was outraged but I came to feel sorry for those who had to use the space...”
she developed what she called “an antithetical sort of piece.” “I would shape the space
for the way people actually use it: to eat lunch.”45

Weekday lunchtime is the only programmed use that is mentioned; its design elements
include “[f ]amiliar lunchtime paraphernalia—blue enamelled drinking fountains, Central
Park light stands, and orange wire-mesh trash cans—occupy the surface.”46
The “lunchtime paraphernalia” and benches take up so much of the available space that sitting
and eating may be the only use possible. As the plan view indicates, Schwartz’s plaza is filled
with loops of benches. The curves of the benches are meant to “allow for a variety of seating—
intimate circles for groups and flat outside curves for those who wish to lunch alone.”47 But their
size and positioning make crossing the plaza very difficult. There is only one direct route across
the plaza, and that route is only visible as such from one point along the sidewalk. The benches
also make large-scale events such as concerts and demonstrations almost impossible. One might
argue that concertgoers could sit on the benches, but their configuration is so multidirectional
that the majority of people seated would be facing the wrong direction.
[…]
In defense of her design, Schwartz drew attention to the fact that the “public” was con-
sulted in the design process. They asked for and got lots of seating. Other critics commented
that the mist from the green hills counted as a water feature, as advocated by William
Whyte, and that artistic design improves public space.49
Whether or not it is a pleasant place to eat lunch, the “public” of Jacob Javits Plaza in-
cludes more than lunching office workers. In addition to housing the GSA, the Federal
294  Kristine F. Miller

Figure 6.2.2  Jacob Javits Plaza plans, with Serra’s Tilted Arc and after being redesigned by Martha Schwartz.
Drafted by Vincent deBritto @ Kristine F. Miller.
 Public Art and Public Culture  295
Building also houses offices, including offices for the Social Security Administration, Im-
migration and Naturalization Services (INS), and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Be-
cause of the presence of these offices, there is considerable pedestrian movement through
the plaza. While the Tilted Arc hearings referred to two sets of “publics”—namely, the office
workers and the artists who lived in loft spaces in Tribeca—there is at least one more “set,”
according to Douglas Crimp:

there is another group on the site every day that outnumber either of these groups: peo-
ple from all over New York who need a green card, a new driver’s license, who must
meet a court date, or serve on jury duty.50

Crimp’s point is emphasized in a series of newspaper articles that enlarge the scope of the
plaza’s potential public, including groups as diverse as people forced to spend the night on
the sidewalk next to the plaza in order to line up for an appointment at INS, and the 10,000
to 20,000 demonstrators who marched from Brooklyn to Federal Plaza to protest police
brutality.51
The plaza is managed strictly. People are not allowed to demonstrate there. But the dom-
inance of the physical objects within the plaza also severely limits what can happen. There is
simply no space for even GSA-approved uses of ceremonies and concerts. Serra’s sculpture oc-
cupied less of the plaza than Schwartz’s redesign. There is now not enough room for events such
as large-scale government demonstrations and protests. Even if a group could secure permission
to hold an event there, the physical layout and the design elements of Jacob Javits Plaza would
limit how many people could participate and what they could do there. [...]
[S]imply because it is a publicly owned space does not mean that it is a public space. The
plaza has a history of public access that legally indicates it is a public forum under the First
Amendment.54 However, the GSA does not currently manage it as such. Security issues
were raised in the destruction of Tilted Arc and guide current management practices. It is
important to note that the Tilted Arc controversies, in which issues of security were raised,
and Schwartz’s redesign of the plaza both predate the Oklahoma City Federal Building
bombing in April 1995 and the bombing of the World Trade Center and the Pentagon in
September 2001. In the course of writing this chapter, also prior to 9/11, attempts to take
photographs of the plaza revealed the implications of calling Federal Plaza a public space
at all. Security workers routinely ask those taking photos to stop or else have their camera
confiscated. In order to be allowed to photograph the plaza, one must first enter the Federal
Building through a security checkpoint and then report to the building manager’s office.
There one fills out a form (requiring this permit is, according to the NYCLU, illegal) re-
questing to hold a special event or art exhibition on the site. Thus, even a space so restricted
through its design can be further restricted by regulation and policing.
While security may seem an incontestable concern, Crimp points out that the GSA has
used this issue in defending its control of the plaza. The GSA, Crimp argues, today uses the
issue of security in the same way it used the issue of aesthetics in the events leading to the
destruction of Tilted Arc—namely, to divide and distract dissenting voices.
[…]
The ongoing history of design at Federal Plaza clearly illustrates that public space and the
public are both physically produced and rhetorically constructed. Rhetoric argues for or against
the “appropriateness” of different modes of behavior and activities. Built form reinforces who
the public is by limiting how a site can be used. Critics can turn a blind eye to these issues by
focusing on a design’s physical appearance or by reiterating a firm’s promotional stance. This is
not to say that all parties involved in the production and construction of Jacob Javits Plaza had
as their goal the exclusion of groups or individuals from the site. But designers and critics must
296  Kristine F. Miller
not unwittingly support the erosion of public space by failing to recognize that broader political
issues are at stake. These issues were exposed in the legal battles over Tilted Arc and were ques-
tioned by Crimp and Deutsche. By not carrying these discussions forward, Jacob Javits Plaza’s
“whimsical” benches represent a failure of public space design and criticism.
At City Hall, government officials used regulation to control how the steps were used
and by whom. At Federal Plaza, the same results were achieved through rhetoric and de-
sign. It takes much longer to physically change a space than to enact regulations governing
what can happen there, but physical changes are more durable. Regulations can be applied
and retracted in days or weeks. Designs exist over longer periods of time. While it is more
obvious to a passerby that a space has been redesigned than that a space has been newly
regulated, designs are less easily “read” as controls. Redesigning a space is also more costly
than setting out new regulations. But because of these costs, new designs are often subject
to some kind of review. Review processes and redesigns themselves generate a body of as-
sertions about the role of public space.

Notes
1 In piecing together this ongoing history of Federal Plaza, this chapter draws upon several sources,
including government correspondence and hearing testimonies relating to Richard Serra’s Tilted Arc
published in Clara Weyergraf-Serra and Martha Buskirk, Richard Serra’s Tilted Arc (Eindhoven, Neth-
erlands: Van Abbemuseum, 1988); Rosalyn Deutsche, Evictions: Art and Spatial Politics (Cambridge,
Mass.: MIT Press, 1996); Douglas Crimp, “Art in the 80s: Myth of Autonomy,” Precis 6 (1987); and
Harriet Senie, The Tilted Arc Controversy: Dangerous Precedent? (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota
Press, 2002).
4 Clara Weyergraf-Serra and Martha Buskirk, Richard Serra’s Tilted Arc (Eindhoven, Netherlands: Van
Abbemuseum, 1988), 124.
5 Maintaining the fountain proved to be difficult, though while it was working it was described as
“something of a Mecca to what seems to be an increasing number of lunchtime eaters who bring
food from home.” “New Federal Office Building: A Capital in Microcosm,” New York Times, August
29, 1968. The same article also pointed out that upon the building’s completion critics argued that
the blank-concrete facade on Broadway was an eyesore and that parking, public transportation, and
eating facilities were inadequate in light of the thousands of workers who were now concentrated in
one area.
6 Paul Goldberger, “Critic’s notebook: harmonizing old and new buildings,” New York Times, May 2,
1985.
7 Damon Stetson, “Federal employees rally here to protest delay in pay raise,” New York Times, October
2, 1971.
8 Herbert Muschamp, New York Times, April 24, 1995, B1; Weyergraf-Serra and Buskirk, Richard Serra’s
Tilted Arc.
14 Cited in Weyergraf-Serra and Buskirk, Richard Serra’s Tilted Arc, 26.
31 Ibid.
32 Ibid.
45 “ASLA Awards 1997,” Landscape Architecture 87, no. 11 (November 1997): 55.
46 Ibid., 54.
47 Elizabeth K. Meyer, Martha Schwartz: Transfiguration of the Commonplace. (Washington, D.C.: Space-
maker Press, 1997), 149.
49 In The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces (Washington, D.C.: Conservation Foundation, 1980), Whyte
described the kinds of features that make a public plaza successful.
50 Cited in Tom Finkelpearl, Dialogues in Public Art (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2000), 63.
51 Ying Chan, “The INS Waiting Game,” New York Daily News, July 16, 1995; Austin Fenner, “March-
ers Flood Downtown: 10,000 Protest Cop Slaying of African Vendor,” New York Times, April 16,
1999.
54 Christopher Dunn, in discussion with the author, November 2000.
Figure 6.0.3  The Story of Ubuntu Park, 2014. Image © Marjetica Potrč and Galerie Nordenhake Berlin/
Stockholm. Courtesy of Marjetica Potr č and Galerie Nordenhake.
6.3 The Soweto Project1
Marjetica Potrč
Source: Potrč, M. (2014). “The Soweto Project,” in Urbonas, G. et al. (eds.), Public
Space? Lost and Found. Boston: MIT Press, 235–243.

For the residents of Soweto, a township of the city of Johannesburg, South Africa, public
space has long been a locus of trauma. During the time of apartheid, the Black population
was excluded from public spaces and the public sphere more generally. The effects of this
exclusion are still felt. This denial of entitlement has translated into the people’s under-
standable disregard for public space, exemplified in the continued trashing, even 20 years
after the end of apartheid, of the plot of land that was to become Ubuntu Park.
The residents explain the meaning of the word ubuntu as: “The people is the people be-
cause of other people.” Ubuntu defines our existence in the world as coexistence, rejecting
individualism and affirming the traditional South African value of togetherness.
Ubuntu Park was the result of one of the two participatory design experiments making
up The Soweto Project, co-developed by myself, the students in the Design for the Living
World class [at the University of Fine Arts/HFBK in Hamburg, Germany], and the com-
munities we worked with over the course of two months in early 2014 at two locations in
Soweto. In Orlando East, we and the local residents turned a former public space that had
been used as a dumping ground into a community-organized public space (Ubuntu Park).
In Noordgesig, we created two vegetable gardens at the primary school, an important step
toward food security for the neighborhood. In both endeavors, we followed the principles
of participatory design. During the process, the community assumes ownership of the work
and develops it further on its own. This is the crucially important point: we don’t do quick
public space interventions that end with the local residents having to deal with something
they don’t really understand as their own or care to continue.
The design agenda proceeded through the following four steps: 1. Listening to the
local residents before making any definite plan; 2. Involving the community in the
­decision-making and design processes; 3. Involving the community in the construction
process; 4. Transferring responsibility for the developed project to the community in order
to leave behind a sustainable work that benefits the local population in the long term.

Ubuntu Park
In the Ubuntu Park project, local residents and the Design for the Living World students
together cleaned up the dumping site and made a number of improvements: we built a
platform stage, benches and tables, and braai stands. On March 9, 2014, the space was given
the name Ubuntu Park.
The platform we built in Ubuntu Park is a relational object. Made of concrete, it was
constructed by the students and local residents on the east side of the park. Four wooden
pillars mark the platform area. For community events, a textile roof can be attached to the
pillars to provide shade.
The construction of the platform stage, and the cultural programming connected with it,
represent an example of placemaking—a process through which a neighborhood recognizes
 Public Art and Public Culture  301
itself and gains recognition from the broader community by creating a physical space for
themselves. This is why the platform captured the imagination of the residents and, in a
way, expresses the whole idea of Ubuntu Park. The platform was first used at the Soweto
Street Festival, and there have been other cultural programs since. Recently, we heard that
a teacher is using the stage regularly for dance practice, singing, and poetry readings with
children as after-school activities. The stage has become a symbol for a new appreciation of
the local culture and affirmation of the community’s identity. The platform was built with
no permit on a no-man’s land that existed beyond the enforcement of municipal regula-
tions. In this vacuum, the non-space became a site of possibilities, where the community
could imagine a new kind of community-organized public space.

The Soweto Street Festival

On March 9, 2014, the communities of Orlando East and Noordgesig hosted the Soweto
Street Festival. The festival parade started at the Noordgesig Primary School and ended at
Ubuntu Park, where we celebrated the local culture with music, dance performances, and
poetry readings. The parade was led by the Boys Brigade, a youth brass band from Noor-
dgesig, a local initiative that keeps children away from the drug culture of the streets. Next
in the parade came local residents, then a line of police cars, and even a car from the fire
brigade, all of which seemed out of proportion on the narrow Orlando streets. The police
and firefighters were there in an official capacity—this was required by the permissions
process—but in an interesting twist, because of the packed streets, they went from being
observers to being performers alongside the musicians and onlookers.
When we arrived at the new community park, the Boys Brigade walked onto the stage
and played their music. This was followed by speeches, then music, dance, and poetry
performances—by a traditional singer named David, the percussion ensemble Mosueo, the
Kopano Dance Theatre, rappers Griffin of Milk Farm and Laurence King Bee of Galaxy
Records, a poet named Alfred, and DJ Bonko, who rounded out the festival with elec-
tronic music. Heavy rain in the early afternoon prevented several scheduled performers
from being there, but in a way this turned out for the best; in their absence, people from
the community took the stage and claimed it as their own with their own performances
(not everyone was included, however: young children unaccompanied by an adult were
told they would have to go home at dusk). That day, all of Ubuntu Park was alive with
people socializing—braaing, dancing, talking with friends, or just being part of a special
community event.
The power of a performative action is its mirroring capacity. When the residents looked
at the festival, they saw an image of themselves that was one of openness, curiosity, happi-
ness, playfulness, and strength. The mirror said: “This is who we are.” The image was the
embodiment of a possibility, of a positive transition from the status quo of neglect fueled by
an understandable disaffection.
The Soweto Street Festival was also a kind of transition ritual. This was a place with no
name: a plot of land that had been designed as a public space in the 1950s but never made
it that far; an area people called “the space between Letsatsi Street and Herby Mdingi
Street, next to Donkey Church,” defined only by the places around it, not by what it was
in itself. After the Soweto Street Festival, it was a community-organized and operated
public space.
But of course there was bureaucracy to deal with. We were able to get the numerous
permits we needed for the Soweto Street Festival with the help of the arts and culture
department of the City of Johannesburg. Getting the permits, however, was a lengthy and
exhausting process, even though we felt we were being given special treatment as privi-
leged foreigners and so had an easier experience than local residents would have had. The
302  Marjetica Potrč
necessary documents are now stored with the community and can be used as a template
for organizing future festivals. That said, on the day of the festival, it turned out that the
permits did not guarantee trouble-free relations with the authorities. Just before the festival
began, a policeman showed up who told us that our permits were not valid: it turned out
that, although we had followed all the rules and done everything on time, the responsible
authorities had not. This story indicates the degree to which government agencies remain
dysfunctional and sclerotic, an unfortunate reality left over from the apartheid regime,
when a culture of dependence was created between the authorities and the population.

Ubuntu Park belongs to a social agreement

Paulina, the principal of a local kindergarten and a member of the Ubuntu Park Com-
mittee, gave a speech at the opening of the Soweto Street Festival. She stepped onto the
platform and proclaimed: “This is Ubuntu Park. Before, it was hell; now it is paradise.”
That day the community understood that their position had changed, from one of inert de-
pendence to one of self-organization. From that time on, the local residents began holding
community meetings on their own, with a cordial invitation to us to attend, if we wished.
Ubuntu Park does not belong to anyone really. It belongs to a social agreement reached
by the community. If for some reason the agreement collapses, the park would become a
no-man’s land again. As Giorgio Agamben writes in The Kingdom and the Glory [Stanford
University Press, 2011] it is people who give meaning to an “empty throne.” The transfor-
mation of a plot of land from a no-man’s land into a community-organized public space
offers a demonstration of this idea.
Without negotiations, there can be no agreement. The main question raised by the resi-
dents was whether Ubuntu Park would be a community space, which is what they desired,
or a public space. They had reservations about the latter. How does the community protect
itself against the public? The residents’ conditions ranged from fencing off and locking
the space after dark to paying a security service to monitor the park. As far as they could
tell, there weren’t many other choices. After numerous, never-ending conversations where
everyone had something to say, they considered marking off the territory with a symbolic
barrier: a fence about a meter high. Any option without a fence, they concluded, was no
option at all. But through a slow process of discussion and reflection, the residents began to
accept the fact that Ubuntu Park could never be an exclusive community space, protected
and closed to outsiders, for the simple reason that people from other neighborhoods pass
through that space all the time. In the end, they reached a consensus alluded to above:
Ubuntu Park would be a community-organized public space, with all of the challenges that
would entail going forward.

Note
1 The Soweto Project Details: Done in conjunction with Nine Urban Biotopes (9UB): Negotiating
the Future of Urban Living (www.urban-biotopes.net). Date of project: January 15–March 31, 2014.
­L ocations: Orlando East and Noordgesig, Soweto, Johannesburg. A project by the Design for the Liv-
ing World class of the University of Fine Arts/Hochschule fur Bildende Kiinste (HFBK) Hamburg
in collaboration with the residents of Soweto, urban dialogues (www.urbandialogues.de), Goethe-­
lnstitut South Africa (www.goethe.de/ins/za/joh/enindex.htm), morethanshelters (www.more-
thanshelters.org), and PlanAct Johannesburg (www.planact.org.za). Supported by the EU Culture
Program (www.ec.europa.eu/culture/index_en.htm) and Hochschule fur bildende Kiinste (HFBK)
Hamburg (www.hf bk-hamburg.de/en).
Figure 6.0.4  T he Gates installation in Central Park, New York City, 2005. Project by Christo and
Jeanne-Claude. Photo © Ben Britten. Source: Wikimedia Commons, Creative Commons
CC-BY-2.0.
6.4 Return to Parrhesia: Recovering the
Capacity to Speak
Krzysztof Wodiczko
Source: Wodiczko, K. (2014). “Return to Parrhesia: Recovering the Capacity to
Speak,” in Urbonas, G. et al. (eds.), Public Space? Lost and Found. Boston: MIT Press,
199–209.

The democratic process depends on the vitality of public space.1 Public space is, after all,
the space of rights—a space that allows the questioning of rights to spread freely. This dem-
ocratic foundation of public space cannot be sustained if we do not provide the cultural,
psychological, technological, and aesthetic conditions for the inclusion (and acknowledg-
ment) of voices that are economically, culturally, and socially marginalized and estranged:
the homeless, illegal or legal immigrants, refugees, present-day slaves, neglected and abused
men, women, and children, and all others who often live in our cities as speechless monu-
ments to their own trauma. The well-being of the democratic process is connected to these
people’s capacity for speech and expression. Unfortunately, many of those who have a great
deal to say have no access to media, no confidence that their voice will make any difference,
and are often so traumatized by what they have experienced that they remain silent. Today’s
public spaces are often marked and monopolized by the powerful presence of historically
symbolic structures and events, as well as by monumental forms of “publicity,” commercial
and political. By and large, public space hosts what philosopher Walter Benjamin called
“the history of the victors.” Public spaces are dominated by the history of the remembered,
often at the expense of the forgotten and unheard, the economically, culturally, and socially
marginalized populate—borrowing again from Benjamin—the invisible space of the “van-
quished and nameless.”
Visibility and public testimony are closely linked to recovery from traumatic experi-
ences. According to trauma theorist and clinician Judith Herman 2 and many others who
work with trauma, the struggle to recover from trauma, often by finding a narrative voice
through testimony, has a greater chance of success when performed as a public speech act,
even more so when directed as a social utterance to and on behalf of others. Truth-telling
and testimony thus have a restorative power. At the turn of the 20th century, French psy-
chologist Pierre Janet named this process “presentification.”
Media art and performative public art can play a role in recovering—or “unfreezing”—
the capacity to speak by creating situations in which marginalized or traumatized people
might insert their experience into public discourse. The key task of critical art and design
in public space is to develop projects collaboratively with these emergent democratic agents.
Rather than speaking for them, we—artists, theorists, designers, researchers, curators, ed-
ucators, and so forth—can help these citizens and residents develop their own capacity to
speak openly and become visible. We must at the same time help create the conditions for
them to be heard by others whose perspective might be altered by these new democratic
agents, a group comprised of “strangers” and the estranged.
My projections seek to restore a public voice to the marginalized residents of cities. These
projections of emotionally charged voices and gestures animate the silent, blind, motionless
 Public Art and Public Culture  307
statues of official monuments and blank monumental facades of civic edifices, disrupting
the continuity of “the history of the victors” with the performative tradition of the van-
quished and nameless. They attempt to inspire, provoke, and animate democratic discourse
in order to bring hidden and repressed social issues to the open, make them public, and
enact the democratic role of public space.
With video and sound projection technology, the regained voices and gestures of the
marginalized can assume the status of historical statues and monuments by night-­speaking
monuments in the present. Their personal experience becomes a historical speech act
through which they reconnect with society as prominent urban actors and contribute to
the possibility of social change as democratic agents.
The year 1990, when I completed the Homeless Vehicle Project, marked a turning point
in my work; the project took on an unforeseen communicative role that exceeded its al-
ready complex functional program. Upon a critical re-evaluation of the actual vehicle’s
shortcomings, my projects began using video technology and participatory and narrative
strategies in order to reinforce the project’s communicative objectives. The projections
(video-based participatory monument animations) and instruments (specially designed per-
formative communication equipment) were my first works to address these issues of mar-
ginalization through the medium of public art.
Both the projections and the instruments provide participants with the psychological,
cultural, technical, and aesthetic means for entering public space as capable commu-
nicative agents who, with preparation, can master the art of speaking in public. Step
by step, they recall, articulate, and share what can be overwhelming life experiences.
Armed with specially designed psycho-cultural prosthetics and empowered by the
monumental scale of civic edifices, they become, as it were, fearless speakers. The aim
of both the projections and the instruments is to inspire and assist the users (whom I call

Figure 6.4.1  Homeless Vehicle in New York City, 1990. Photo © Krzysztof Wodiczko.
308  Krzysztof Wodiczko
the “operators” or “animators”) in developing and projecting their voices and gestures
in public space.
The process of creation begins with a preparatory video recording that is integral to the
project’s development. This entails repeatedly recording, erasing, and re-recording testi-
monies. The process aids participants in developing their thoughts. Gradually, they become
empowered and come to see themselves as artistic creators in their own right. This first step
is crucial because it is the moment when participants reflect on their personal experiences—
which is often emotionally and politically fraught—and develop the capacity to present
themselves and their stories to the public. The subsequent process of editing the recorded
material and projecting it in public also becomes a crucial stage in the project. Through the
use of projections and wearable instruments, my work has engaged themes of testimony,
monument, trauma, healing, and the stranger.
The development of my work has been influenced by Chantal Mouffe’s notion of agonis-
tic democracy and Michel Foucault’s lectures on fearless speech, or parrhesia. Mouffe sug-
gests that a vital democracy is characterized by agonistic debate, which takes place between
rivals on shared symbolic terrain (as opposed to Carl Schmitt’s formulation of an antagonis-
tic political relationship between “enemies” with no shared symbolic terrain.) For Mouffe,
agonism is to be distinguished from communicative action (both in its Habermasian var-
iant, in which debate is regulated by rules, and the variant offered by Hannah Arendt, in
which disputes are resolved through persuasion). “While for Habermas consensus emerges
through what Kant calls disputieren, an exchange of arguments constrained by logical rules,
for Arendt it is a question of streiten, where agreement is produced through persuasion, not
irrefutable proofs,” Mouffe writes. She criticizes the Arendtian understanding of agonism
for being an “agonism without antagonism,” and argues instead for a passionate, adver-
sarial exchange of opinions: dissensus rather than consensus. “According to the agonistic
approach, critical art is art that foments dissensus, that makes visible what the dominant
consensus tends to obscure and obliterate,” she writes. “It is constituted by a manifold of ar-
tistic practices aiming at giving a voice to all those who are silenced within the framework
of the existing hegemony.”3 This act of giving voice to the silenced is precisely what I seek
through these instruments and projections.
Mouffe’s concept of agonism doesn’t determine what kinds of political statements are
correct, right, just, or true; rather, it addresses the social processes that allow one to speak
politically. This characterization is also reflected in Foucault’s discussions of parrhesia com-
piled in Fearless Speech.4 The task of the parrhesiastes (or fearless speaker) was to speak out
publicly and honestly, based on their own experience, while offering an unsolicited and
brave public criticism aimed toward positive change. In ancient Greece, parrhesia—the
Athenian right and duty (and art) of “free speaking,” of outspokenness—was the very core
of the democratic process and the life of public space. This “fearless and free speaking,”
however, required special political and ethical qualifications. There is a fundamental differ-
ence between the profoundly exclusive form of Athenian democracy, in which the concept
of parrhesia originated, and the constitutionally inclusive form of democracy of our time.
Greek democracy only recognized a small group of male property-owners as citizens of
the polis, excluding women, slaves, and foreigners. In its present form, modern democracy
promises—at least in principle—the fundamental right of participation to every citizen and
resident, regardless of circumstance. This includes the right to communicate in public—to
speak and listen fearlessly. This extends even to strangers among strangers: immigrants sans
papiers or “undocumented aliens,” the homeless, soldiers returning from war, and many
other “others.”
Foucault’s interest in parrhesia stems from his interest in the ancient notion of “care of
the self.” Parrhesia is a technique not only for public speaking, like rhetoric, but also for
 Public Art and Public Culture  309
speaking the truth about oneself requiring (and contributing to) the care for the self. This
concept of “care of the self ” is crucial to my work. Without improving one’s own psycho-
logical, emotional, and mental state, one is not equipped for public communication, let
alone parrhesiastic speech in public space. Public space is not only a stage for democracy but
also a healing environment through free and open speaking. Art and design have a crucial
role to play in contributing to its development as such. In studying parrhesia, Foucault is less
concerned with the truth itself than with the practices of “truth-telling,” and the role of the
agent who enacts them.
[…]
Truth-telling in the parrhesiastic mode raises questions about who is able to tell the truth,
what truth can be spoken, the consequences of truth-telling, and the relationship between
truth-telling and power. Foucault summarizes that parrhesia is

a kind of verbal activity where the speaker has a certain relation to truth through
frankness, a certain relationship to his own life through danger, a certain type of rela-
tionship to himself or other people through criticism, and a specific relation to moral
law through freedom and duty.6

In its ancient Greek origins, parrhesia required a field of mutual protection, trust, and cour-
age. In an attempt to create a “zone of truth-telling,” my work seeks to create intermediate,
transitory, and transitional artifices, situations, and events that facilitate the development of
both fearless speaking and fearless listening through the exchange of memories, experiences,
and critical visions. In particular, the Homeless Vehicle (1990), the Tijuana Projection (2001),
and the Veteran Vehicle (2008) projects illustrate the relationship between art, trauma, and
parrhesia in my work. I strongly believe that artistic projects that facilitate fearless speech
can contribute to the development of a dynamic, agonistic public sphere that runs counter
to the pain and silence that often follow trauma, and actively speaks out against the perpet-
uation of violence and bloodshed.
I believe that the experimental tools developed in these projects can act as psychological,
cultural, and political aids for those who are unable to open up and communicate in the
open. Through their use, they might help these incipient parrhesiastes redevelop their ability
to open up to themselves and others, while offering a platform for the transmission of their
voices and images in public space. Ultimately, the communicative and performative prop-
erties of the tools inspire such developments, but the act of speech is ultimately undertaken
by their users. It is their fearless speech—the art of public testimony and performance—that
is the most important part.

Notes
1 Part of this text is based on the essay, “Art, Trauma and Parrhesia,” in Art & the Public Sphere (2011),
vol. 1, no. 3, 293.
2 See for instance Herman’s Trauma and Recovery (New York: Basic Books, 2015).
3 Chantal Mouffe, “Artistic Activism and Agonistic Spaces,” Art & Research 1, no. 2 (Summer 2007),
http://www.artandresearch.org.uk/v1n2/mouffe.html.
4 Michel Foucault, Fearless Speech, ed. Joseph Pearson (New York: Semiotext(e), 2001), 169–170.
6 Ibid., 19.

Figure 6.0.5  Speakers’ Corner in the Hyde Park, Westminster, London, 2005. Photo © CGP Grey.
Source: Wikimedia Commons, Creative Commons CC-BY-2.0.
6.5 Agonistic Politics and Artistic Practices:
Agonistic Public Spaces
Chantal Mouffe
Source: Mouffe, C. (2013). “Agonistic Politics and Artistic Practices: Agonistic Pub-
lic Spaces,” in Mouffe, C. (eds.), Agonistics: Thinking the World Politically. London:
Verso, 85–105.

Art occupies an increasingly central place in our societies, but can it still play a critical role?
It is often argued that in late capitalism, aesthetics has triumphed in all realms, and that the
effect of this triumph has been the creation of an hedonistic culture where there is no place
anymore for art to provide a truly subversive experience. The blurring of the lines between
art and advertising is such that the very idea of critical public spaces has lost its meaning.
With the pervasive control of the market, the distinction between public and private has
ceased to be pertinent, since even the public has become privatized. Every critical gesture
is quickly recuperated and neutralized by the forces of corporate capitalism.
[Paolo Virno], in A Grammar of the Multitude, asserts that the culture industries have played
an important role in the transition from fordism to post-fordism.1 In his view, they repre-
sent the ‘matrix of post-fordism.’ With the development of immaterial labour in advanced
capitalism, the labour process has become performative, and it mobilizes the most universal
requisites of the species: perception, language, memory and feelings. Contemporary pro-
duction is now ‘virtuosic,’ and productive labour in its totality appropriates the special char-
acteristics of the performing artist. We are witnessing a process of hybridization between
spheres of labour, political action and intellectual reflection, which were previously distinct
because they were supported by radically heterogeneous principles and criteria. Today the
boundaries between pure intellectual activity, political action and labour have dissolved,
and post-fordist labour has absorbed into itself many of the characteristics of political action.
This transformation opens the way for novel forms of social relations in which art and
work exist in new configurations. The objective of artistic practices should be to foster the
development of those new social relations that are made possible by the transformation of
the work process. Their main task is the production of new subjectivities and the elabora-
tion of new worlds. What is needed in the current situation is a widening of the field of ar-
tistic intervention, with artists working in a multiplicity of social spaces outside traditional
institutions in order to oppose the program of the total social mobilization of capitalism.
[…]
I also believe that the terrain of the production of subjectivity is of strategic importance.
I agree with Brian Holmes that, “Art can offer a chance for society to collectively reflect on
the imaginary figures it depends upon for its very consistency, its self-understanding.”3 I am
convinced that artistic and cultural practices can offer spaces for resistance that undermine
the social imaginary necessary for capitalist reproduction. But I think that to apprehend
their political potential, we should visualize forms of artistic resistance as agonistic inter-
ventions within the context of counter-hegemonic struggles.
[…] I argued that to adequately grasp the transition from fordism to post-Fordism, it is
necessary to introduce its hegemonic dimension. I suggested that this could be done by
using several insights found in Luc Boltanski and Eve Chiapello’s book The New Spirit of
 Public Art and Public Culture  313
Capitalism, where they emphasize the role played by what they call ‘artistic critique’ in the
transformation undergone by capitalism in the last decades of the twentieth century.4 They
show how the aesthetic strategies of the counter-culture—the search for authenticity, the
ideal of self-management, the anti-hierarchical exigency, and the demands for autonomy
made by the new movements of the ‘60s—have been harnessed in the development of the
post-fordist networked economy to promote the conditions required by the current mode
of capitalist regulation. Through ‘neo-management,’ artistic critique had become an im-
portant element of capitalist productivity.
At first sight, this analysis would seem to support the pessimistic view about the end of a
critical role for art. But by allowing me to see the transition from fordism to post-fordism
in hegemonic terms, Boltanski and Chiapello have in fact provided the framework for the
argument that I want to make in this chapter about the importance of artistic and cultural
practices in the counter-hegemonic struggle. Indeed, when the current neo-liberal hegem-
ony is seen in terms of a ‘passive revolution,’ as the result of a set of political interventions
in a complex field of economic, legal and ideological forces, its discursive nature comes to
the fore.
Such an hegemony is the result of a discursive construction that articulates in a very
specific manner a manifold of practices, discourses and language games of a very diverse
nature. If it can be perceived as the natural consequence of technological progress, it is
because, through a process of sedimentation, the political origin of those contingent prac-
tices has been erased; they have become naturalized, and the forms of identification that
they have produced have crystallized in identities which are taken for granted. This is why
neo-liberal practices and institutions appear as the outcome of natural processes, as a fate
that we have to accept because “there is no alternative.”
The importance of the hegemonic approach to artistic practices and their relation to
politics is that it highlights the fact that the hegemonic confrontation is not limited to
traditional political institutions. It also takes place in the multiplicity of places where he-
gemony is constructed, bringing to light the political centrality of what is usually called
‘civil society.’ This is where, as Antonio Gramsci has argued, a particular conception of
the world is established and a specific understanding of reality is defined—what he refers
to as ‘common sense,’ which provides the terrain in which specific forms of subjectivity
are constructed. And he repeatedly emphasized the centrality of cultural and artistic
practices in the formation and diffusion of common sense, underlining the decisive role
played by those practices in the reproduction or disarticulation of a given hegemony. If
it is the result of a discursive articulation, common sense can be transformed through
counter-hegemonic interventions, and this is where cultural and artistic practices can
play a decisive role.
By stressing the role of cultural practices in capitalist productivity, Boltanski and Chia-
pello’s analyses also confirm how, in times of post-fordist production, this role has become
absolutely crucial. Today’s capitalism relies increasingly on semiotic techniques in order to
create the modes of subjectivation that are necessary for its reproduction. In modern pro-
duction, the control of souls, as set out by Foucault, plays a strategic role in governing affects
and passions. The forms of exploitation characteristic of the times when manual labour was
dominant have been replaced by new ones that constantly require the creation of new needs
and the incessant desire for the acquisition of goods. This explains why, in our consumer
societies, advertising plays such an important role.
This role, however, is not limited to promoting specific products. It also produces fantasy
worlds with which the consumers of goods can identify. Nowadays, to buy something is
to enter into a specific world, to become part of an imagined community. To maintain its
hegemony, the current capitalist system needs to constantly mobilize people’s desires and
314  Chantal Mouffe
shape their identities. It is the construction of the very identity of the buyer that is at stake
in the techniques of advertising.
A counter-hegemonic politics must therefore engage with this terrain so as to foster other
forms of identification. While one of the objectives of the hegemonic struggle has always
been the agonistic production of new subjectivities, it is clear that, in the present stage of
capitalism, such a terrain is more important than ever.

Agonistic public spaces

Once the centrality of the cultural terrain is acknowledged, how can cultural and artistic
practices contribute to the counter-hegemonic challenge to neo-liberal hegemony?
Before addressing this question, I want to clarify that I do not see the relation between
art and politics in terms of two separately constituted fields, art on one side and politics on
the other, between which a relation need be established. There is an aesthetic dimension in
the political and there is a political dimension in art. From the point of view of the theory
of hegemony, artistic practices play a role in the constitution and maintenance of a given
symbolic order, or in its challenging, and this is why they necessarily have a political di-
mension. The political, for its part, concerns the symbolic ordering of social relations, and
this is where its aesthetic dimension resides. This is why I believe that it is not useful to
make a distinction between political and non-political art.
Instead, the crucial question concerns the possible forms of critical art. According to the
approach that I am advocating, this means examining the different ways in which artistic
practices can contribute to unsettling the dominant hegemony. To address this issue re-
quires scrutinizing the role of critical artistic practices in the public space. I am not referring
here to one single space but a multiplicity of discursive surfaces and public spaces. Secondly,
while there is neither an underlying principle of unity, nor a predetermined centre to this
diversity of spaces, there always exist diverse forms of articulation among them. We are not
confronted with the kind of dispersion envisaged by some post-modernist thinkers. Nor
are we faced with the kind of ‘smooth’ space described by Deleuze and his followers. Public
spaces are always striated and hegemonically structured. A given hegemony results from a
specific articulation of a diversity of spaces, and this means that the hegemonic struggle also
consists in an attempt to create a different form of articulation among public spaces.
And what distinguishes the agonistic approach to the public space from other approaches?
Its main characteristic is that it challenges the widespread view that, albeit in different ways,
informs most visions of the public space. According to the accepted view, the public space
is the terrain where one aims at creating consensus. For the agonistic approach, on the
contrary, the public space is where conflicting points of view are confronted without any
possibility of a final reconciliation. Such a conception is clearly very different from the one
defended by Jürgen Habermas, who presents what he calls the ‘public sphere’ as the place
where deliberation aiming at a rational consensus takes place.
To be sure, Habermas now accepts that it is improbable, given the limitations of social
life, that such a consensus could effectively be reached, and he sees his ‘ideal situation of
communication’ as a ‘regulative idea.’ However, from the perspective of the hegemonic
approach, the impediments to the Habermasian ideal speech situation are not merely linked
to empirical limitations. They are of an ontological nature. As I indicated [elsewhere], one
of the main tenets of agonistics is that the kind of rational consensus which Habermas’
approach postulates is a conceptual impossibility because it presupposes the availability of
a consensus without exclusion, which is precisely what the hegemonic approach reveals to
be impossible. The way public spaces are envisaged has important consequences for artistic
and cultural practices because those who foster the creation of agonistic public spaces will
 Public Art and Public Culture  315
conceive critical art in a very different way than those whose aim is the creation of consen-
sus. The agonistic approach sees critical art as constituted by a manifold of artistic practices
bringing to the fore the existence of alternatives to the current post-political order. Its
critical dimension consists in making visible what the dominant consensus tends to obscure
and obliterate, in giving a voice to all those who are silenced within the framework of the
existing hegemony. There is, however, a point that needs to be clarified to avoid any mis-
understanding about the way the agonistic approach understands critique. Critical artistic
practices, according to this view, do not aspire to lift a supposedly false consciousness so
as to reveal the ‘true reality.’ This would be completely at odds with the anti-essentialist
premises of the theory of hegemony, which rejects the very idea of a ‘true consciousness.’
As I indicated earlier, it is always through insertion in a manifold of practices, discourses
and language games that specific forms of individualities are constructed. This is why the
transformation of political identities can never result from a rationalist appeal to the true
interest of the subject, but rather from the inscription of the social agent in a set of practices
that will mobilize its affects in a way that disarticulates the framework in which the dom-
inant process of identification takes place. As Yannis Stavrakakis points out, “a critique of
an ideological system of meaning cannot be effective if it remains at a purely deconstruc-
tive level; it requires a mapping of the fantasies supporting this system and an encircling of
its symptomatic function.”5 This means that to construct oppositional identities, it is not
enough to simply foster a process of ‘de-identification.’ A second move is necessary. To in-
sist only on the first move is in fact to remain trapped in a problematic according to which
the negative moment would be sufficient on its own to bring about something positive,
as if new subjectivities were previously available, ready to emerge when the weight of the
dominant ideology has been lifted. Such a view, which informs many forms of critical art,
fails to come to terms with the nature of the hegemonic struggle and the complex process
of the construction of identities.

Alfredo Jaar’s counter-hegemonic interventions

To illustrate my argument, I will take the case of Alfredo Jaar, whose work provides one
of the best examples of an aesthetics of resistance informed by the hegemonic strategy that
I am advocating. We find in his practice the plurality of forms of artistic intervention that
an hegemonic approach requires and the multiplicity of sites where they should take place.
Defining himself as a ‘project artist’ who responds to specific issues in specific places, Jaar
has repeatedly emphasized that it is vital for him to intervene in several fields, not only in
the art world but also in public spaces and in various educational sites.6 Contrary to those
who claim that an efficient critique can only exist outside institutions, he sees institutions
as an important terrain of struggle. Combining these three types of activities, he is able to
intervene in a variety of sites where the dominant hegemony is established and reproduced,
contributing in this way to the development of counter-hegemonic moves.
Alfredo Jaar’s artistic interventions chime with the hegemonic approach in several ways.
They have generally been described as providing ‘counter-information’ (Georges Didi-­
Huberman) or building a ‘counter-environment’ (Adriana Valdes). In both cases, Jaar em-
phasizes what I have previously referred to as a strategy of ‘disarticulating’ the existing
‘common sense’ and fostering a variety of agonistic public spaces that contribute to the
development of a ‘counter-hegemony.’
Such a strategy is manifest in ‘Questions Questions,’ a public intervention in Milan in
the fall of 2008, which Jaar sees as his most Gramscian project. To react to the control of
the Italian public space by Berlusconi’s media and advertising network, he put placards on
public buses, billboards, subways and trams to raise questions such as “Does politics need
316  Chantal Mouffe
culture?” or “Is the intellectual useless?” He explained that his aim was to “try to create
little cracks in the system” by occupying every space available for three months, so as to
create a network of resistance and to restore the meaning of the public space, which had
been erased by the control of Berlusconi.
What is particularly interesting in this form of intervention is its mode of unsettling
common sense by posing apparently simple questions, albeit questions that, in the specific
context of the intervention, are likely to trigger reflections that will arouse discontent with
the current state of things. Diverging from some forms of critical art that believe it is by
giving people lessons about the state of the world that they will be moved to act, and against
the fashionable emphasis on transgression and resistance, Jaar aims at moving people to act
by creating in them a desire for change. Discarding the authoritative mode of address, he
prefers to interpellate people by setting in motion a process that will make them question
their unexamined beliefs. He is convinced that the best way to move people to act is by
awakening consciousness of what is missing in their lives and by bringing them to feel that
things could be different.

Notes
1 Paolo Virno, A Grammar of the Multitude, Los Angeles: Semiotext(e), 2004.
3 Brian Holmes, ‘Artistic Autonomy’, www.u-tangente.org.
4 Luc Boltanski and Eve Chiapello, The New Spirit of Capitalism, London and New York: Verso, 2005.
5 Yannis Stavrakakis, The Lacanian Left: Psychoanalysis, Theory, Politics, Edinburgh: Edinburgh Univer-
sity Press, 2007, 81.
6 See, for instance, Jaar’s “Interview with Luigi Fassi”, Klat, Winter 2009–2010, 73–74.
7

Public Space Infrastructures

Public Space Infrastructures

The twenty-first century has challenged the conventional image of public space as indi-
vidualized open space—the park, plaza, and square. Public space is now being understood,
appreciated, and explored as a complex, dynamic, physical, and social system in action.
As capital has usurped traditional public spaces, many more marginalized actors such as
minorities, youth, women, community groups and minor institutions have claimed public
and quasi-public spaces dominated by infrastructure thus making the connection between
public space and infrastructure even more apparent. Transportation networks, nodes, and
hubs are explored for their capacity to bring vast numbers of people together into relative
proximity within short time-spans, necessary for the socio-spatial production of public
space. In India, for example, where society is divided by caste and class, the implementation
of the metro rapid transit system in several megacities has become one of the most unifying
urban public spaces. As explored in Section 3 and elsewhere in the Reader, one of the key
components of the emancipatory urban projects in Latin America in the last 25 years has
been the interlocking of new transportation networks and public spaces: Bogotá, Colom-
bia, is a case in point. Networks as alternative public domains also deliver alternative social
practices and communication to rival the dominant commercial messages of consumerism.
These new and emerging modes and modalities of communication create possibilities for
social interaction and dialogue and thus for the creation of emergent public spheres. This
section explores how spaces and systems of infrastructures and landscape create possibilities
for interaction and communication, and how such emergent possibilities influence the con-
ceptualization and formation of public space.
Michel de Certeau’s chapter encapsulates infrastructure at the broadest but also the most
human scale—of walking in the city. Critiquing the imbalance of power in the urbanistic
project de Certeau provides an alternative to viewing the city. He suggests that by walk-
ing, the pedestrian can, much like an author, write their own text of the city. Instead of
the singular narrative of the planned and regulated city—as it may be viewed from afar
or above—the pedestrians can generate their own narratives by walking and imagination,
giving new meanings to streets and places. De Certeau shows how through this everyday
practice that is accessible to most, the ordinary citizen has the power to create their own
meanings of space they traverse.

Figure 7.0  Farmers Market, Union Square, New York City. Photo © Miodrag Mitrašinović.
320  Public Space Infrastructures
Streets and sidewalks are perhaps the most visible network in cities. The chapter from
the book Sidewalks by Loukaitou-Sideris and Ehrenfeucht (2009) discusses the social, eco-
nomic, and political life of this quintessential infrastructure and network on which much
of urban life depends. In the selection here, the authors present four themes in their work
on sidewalks: distinctiveness, publicness, diversity and contestation, and regulation. The authors
establish how sidewalks are distinct and unique from the roadbed of the street. By their
close proximity to the buildings, sidewalks are closely linked to the uses and users of the
buildings that lay claim to this public space. But the most distinct aspect of sidewalks is that
this lowly infrastructure is the place where much city life is made visible by walking, social-
izing, and meeting. Claimed by a wide range of actors, sidewalks are prime places for the
various publics. As key elements of public property, sidewalks provide access and showcase
the many types of publicness. But adjacent private property owners exercising control over
the sidewalk also challenge certain uses and users creating a tension in the permitted pub-
licness. The very ability of sidewalks to be places for a diverse set of actors creates numerous
overlaps (physical, social, legal) of multiple interests in the same space leading to contesta-
tion. To confront the contested nature of sidewalks, societies create agreements through
regulation to create a framework for municipalities to address the situation and take action.
The Urban Task Force appeals to the public sector to act as the custodian of the public
realm. In their call for creating a network of open public spaces, the authors suggest the
largest benefit—urban integration—provided by the web of connections generated through
the network. In this ambitious vision, the task force recommends the introduction of a na-
tional program for a comprehensive green pedestrian routes network and a Public Realm
Strategy, linked to local plans, to plan comprehensively for the provision, design, manage-
ment, funding, and maintenance of the public realm.
Landscape and infrastructure are inextricably linked to public space. Building further
on the idea of public space as a network, Ana and Pedro Brandão urge the readers to con-
sider public space as a system created by the collection of spaces viewed through the lens
of interactions and overlaps between landscapes and infrastructure systems. Building upon
interdisciplinary perspectives, this systems approach suggests dynamic interactions between
public space and mobilities, activities, production, and ecological sustenance. Using a case
study of the South Bank of Lisbon Metropolitan Area in Portugal, the authors present their
proposal as a conceptual operative matrix generated by the interactions between public
space, infrastructure, and landscape. The significance of this approach is in expanding the
conventional understanding of public space as isolated sites of social interaction, to encom-
pass its ability to generate new social and economic values, to create new public programs,
and to increase environmental resilience and sustainability. Employing the principle of
‘urban-space continuity,’ authors argue that public space systems are today at the center
of the critical processes of urban transformation. When integrated with hard infrastruc-
ture and landscape, they create a coherent socio-spatial structure the authors call the new
‘Commons.’
In their visionary proposal for an elastic landscape, Sussanah Drake and Architecture Re-
search Office (ARO) suggest uniting harbor ecologies and urban infrastructure to create a
flexible and adaptive future for Lower Manhattan. Using the palpable challenges brought by
climate change, their proposal advocates for a sustainable partnership that takes advantage
of the interdependence of naturally occurring and man-made systems in the city. Suggest-
ing a new ‘public space ecology,’ the proposal forms an interconnected system of porous
green streets and graduated edges, and offers critical ecological perspectives on retrofitting
decaying urban infrastructure while identifying opportunities for integrating public space
into ecological systems and solutions. What Drake calls a ‘New Street Ecology’ includes the
redesign of street cover to absorb and process stormwater, mitigate toxins, reduce the heat
 Public Space Infrastructures  321
island effect, and store carbon while at the same time maximizing economic opportunities
and increasing sociability of public space. In a city with nearly 8,000 miles of streets, the
proposal puts forth a new ecological infrastructure which could potentially transform it by
integrating interior porous street network with the exterior marsh system. The streets are
conceptualized as a network of porous conduits that drain storm water, parking places be-
come parks, while planting is employed to phyto-remediate toxic loads. This is a scholastic
vision of ecological urban infrastructure in which the separation and spatial distinctions
between existing services, private and public utilities, porous streets and parks, and the
exterior marsh system contribute to a shared, public understanding of urban resilience and
sustainability while simultaneously redefining the urban experience through new ‘public
space ecologies.’

Figure 7.0.1  Shibuya pedestrian crossing, Tokyo, Japan, 23 March 2020. Photo © Jorge Láscar.
Source: Wikimedia Commons, Creative Commons CC-BY-2.0.
7.1 Spatial Practices: Walking in the City
Michel de Certeau
Source: Certeau, M. De. (1984). “Spatial Practices: Walking in the City,” in The
Practice of Everyday Life. Los Angeles: University of California Press, 91–110.

The chorus of idle footsteps

Their story begins on ground level, with footsteps. They are myriad, but do not compose
a series. They cannot be counted because each unit has a qualitative character: a style of
tactile apprehension and kinesthetic appropriation. Their swarming mass is an innumerable
collection of singularities. Their intertwined paths give their shape to spaces. They weave
places together. In that respect, pedestrian movements form one of these “real systems
whose existence in fact makes up the city.”1 They are not localized; it is rather they that
spatialize. They are no more inserted within a container than those Chinese characters
speakers sketch out on their hands with their fingertips.
It is true that the operations of walking on can be traced on city maps in such a way as
to transcribe their paths (here well-trodden, there very faint) and their trajectories (going
this way and not that). But these thick or thin curves only refer, like words, to the absence
of what has passed by. Surveys of routes miss what was: the act itself of passing by. The op-
eration of walking, wandering, or “window shopping,” that is, the activity of passers-by, is
transformed into points that draw a totalizing and reversible line on the map. They allow
us to grasp only a relic set in the nowhen of a surface of projection. Itself visible, it has the
effect of making invisible the operation that made it possible. These fixations constitute
procedures for forgetting. The trace left behind is substituted for the practice. It exhibits the
(voracious) property that the geographical system has of being able to transform action into
legibility, but in doing so it causes a way of being in the world to be forgotten.

Pedestrian speech acts

A comparison with the speech act will allow us to go further2 and not limit ourselves to
the critique of graphic representations alone, looking from the shores of legibility toward
an inaccessible beyond. The act of walking is to the urban system what the speech act is to
language or to the statements uttered.3 At the most elementary level, it has a triple “enun-
ciative” function: it is a process of appropriation of the topographical system on the part of
the pedestrian (just as the speaker appropriates and takes on the language); it is a spatial
acting-out of the place (just as the speech act is an acoustic acting-out of language); and it
implies relations among differentiated positions, that is, among pragmatic “contracts” in the
form of movements (just as verbal enunciation is an “allocution,” “posits another opposite”
the speaker and puts contracts between interlocutors into action).4 It thus seems possible to
give a preliminary definition of walking as a space of enunciation.
We could moreover extend this problematic to the relations between the act of writing
and the written text, and even transpose it to the relationships between the “hand” (the
touch and the tale of the paintbrush [le et la geste du pinceau]) and the finished painting
(forms, colors, etc.). At first isolated in the area of verbal communication, the speech act
 Public Space Infrastructures  325
turns out to find only one of its applications there, and its linguistic modality is merely the
first determination of a much more general distinction between the forms used in a system
and the ways of using this system (i.e., rules), that is, between two “different worlds,” since
“the same things” are considered from two opposite formal viewpoints.
Considered from this angle, the pedestrian speech act has three characteristics which
distinguish it at the outset from the spatial system: the present, the discrete, the “phatic.”
First, if it is true that a spatial order organizes an ensemble of possibilities (e.g., by a place
in which one can move) and interdictions (e.g., by a wall that prevents one from going
further), then the walker actualizes some of these possibilities. In that way, he makes them
exist as well as emerge. But he also moves them about and he invents others, since the
crossing, drifting away, or improvisation of walking privilege, transform or abandon spatial
elements. Thus Charlie Chaplin multiplies the possibilities of his cane: he does other things
with the same thing and he goes beyond the limits that the determinants of the object set
on its utilization. In the same way, the walker transforms each spatial signifier into some-
thing else. And if on the one hand he actualizes only a few of the possibilities fixed by the
constructed order (he goes only here and not there), on the other he increases the number of
possibilities (for example, by creating shortcuts and detours) and prohibitions (for example,
he forbids himself to take paths generally considered accessible or even obligatory). He thus
makes a selection. “The user of a city picks out certain fragments of the statement in order
to actualize them in secret.”5
He thus creates a discreteness, whether by making choices among the signifiers of the
spatial “language” or by displacing them through the use he makes of them. He condemns
certain places to inertia or disappearance and composes with others spatial “turns of phrase”
that are “rare,” “accidental” or illegitimate. But that already leads into a rhetoric of walking.
In the framework of enunciation, the walker constitutes, in relation to his position, both
a near and a far, a here and a there. To the fact that the adverbs here and there are the indica-
tors of the locutionary seat in verbal communication6 —a coincidence that reinforces the
parallelism between linguistic and pedestrian enunciation—we must add that this location
(here—there) (necessarily implied by walking and indicative of a present appropriation of
space by an “I”) also has the function of introducing an other in relation to this “I” and
of thus establishing a conjunctive and disjunctive articulation of places. I would stress par-
ticularly the “phatic” aspect, by which I mean the function, isolated by Malinowski and
Jakobson, of terms that initiate, maintain, or interrupt contact, such as “hello,” “well,
well,” etc.7 Walking, which alternately follows a path and has followers, creates a mobile
organicity in the environment, a sequence of phatic topoi. And if it is true that the phatic
function, which is an effort to ensure communication, is already characteristic of the lan-
guage of talking birds, just as it constitutes the “first verbal function acquired by children,”
it is not surprising that it also gambols, goes on all fours, dances, and walks about, with a
light or heavy step, like a series of “hellos” in an echoing labyrinth, anterior or parallel to
informative speech.
The modalities of pedestrian enunciation which a plane representation on a map brings
out could be analyzed. They include the kinds of relationship this enunciation entertains
with particular paths (or “statements”) by according them a truth value (“alethic” modalities
of the necessary, the impossible, the possible, or the contingent), an epistemological value
(“epistemic” modalities of the certain, the excluded, the plausible, or the questionable) or
finally an ethical or legal value (“deontic” modalities of the obligatory, the forbidden, the
permitted, or the optional).8 Walking affirms, suspects, tries out, transgresses, respects, etc.,
the trajectories it “speaks.” All the modalities sing a part in this chorus, changing from step
to step, stepping in through proportions, sequences, and intensities which vary according to
the time, the path taken and the walker. These enunciatory operations are of an unlimited
diversity. They therefore cannot be reduced to their graphic trail.
326  Michel de Certeau
Walking rhetorics
The walking of passers-by offers a series of turns (tours) and detours that can be compared to
“turns of phrase” or “stylistic figures.” There is a rhetoric of walking. The art of “turning”
phrases finds an equivalent in an art of composing a path (tourner un parcours). Like ordinary
language,9 this art implies and combines styles and uses. Style specifies “a linguistic struc-
ture that manifests on the symbolic level… an individual’s fundamental way of being in
the world”;10 it connotes a singular. Use defines the social phenomenon through which a
system of communication manifests itself in actual fact; it refers to a norm. Style and use
both have to do with a “way of operating” (of speaking, walking, etc.), but style involves a
peculiar processing of the symbolic, while use refers to elements of a code. They intersect
to form a style of use. A way of being and a way of operating.11
In introducing the notion of a “residing rhetoric” (“rhetorique habitante”), the fertile path-
way opened up by A. Médam12 and systematized by S. Ostrowetsky13 and J.-F. Augoyard,14
we assume that the “tropes” catalogued by rhetoric furnish models and hypotheses for the
analysis of ways of appropriating places. Two postulates seem to me to underlie the validity
of this application: 1) it is assumed that practices of space also correspond to manipulations
of the basic elements of a constructed order; 2) it is assumed that they are, like the tropes
in rhetoric, deviations relative to a sort of “literal meaning” defined by the urbanistic sys-
tem. There would thus be a homology between verbal figures and the figures of walking
(a stylized selection among the latter is already found in the figures of dancing) insofar as
both consist in “treatments” or operations bearing on isolatable units,15 and in “ambigu-
ous dispositions” that divert and displace meaning in the direction of equivocalness16 in
the way a tremulous image confuses and multiplies the photographed object. In these two
modes, the analogy can be accepted. I would add that the geometrical space of urbanists and
architects seems to have the status of the “proper meaning” constructed by grammarians
and linguists in order to have a normal and normative level to which they can compare the
drifting of “figurative” language. In reality, this faceless “proper” meaning (ce “propre” sans
figure) cannot be found in current use, whether verbal or pedestrian; it is merely the fiction
produced by a use that is also particular, the metalinguistic use of science that distinguishes
itself by that very distinction.17
The long poem of walking manipulates spatial organizations, no matter how panoptic
they may be: it is neither foreign to them (it can take place only within them) nor in con-
formity with them (it does not receive its identity from them). It creates shadows and am-
biguities within them. It inserts its multitudinous references and citations into them (social
models, cultural mores, personal factors). Within them it is itself the effect of successive
encounters and occasions that constantly alter it and make it the other’s blazon: in other
words, it is like a peddler, carrying something surprising, transverse or attractive compared
with the usual choice. These diverse aspects provide the basis of a rhetoric. They can even
be said to define it.
By analyzing this “modern art of everyday expression” as it appears in accounts of spatial
practices,18 J.-F. Augoyard discerns in it two especially fundamental stylistic figures: syn-
ecdoche and asyndeton. The predominance of these two figures seems to me to indicate,
in relation to two complementary poles, a formal structure of these practices. Synecdoche
consists in “using a word in a sense which is part of another meaning of the same word.”19
In essence, it names a part instead of the whole which includes it. Thus “sail” is taken for
“ship” in the expression “a fleet of fifty sails”; in the same way, a brick shelter or a hill is
taken for the park in the narration of a trajectory. Asyndeton is the suppression of linking
words such as conjunctions and adverbs, either within a sentence or between sentences. In
the same way, in walking it selects and fragments the space traversed; it skips over links and
 Public Space Infrastructures  327
whole parts that it omits. From this point of view, every walk constantly leaps, or skips like
a child, hopping on one foot. It practices the ellipsis of conjunctive loci.
In reality, these two pedestrian figures are related. Synecdoche expands a spatial element
in order to make it play the role of a “more” (a totality) and take its place (the bicycle or the
piece of furniture in a store window stands for a whole street or neighborhood). Asyndeton,
by elision, creates a “less,” opens gaps in the spatial continuum, and retains only selected
parts of it that amount almost to relics. Synecdoche replaces totalities by fragments (a less
in the place of a more); asyndeton disconnects them by eliminating the conjunctive or the
consecutive (nothing in place of something). Synecdoche makes more dense: it amplifies the
detail and miniaturized the whole. Asyndeton cuts out: it undoes continuity and undercuts
its plausibility. A space treated in this way and shaped by practices is transformed into en-
larged singularities and separate islands.20 Through these swellings, shrinkings, and frag-
mentations, that is, through these rhetorical operations a spatial phrasing of an analogical
(composed of juxtaposed citations) and elliptical (made of gaps, lapses, and allusions) type is
created. For the technological system of a coherent and totalizing space that is “linked” and
simultaneous, the figures of pedestrian rhetoric substitute trajectories that have a mythical
structure, at least if one understands by “myth” a discourse relative to the place/nowhere
(or origin) of concrete existence, a story jerry-built out of elements taken from common
sayings, an allusive and fragmentary story whose gaps mesh with the social practices it
symbolizes.
Figures are the acts of this stylistic metamorphosis of space. Or rather, as Rilke puts it,
they are moving “trees of gestures.” They move even the rigid and contrived territories of
the medico-pedagogical institute in which retarded children find a place to play and dance
their “spatial stories.”21 These “trees of gestures” are in movement everywhere. Their for-
ests walk through the streets. They transform the scene, but they cannot be fixed in a cer-
tain place by images. If in spite of that an illustration were required, we could mention the
fleeting images, yellowish-green and metallic blue calligraphies that howl without raising
their voices and emblazon themselves on the subterranean passages of the city, “embroi-
deries” composed of letters and numbers, perfect gestures of violence painted with a pistol,
Shivas made of written characters, dancing graphics whose fleeting apparitions are accom-
panied by the rumble of subway trains: New York graffiti.
If it is true that forests of gestures are manifest in the streets, their movement cannot be
captured in a picture, nor can the meaning of their movements be circumscribed in a text.
Their rhetorical transplantation carries away and displaces the analytical, coherent proper
meanings of urbanism; it constitutes a “wandering of the semantic”22 produced by masses
that make some parts of the city disappear and exaggerate others, distorting it, fragmenting
it, and diverting it from its immobile order.

Myths: What “makes things go”

The figures of these movements (synecdoches, ellipses, etc.) characterize both a “symbolic
order of the unconscious” and “certain typical processes of subjectivity manifested in dis-
course.”23 The similarity between “discourse”24 and dreams25 has to do with their use
of the same “stylistic procedures”; it therefore includes pedestrian practices as well. The
“ancient catalog of tropes” that from Freud to Benveniste has furnished an appropriate in-
ventory for the rhetoric of the first two registers of expression is equally valid for the third.
If there is a parallelism, it is not only because enunciation is dominant in these three areas,
but also because its discursive (verbalized, dreamed, or walked) development is organized as
a relation between the place from which it proceeds (an origin) and the nowhere it produces
(a way of “going by”).
328  Michel de Certeau
From this point of view, after having compared pedestrian processes to linguistic for-
mations, we can bring them back down in the direction of oneiric figuration, or at least
discover on that other side what, in a spatial practice, is inseparable from the dreamed
place. To walk is to lack a place. It is the indefinite process of being absent and in search of
a proper. The moving about that the city multiplies and concentrates makes the city itself
an immense social experience of lacking a place-an experience that is, to be sure, broken
up into countless tiny deportations (displacements and walks), compensated for by the re-
lationships and intersections of these exoduses that intertwine and create an urban fabric,
and placed under the sign of what ought to be, ultimately, the place but is only a name, the
City. The identity furnished by this place is all the more symbolic (named) because, in spite
of the inequality of its citizens’ positions and profits, there is only a pullulation of passer-by,
a network of residences temporarily appropriated by pedestrian traffic, a shuffling among
pretenses of the proper, a universe of rented spaces haunted by a nowhere or by dreamed-of
places.

Notes
1 Ch. Alexander, “La Cite semi-treillis, mais non arbre,” Architecture, Movement, Continuite, 1967.
2 See R. Barthe’s remarks in Architecture d’aujourd’hui, No. 153, December 1970—January 1971, 11–13:
“We speak our city…merely by inhabiting it, walking through it, looking at it.” Cf. C. Soucy, L’Image
du centre dans quatre romans contemporains (Paris: CSU, 1971), 6–15.
3 See the numerous studies devoted to the subject since J. Searle’s “What is a Speech Act?” in Philosophy
in America, ed. Max Black (London: Allen & Unwin; Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1965),
221–239.
4 E. Benveniste, Problemes de linguistique generale (Paris: Gallimard, 1974), II, 79–88, etc.
5 R. Barthes, quoted in C. Soucy, L’Image du centre, 10.
6 “Here and now delimit the spatial and temporal instance coextensive and contemporary with the
present instance of discourse containing I”: E. Benveniste, Problemes de linguistique generale (Paris:
Gallimard, 1966), I, p. 253.
7 R. Jakobson, Essais de linguistique generale (Paris: Seuil Points, 1970), p. 217.
8 On modalities, see H. Parret, La Pragmatique des modalites (Urbino: Centro di Semiotica, 1975); A. R.
White, Modal Thinking (Ithaca, N .Y .: Cornell University Press, 1975).
9 See Paul Lemaire’s analyses, Les Signes sauvages. Une Philosophie du langage ordinaire (Ottawa: Universite
d’Ottawa et Universite Saint-Paul, 1981), in particular the introduction.
10 A. J. Greimas, “Linguistique statistique et linguistique structurale,” le Francais moderne, October 1962,
245.
11 In a neighboring field, rhetoric and poetics in the gestural language of mute people, I am grateful
to E. S. Klima of the University of California, San Diego and U. Bellugi, “Poetry and Song in a
Language without Sound,” an unpublished paper; see also Klima, “The Linguistic Symbol with and
without Sound,” in The Role of Speech in Language, ed. J. Kavanagh and J. E. Cuttings (Cambridge,
Mass.: MIT, 1975).
12 Conscience de la ville (Paris: Anthropos, 1977).
13 See Ostrowetsky, “Logiques du lieu,” in Semiotique de l’espace (Paris: Denoel-Gonthier Mediations,
1979), 155–173.
14 Pas a pas. Essai sur le cheminement quotidien en milieu urbain (Paris: Seuil, 1979).
15 In his analysis of culinary practices, P. Bourdieu regards as decisive not the ingredients but the way
in which they are prepared and used: “Le Sens pratique,” Actes de la recherche en sciences sociales,
February 1976, 77.
16 J. Sum pf, Introduction a la stylistique du francais (Paris: Larousse, 1971), 87.
17 On the “theory of the proper,” see J. Derrida, Marges de la philosophie (Paris: Minuit, 1972), 247–324;
Margins of Philosophy, trans. A. Bass (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982).
18 Augoyard, Pas a pas.
19 T. Todorov, “Synecdoques,” Communications, No. 16 (1970), 30. See also P. Fontanier, Les Figures du
discours (Paris: Flammarion, 1968), 87–97; J. Dubois et al., Rhetorique generale (Paris: Larousse, 1970),
102–112.
 Public Space Infrastructures  329
20 On this space that practices organize into “islands,” see P. Bourdieu, Esquisse d’une theorie de la pratique
(Geneve: Droz, 1972), 215, etc.; “Le Sens pratique,” 51–52.
21 See Anne Baldassari and Michel Joubert, Pratiques relationnelles des enfants a l’espace et institution (Paris:
CRECELE-CORDES, 1976); and by the same authors, “Ce qui se trame,” Para/le/es, No. I, June
1976.
22 Derrida, Marges, 287, on metaphor.
23 Benveniste, Problemes, I, 86–87.
24 For Benveniste, “discourse is language considered as assumed by the person who is speaking and in
the condition of intersubjectivity” (ibid., 266).
25 See for example S. Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams, trans. J. Strachey (New York: Basic Books,
1955), Chapter VI, § 1–4, on condensation and displacement, “processes of figuration” that are proper
to “dreamwork.”

Figure 7.0.2  Pedestrians on Broadway, New York City. Photo @ Dorotea Mitrašinović.
7.2 The Social, Economic and
Political Life of Sidewalks
Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris and Renia Ehrenfeucht
Source: Loukaitou-Sideris, A. and Ehrenfeucht, R. (2009). “Introduction: The Social,
Economic, and Political Life of Sidewalks,” in Loukaitou-Sideris, A. and Ehrenfeucht,
R. Sidewalks: Conflict and Negotiation Over Public Space. Boston: MIT Press, 3–14.

Most of us take sidewalks for granted. An undervalued element of the urban form, this
public ground connects points of origin and destination, and few people go through the day
without traversing at least one sidewalk. Sidewalks are unassuming, standardized pieces of
gray concrete that are placed between roadways and buildings, and their common appear-
ance belies their significance and history as unique but integral parts of the street and urban
life. A commercial terrain for merchants and vendors, a place of leisure for flaneurs, a refuge
for homeless residents, a place for day-to-day survival for panhandlers, a space for debate
and protest for political activists, an urban forest for environmentalists: U.S. sidewalks have
hosted a wealth of social, economic, and political uses and have been integral to a contested
democracy.
What do we want from sidewalks? Various observers argue that public spaces are be-
coming less democratic, and they point to the historic uses for public spaces to underscore
their argument. Fewer explain the ways that people use sidewalks in cities now and the role
that sidewalks play in contemporary urban life. In 1961, Jane Jacobs (1961) called sidewalks
“the main public places of the city” and “its most vital organs.” For Jacobs, sidewalks were
active sites of socialization and pleasure, and this social interaction kept neighborhoods safe
and controlled. She demanded a better appreciation of the street in the face of modernist
planning that intended to replace its complexity with order.
[…]
In recent decades, however, people have been returning to the central city and, in some
cases, high-density living. The urban downtown and Main Street “renaissance,” as some
scholars have called it (Teaford 1990), has brought new attention to downtown public
spaces. Cities have revitalized abandoned parts of their downtowns, hoping to attract back
to the center not only tourists and conventioneers but also suburban residents. They have
allowed historic buildings to be converted into lofts, created outdoor destinations with
sidewalk cafes, commercial displays, vendors, and performers, and—with corporate help—
have rebuilt historic public markets, town centers, and riverfronts. Similarly, towns have
sought to bring back their decayed Main Streets, and suburbs have developed new town
centers and destination districts. At the same time, the U.S. Surgeon General has encour-
aged people to walk more to stay healthy and fight obesity (U.S. Department of Health and
Human Services 1996) and generated a renewed interest in walking.
Urbanists, heeding Jane Jacobs’s early call for an appreciation of public environments,
have helped illuminate the complexities and functions of public spaces and inspired a gen-
eration of urban designers and planners to envision a public city. “Public,” however, does
not mean inclusive of all urban residents or all people who use city sidewalks; it never has.
And it certainly does not imply accepting frightening or uncomfortable activities. These
planners and urbanists have suggested that vibrant public spaces can control undesirable
people and activities ( Jacobs 1961; Whyte 1988).
 Public Space Infrastructures  333
When public spaces are redeveloped, some people are planned for as the target users
while others are planned against, and redevelopment projects are meant to exclude as much
as attract. Some observers have criticized attempts to fortify the city (Davis 1990; Sorkin
1992; Smith 2001; Mitchell 2003; Smith and Low 2006), but others support efforts to reg-
ulate public spaces and exclude disruptions, such as public protests and activities associated
with panhandling and homelessness (Ellickson 1996). Comfort and safety are attributes
cherished by many who choose to visit only public spaces that can ensure pleasant encoun-
ters with others like themselves—sidewalks in homogeneous communities, malls, plazas,
and movie theaters.
A favorite public-space myth recalls a time when diversity was accepted on city streets. It
speaks to a contemporary desire to accommodate diversity, envisioning what public spaces
could be rather than describing what they were. Nineteenth-century streets and sidewalks were
crowded and complex, but public-space historians have shown that they were also contested
sites where rights and access were not guaranteed. Urban streets and sidewalks also have been
locations of intervention for reformers and public-health advocates. Municipal interventions
restricted those who worked or played on public sidewalks, widened the streets, and cleaned
and greened the sidewalks. Urbanites adapted to these changes, at times disregarded them, and
inserted different interpretations and priorities into the ever-changing public realm.
[…]

Distinctiveness
The relative lack of scholarly work on sidewalks might be explained by their status as an
undifferentiated part of the street. Streets and sidewalks compose the public right of way in
cities. Like streets, sidewalks are ubiquitous and difficult to avoid. Motorists observe them
from their vehicles, and pedestrians walk along them from point of origin to destination or
from car to building. But sidewalks differ from the roadbed and have historically accom-
modated distinct uses. The roadbed is used solely for vehicles, but people have walked and
socialized on the sidewalks since sidewalks were first constructed.
Sidewalks also differ from one another based on their location within the city, surrounding
demographics, and association with particular uses and buildings. Such differences are more
nuanced than the roadbed/sidewalk distinction implies. Sidewalks are closely associated with
abutting buildings, and the way that they are perceived and used affects the tenants and users
of these buildings. In addition, abutting property owners are responsible for keeping sidewalks
free from obstructions and sometimes must keep them in good repair. For this reason, sidewalks
are simultaneously public and parochial—open to all and yet a space over which a group feels
ownership (Lofland 1998). The book therefore highlights the distinct characteristics of urban
sidewalks as small public spaces that wind throughout the city.

Publicness
The book also examines the flexible and ambiguous boundaries that surround sidewalks’
publicness. Many different social groups—municipal bureaucrats, abutting property own-
ers, neighborhood councils, merchants, street vendors, homeless people, labor unions, and
political activists—have negotiated public access and activities on the sidewalk. […]
As Neil Smith and Setha Low (2006, 3) have explained, global societies have public
spaces that operate at different scales:

the range of social locations offered by the street, the park, the media, and Internet, the
shopping mall, the United Nations, national governments, and local neighborhoods.
334  Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris and Renia Ehrenfeucht
‘Public space’ envelops the palpable tension between place, experienced at all scales of
daily life, and the seeming spacelessness of the Internet, popular opinion, and global
institutions and economy.

In exploring sidewalks, we also show how local conflicts are moments where larger institu-
tions and processes “touchdown.” Indeed, one difficulty in public-space debates is agreeing
on the issue that is being debated. A Senegalese street vendor in Harlem and his Guatemalan
counterpart in East Los Angeles reflect forces that influence economic restructuring and
transnational migrations, and their presence can invoke these concerns, but street vending
also represents a contested activity on a local corner.
Access to public spaces also is a mechanism by which urban dwellers assert their right to
participate in society, and these struggles over the right to use public spaces take different
forms. One distinction can be made between a demand to access a space for its defined
uses (as was the case with desegregation movements over public transportation and public
facilities) and the right to define a space’s use (such as a fight against a public sleeping ban).
Both are important.
[…]
All spaces have restrictions—physical, legal, and social—and the way that a space func-
tions for a public is evaluated comparatively with other public spaces. A shopping plaza
differs from the sidewalk in its design, uses, and hours of operation, but both have public
functions. Moreover, because some activities necessarily infringe on others (a sidewalk
used for lumber storage may be impassable), a space’s publicness is better assessed over time
because not all activities happen or need to happen at one time. Although any given space
may not always be open or accessible, the right to its use as others use it is a significant
part of full societal participation. In addition, as Don Mitchell (2003, 35) has argued, what
“makes a space public is often not its preordained ‘publicness.’ Rather, a space is made
public when, so as to fulfill a pressing need, one group takes space and through its actions
makes it public.”
Margaret Kohn (2004, 11–12) places urban spaces on a continuum of public and pri-
vate usage that is based on the interplay of ownership, accessibility, and intersubjectiv-
ity. The public/private dichotomy is still relevant, but it needs to be defined precisely
given the extensive scholarship that highlights privacy in public and the range of public
spaces that are privately owned. Most sidewalks are public property, but private prop-
erty owners exercise significant control over them and often are held responsible for
their maintenance. Businesses also often use sidewalks, which benefits both them and
other users.

Diversity and contestation

The third theme of this book is the role that sidewalks play as shared spaces that accom-
modate diverse people. This diversity sometimes leads to contestation. How do people use
spaces differently and similarly? In what ways do these activities reflect varying notions
and different priorities? What underlies the conflicts that arise? What aspects of activities
become incompatible with others? Although municipalities enact ordinances and employ
other interventions to limit undesirable public-space activities, such ordinances do not
reflect the government’s perspective but rather the negotiated interests of constituents who
want some degree of order.
Public spaces have multiple functions. They provide sites for people to interact with those
who are outside their private circles and allow decision making, the articulation of public
concerns, and the resolution of common problems. Usually, however, public spaces are used
 Public Space Infrastructures  335
for daily activities such as transportation, shopping, and recreation. Public spaces host an
array of activities that overlap and thereby become sites of conflict.
Various groups have identifiably different interests, but no monolithic middle or
­upper-income group controls a homogeneous group of low-income residents. Residents
in poor neighborhoods are affected by street prostitution and drug use and may want them
eliminated from their sidewalks. Small businesses may compete with street vendors or dis-
like street trees that block their signage. Pedestrians may object to newspaper boxes or
sidewalk displays. One person’s sidewalk activity may very well compete for limited space
or conflict with another’s need for order. The complexity arises because multiple interests
of various groups overlap on the same narrow stretches of sidewalk pavement.
Although we emphasize differences and conflict among groups, conflict is not always a
negative that should be eliminated. As Rosalyn Deutsche (1996, 278) argues, “urban space is
the product of conflict.” This differs in two essential ways from Jurgen Habermas’s view that
civilized discussion between groups that share interests can develop a collective voice. First, it
highlights conflict over consensus and difference over commonality. Differences are not more
important than commonalities, but commonalities are less likely to require negotiation. Sec-
ond, these discussions are not only verbal but also play out through practices in public spaces.
When people simply take space for a given purpose at a given time, they are demanding pub-
lic spaces for specific and contingent use. We are no longer faced with a question of how to
maintain or establish order in a rapidly changing city but rather how to live with differences
and adapt cities to the challenges that differences bring (Sandercock 2003).
Every disruptive or conflictual activity has multiple sides. Dissenters may value the op-
portunity to block a sidewalk and disrupt a convention because they gain the attention of
decision makers or the media. The conventioneers may need to use the sidewalk to reach
the convention and conduct their business, while other citizens may need the sidewalk for
passage. All strands might be legitimate claims, and the ensuing discussions are fundamental
to urban democracy.

Regulation
Public spaces are contested terrains. Through public struggles, urbanites articulate both
diverse and common interests and demand mechanisms for regulating shared aspects of ur-
ban life that are flexible and transparent. The final theme of this book explores public-space
control and the defining of differences among people and boundaries among spaces.
Because the process of developing public space has simultaneously been a process of
controlling it, the regulatory framework is a dimension of public space. As many scholars
have documented, design and regulatory strategies have constitutional implications for First
Amendment speech and assembly rights. They also have subtler effects when they delineate
who is protected and who represents a problem. But frameworks of control that differenti-
ate among spaces and people have been central to any discussion about urban life.
Openness has always been limited, and the struggle over public spaces is about constraints
and acceptable activities and users. This negotiation over appropriate uses differentiates among
activities (in what context does standing become loitering?), spaces (where does standing be-
come loitering?), and the guidelines for the permissible. Efforts to control public spaces depend
on these definitions. Defining who can participate and how they can do so is fundamental.
Municipalities enact ordinances and regulations to define acceptable uses of sidewalks, and cities
and corporate actors employ design and policy strategies to achieve particular effects. How side-
walks can be used (their “primary purposes”) and who can use them (their “publicness”) have
been debated in council chambers and in court by urban residents, business owners, municipal
governments, civil rights advocates, and political activists.
336  Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris and Renia Ehrenfeucht
Formalized actions come late in the struggle over access to sidewalks, and they reflect
agreements on activities, users, and their relative priorities. Agreements do not imply that
all parties believe that an ordinance is fair or necessary but suggest that the situation has
been defined adequately for the municipality to take some action. In fact, a tension must be
framed in a way that offers a course of action.
Many observers fear that public spaces are becoming less democratic, but we argue that
this is not because ordinances have been enacted or other devices deployed to control public
spaces. Individual ordinances and public-space regulations may be wrong and should be
contested. We caution against defining the ordinances and laws as the problem, however,
when it is the agreements that they embody that should be examined and evaluated. As
Nancy Fraser (1992, 124) reminds us, “The ideal of participation parity is not fully real-
izable.” In the debate over appropriate public space uses that may precede an ordinance,
certain actors are more powerful than others, and their voices are heard louder. In fact, the
process of justifying controls can engender fear that leads to withdrawal from those very
spaces that we attempt to secure. Focusing on eliminating all disorder fails to adapt and
respond to changing urban circumstances and results in an unjust society. Public-space
controls are important negotiations, and even our tools to fight injustice are restraints on
actors (individuals, corporations, and governments). A just city would have controls that
define the parameters of public-space use and access and also processes that enable different
voices and interests to help define those controls.

References
Davis, Mike. 1990. City of Quartz: Excavating the Future in Los Angeles. London: Verso.
Deutsche, Rosalyn. 1996. Eviction: Art and Spatial Politics. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Ellickson, Robert C. 1996. “Controlling Chronic Misconduct in City Spaces: Of Panhandlers, Skid
Rows, and Public Space Zoning.” Yale Law Review 105(5): 1165–1248.
Fraser, Nancy. 1992. “Rethinking the Public Sphere: A Contribution to the Critique of Actually Existing
Democracy.” In Craig Calhoun, ed., Habermas and the Public Sphere (109–142). Cambridge, MA and
London: MIT Press.
Jacobs, Jane. 1961. The Death and Life of the Great American Cities. New York: Random House.
Kohn, Margaret. 2004. Brave New Neighborhoods: The Privatization of Public Space. New York: Routledge.
Lofland, Lynn H. 1998. The Public Realm: Exploring the City’s Quintessential Social Territory. New York:
Aldine de Gruyter.
Mitchell, Don. 2003. The Right to the City: Social Justice and the Fight for Public Space. New York: Guilford
Press.
Sandercock, Leonie. 2003. Cosmopolis II: Mongrel Cities in the Twenty-first Century. New York: Continuum.
Smith, Neil, and Setha Low. 2006. “Introduction: The Imperative of Public Space.” In Setha Low and
Neil Smith, eds., The Politics of Public Space (1–16). New York: Routledge.
Smith, Neil. 2001. “Global Social Cleansing: Postliberal Revanchism and the Export of Zero Tolerance.”
Social Justice 28(3): 68–74.
Sorkin, Michael, ed. 1992. Variations on a Theme Park: The New American City and the End of Public Space.
New York: Hill and Wang.
Teaford, Jon C. 1990. The Rough Road to Renaissance. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. 1996. Surgeon General’s Report on Physical Activity and
Health. Report S/N 017–023–00196-5. Washington, DC: DHHS.
Whyte, William H. 1988. City: Rediscovering the Center. New York: Doubleday.
Figures 7.0.3  Domino Park at the location of the demolished Domino Sugar Factory, a part of the
Bloomberg administration’s waterfront development plan which provided incentives for
luxury housing development in return for public amenities along the East River waterfront.
Queens, New York City. Photo © Miodrag Mitrašinović.
7.3 The Public Realm: A Public
Responsibility
The Urban Task Force
Source: The Urban Task Force (1999). “The Public Realm: A Public Responsibil-
ity,” in The Urban Task Force (2003). Towards An Urban Renaissance. London: Taylor
and Francis, 28–31.

Creating a network of public spaces

In most urban settlements, public space, including streets, squares, parks and less well de-
fined ‘common areas’ adds up to more than half the total area of land—the rest is occupied
by buildings and infrastructure. In England, this valuable ‘common good’ is predominantly
owned by public or quasi-public bodies and institutions. The public sector must act as the
custodian of the public realm.
The network of public spaces provides a web of connections that offers people a range of
choices when deciding to make local journeys in the course of their daily lives. Most com-
pact and well-ordered cities are designed around a well-connected pattern of streets and
public spaces. New urban developments—whether infill or new build sites—should do the
same, with a clear hierarchy between the major through-routes and the more subtle struc-
ture of local streets and alleyways. While many contemporary residential developments
in England are based on standard layouts which lack this level of urban integration, there
are also excellent examples of towns that have successfully absorbed new neighbourhoods
and communities over time, creating a seamless continuity between the old and the new.
A popular example is Brighton and neighbouring Hove. Sandwiched between the Downs
and the sea, the 18th and 19th centuries created these adjoining towns as unique, popular,
multi-purpose places, and a robust and long-enduring form and fabric, which still house
many different activities and a wide mixture of housing tenures.

Achieving urban integration

To achieve urban integration means thinking of urban open space not as an isolated unit—
be it a street, park or a square—but as a vital part of the urban landscape with its own
specific set of functions. Public space should be conceived of as an outdoor room within a
neighbourhood, somewhere to relax and enjoy the urban experience, a venue for a range of
different activities, from outdoor eating to street entertainment; from sport and play areas
to a venue for civic or political functions; and most importantly of all as a place for walking
or sitting-out. Public spaces work best when they establish a direct relationship between the
space and the people who live and work around it.
The traditional street plays a key role in the formation of community. It is where people
of all ages come together and interact. The re-establishment of the street as an urban focus
could make an immediate impact on people’s lives. Streets with continuous active front-
ages, and overlooked from upper storeys, provide a natural form of self-policing. The con-
tinuous presence of passers-by as well as informal surveillance combine to create the blend
of urban vitality and safety that is characteristic of many successful urban areas.
[…] While one priority should be the creation of ‘centre to edge’ networks of public
space which provide the basis for longer journeys for pedestrians and cyclists, a second
 Public Space Infrastructures  341
should be the establishment of networks around cities—green inner rings that supplements
the outer Green Belt by creating breathing space close to inner urban neighbourhoods. It
is not just human demands which need to be satisfied in the provision of open space. Net-
works of open space must also be considered in terms of wildlife requirements, with the aim
of increasing the habitat range for other species. Parks and gardens cannot satisfy all these
needs. Less formal areas such as greens and commons, local nature reserves, small woods
and coppices, and multi-use wildlife corridors all need to be considered […] Landscape de-
sign plays a critical role in establishing a balance between nature and the ecology, and the
needs and requirements of contemporary urban life.

Central square not Central Local pocket

squares and places
well manitained civic squares
Forgotten
urban
squares
Old valley
lines broken

Old
waterways
rundown Green areas
are isolated
Restore and link
Parks not old green routes
well
maintained Old railway routes Local pocket
parks
are disused
District parks
and amenity
Green corridors
are broken
Views
Restore old
waterways
Access

Old locks Local pocket

maintained parks

Access to open country

is not easy Waterways used
Neighbourhood parks to transfer
and sports areas water resources

isolated pockets of open space

Access
utilise old railways
as new green routes
Views

Protect existing
green corridors

Pathways Routes

Open countryside is protected

Figures 7.3.1  Cities and towns should be designed as networks that link together residential areas to public
open spaces and natural green corridors with direct access to the countryside. Courtesy of
Andrew Wright Associates.
342  The Urban Task Force
Towards a public realm strategy
To create a public realm with positive amenity value requires a comprehensive approach to
planning, urban design and management which gets over the current fragmentation of stat-
utory roles and responsibilities. A Public Realm Strategy, which requires local authorities
to plan comprehensively for all aspects of the public realm, should either form part of the
Local Plan or should have a clear relationship with it, possibly in the form of Supplemen-
tary Planning Guidance. The strategy should specify a clear network and hierarchy of open
space provision based on a combination of nationally agreed standards and guidance and a
careful interpretation of local need.

Recommendations
1 Require local authorities to prepare a single strategy for their public realm and open
space, dealing with provision, design, management, funding and maintenance;
2 Introduce a national programme to create comprehensive green pedestrian routes
around and/or across each of our major towns and cities.
Figure 7.0.4  Copacabana Beach pedestrian promenade along Avenida Atlantica, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
Designed by Roberto Burle Marx (with Haruyoshi Ono and José Tabacow) in 1970 as part
of the oceanfront open space system connecting the historic city core on the north with
Leblon on the south and allowing general public access to the waterfront. Photo © Miodrag
Mitrašinović.
7.4 Public Space, Infrastructure, Landscape:
An Interdisciplinary Matrix for Urban
Spatial Continuity
Ana Brandão and Pedro Brandão
Source: Brandão A. L. and Brandão P. (2017). ‘Public Space, Infrastructure, Land-
scape: An Interdisciplinary Matrix for Urban Spatial Continuity.’ The Journal of Pub-
lic Space, 2(1), 123–134.

Although ‘industrial city’ is understood as the result of urban expansion and city reorgani-
sation related to industrial production models (critically portrayed by Friedrich Engels and
other European social philosophers in the 19th century), the first use of the term “indus-
trial city” was made by Tony Garnier in 1905 (Choay, 1965). Before that, the concept of
“urbanization” had already been used by Cerdà in the General theory of urbanization (Teoría
General de la Urbanización, 1867) as the theoretical and practical knowledge about the city’s
new production systems with new features such as urban infrastructure, facilities, energy,
transportation and housing development. Urban growth was associated with new kinds of
production tools organised in plans.
The breakdown of the industrial model, followed by the post-industrial transition, cor-
responds to diversifications and specialisations of urban knowledge, developed by several
scientific areas, design and planning disciplines. On the one hand this specialisation corre-
sponds to a deepening of sectoral knowledge (e.g., mobility, environment, social sciences,
engineering, economy), while on the other hand it no longer responds to the complexity of
diverse urban phenomena where less predictability and greater uncertainty are now dom-
inant. After 150 years of beliefs, experiments and models, this knowledge no longer seems
effective in solving emerging problems in many of the contemporary urban contexts.
In a changing and diverse period as ours, what kinds of urban knowledge are available?
Could different situations, perspectives and dynamics still be expected to work with the
same stable and independent disciplinary practical and theoretical knowledge base? The
unstable and variable contexts and characteristics of post-industrial cities have to be un-
derstood as a large variety of urban realities, and as requiring collaborative and reflexive
practice of a variety of knowledge cultures referring to the contemporary city. Instead of
one paradigmatic model or one knowledge base responding everywhere to the needs of
urban space production, some reflexive action needs to be taken on what we call ‘urbanism’
or ‘city planning’ today.

New post-industrial territories and ‘commons’1 systems:

A case study
The transition from what we call ‘industrial city’ to a diverse set of urban realities we
live in today, should adopt a great variety of scales of urban-space production (Lefebvre
1974) in what might be called ‘post-industrial urban metropolis’ (Bell, 1973). At the least
we may agree that today there is a much less homogeneous and a more diverse, extensive
and scattered urban realities which lack a uniform urban identity. What we generically
call ‘post-industrial’ (other authors refer to it as “post-modern”) is in itself illustrative of
 Public Space Infrastructures  347

Figure 7.4.1  Public infrastructures in Lisbon’s South Bank. Source: Ana and Pedro Brandão.

the complexity of transition we deal with (A. Brandão & P. Brandão, 2013). The same
observation can be made to public spaces of contemporary cities (Carmona, 2010a).
New perspectives require the perception of public space to move from a feature of ur-
ban life based on traditional spatial references to the context of complex contemporary
changes: increasing mobility and social and economic connectivity, new typologies (24h
spaces, multifunctional spaces) and characteristics (more heterogeneous and conflict-
ing, subject to commodification). Public space production is no longer restricted to
348  Ana Brandão and Pedro Brandão
traditional models of public space—i.e., the square, the garden—in typically dense and
central urban environments. Instead, public space is embedded in the contemporary
urban dynamics and faces issues such as the lack of connectivity, segregation, loss of
activities and social interaction.
[…]
Our hypothesis is that persistent and common values can act as interdisciplinary ref-
erents (with corresponding tools and concepts) encompassing complex changing realities
and transitional periods. In that sense, our hypothesis is based on urban-spatial continuity
as a conceptual integration of common spatial and service values: where public space (in-
teraction, exchange and identity formation) interacts with other aspects of urban systems
such as infrastructure (mobility facilitator, support of urban activities) and landscape (life-­
production potential, ecological sustainability).
Therefore public space should be considered not as a sum of isolated spaces, but as a net-
work of places (Pinto & Remesar, 2012) with a shared set of properties, interdependencies
and interactions, in a systemic perspective fostered by functional and morphological inter-
dependencies. New multidimensional facts under the theoretical principle of ‘urban-space
continuity’ may answer present dilemmas: growth of scale and distance (dispersion); growth
of complexity and diversity (indeterminacy); and growth of non-systemic actions (disrup-
tion). Today’s city calls for more integration of a system of public spaces at the centre of the
processes of urban transformation (Pinto & Brandão, 2015). A conceptual and operational
matrix aims to interpret these spaces in unstable, disconnected, and unforeseen contexts, by
mapping urban qualities while focusing on the basis of urban-spatial continuity and testing
urban systems in relation to their structuring potential. By mapping spatial service-values,
potential for their interaction and integration becomes legible as a new, coherent structure
of the ‘Commons’, which acts as a reference in the process of urban transition by managing
uncertainty and balancing the changing needs, actors’ roles, and resources.

Spatial continuity matrix of the commons: Public space,

infrastructure, landscape

An interdisciplinary theoretical principle

The diversity of urban fabrics and related problems is also translated to the production of
public spaces: “What is clear is that contemporary trends in public space design and man-
agement are resulting (over time) in an increasingly complex range of public space types”
(Carmona, 2010b: 172). Our question is about the strategic necessity: with what instru-
ments can we act in a growing, diverse, complex territory, and in changing conditions?
What is the Commons role in a structuring process of “becoming urban”? When it is struc-
tured through top-down, rational principles defined for the industrial mode of production,
knowledge on the city no longer reflects the diversity of problems in contemporary urban
environments. In fact, city knowledge organized though the outdated principles, rules,
procedures and former planning practices now causes difficulties in addressing current ur-
ban phenomena.
Our proposal for an operative matrix is based on structuring elements needed in emerg-
ing urban areas as an approach to common concepts of urban-space continuity. This trans-
versal and interacting concept crosses several urban dimensions (Carmona, Heath, Oc &
Tiesdell, 2003)—morphological, experiential, economic, social, and political—within an
interdisciplinary and systemic perspective. There are no previously agreed starting points
based on the alleged ability to anticipate and master unknown variables in this equation:2
 Public Space Infrastructures  349
it is now essential to question “disciplinary plots and fences” regarding existing approaches
in planning, urban design, infrastructure, architecture, landscape, transportation, art, social
organization, economics, history, and geography. Interdisciplinary experimentation that
employs a “crossing” principle such as ‘spatial continuity’ is not yet a common practice,
but there are some exemplary cases—such as the recognised need to match the quality of
mobility with spatial quality—showcasing what can be done:

1 by experimenting with new types of joint infrastructure and public space in “shared
space” projects (Monderman, 2007)
2 in regenerating transport interchange concepts by integrating mixed uses and services
in inter-modality areas, and
3 in experimenting with new forms of urban systems integration—public space, land-
scape and infrastructure—in managing risk and preventing effects of climate change.

[…]

Urban systems for urban continuity: Public space, infrastructure, landscape

Although public investment in and public attention to urban design projects grew much in
recent years, much attention still focuses on isolated examples often lacking connectivity
or integration so as to gain real meaning as urban systems, and to provide more return on
social and economic values thus ensuring sustainability. We must acknowledge that public
spaces with poor networking qualities show weak returns in quantity and quality of use,
economic activity, long-term social benefits, basic utility, or environmental impact. This
means there is a systemic potential that needs to be assessed and fostered in order to enable
spatial and functional continuity in the fractured urban fabric. Therefore, research on “sys-
tems of collective spaces grounded in the interaction with landscape and infrastructural sys-
tems” (Portas, 2004) could frame methods and tools appropriate for specific urban contexts.
Such features are also the more lasting elements of urban fabric, define public interaction,
with ability to support and structure transformation over time, also securing conditions
for decisions related to opportunities, resources availability, and stakeholders interests. The
new values of public space, achieved through its interactions with infrastructure and land-
scape, are also the base for new management strategies.
PUBLIC SPACE can be characterized as urban space for common use, with no restric-
tions of access, in opposition to the private use of public-interest space. Public space is a
structuring layer of urban form (space between buildings), which can be seen as hardware,
performing territorial and functional integration in the city. But as software (P. Brandão,
2008), it incorporates relations and interactions that make urban life: socio-cultural di-
mensions representing society or community as spaces for expression and sharing (Borja &
Muxí, 2003). In contemporary cities, public space is no longer made only by canonical
typologies—square, garden, public, private—but evolves around several hybrid spaces and
joint uses including the sphere of communication and virtual spaces. To understand its
complexity, we need to focus on systemic perspectives, the network perspective (Pinto &
Remesar, 2012), and on fostering functional and morphological continuities.
INFRASTRUCTURE can be defined as the system—set of elements—that frames and
supports urban life and urban structures. As the backbone of urban transformation, infra-
structure is one of the more lasting elements of the built environment, visible in the initial
phase and built upon over time to support several cycles of urban transformation (Lukez,
2007). In today’s cities, exchanges, flows, and connectivities are important features and can
350  Ana Brandão and Pedro Brandão
sometimes be an alternative (or substitution) to the traditional forms of social and urban
relations (Ascher, 1995). In addition to physical structures, networks of technological and
virtual connectivities add new interactive possibilities. Expansion of infrastructural net-
works changes territorial uses, while the potential of network connectivities is also in their
capacity for multi-mobility and communications, as infrastructures in a networked city use
all possible links and mediums to be connected.
LANDSCAPE can be seen as a complex and dynamic system, including natural and
cultural aspects, and changing over time. Traditionally based on physical, biological and
natural objectives, it also is an expression of human activities. Today, the concept of
landscape is expanding as a result of interdisciplinary action and combination of cultural,
natural and environmental problematique. 3 Its holistic character is referred to as a base
for an integrated territorial management (Cancela d’Abreu, Correia, & Oliveira, 2004),
due to its ability to express “numerous relations throughout time between natural and
human factors of a certain area”. Landscape is a dynamic system in constant change and
reinterpretation (Antrop, 2005), capable of supporting communal identities through their
transformations. Although the ‘root’ of the concept of ‘landscape’ is located in natural
life-supporting systems, in post-industrial cities urban landscape is also characterised by
urban built-up continuities, the blurring of urban-rural distinctions, and the emergence
of new hybrid categories.
The broader set of ‘public-use spaces’ is today more inclusive, embracing a greater variety
of users. It is also structuring connection and continuity, allowing a management of differ-
ent timeframes of movement and transformation. Spatial continuity of living spaces unfolds
at different scales and ways of appropriation, from the street and neighborhood to the larger
spaces of encounter and interaction. We can assume that spatial networks—integrating
landscapes, infrastructures and public spaces—form interconnected systems aimed towards
converging objectives. Integration of these concepts in a matrix of spatial continuity has to
respond to an interdisciplinary culture opposed to the limitation of existing “spatial exper-
tise” which denies the need for broader, transversal strategies.

Conclusion
Urban design practice should focus on the process of re-structuring urban territories by
employing public space, landscape and infrastructure as integrated systems. Mapping the
existing structures and available resources can be a starting point in developing an inter-
disciplinary agenda for a strategy of spatial continuity. The interdisciplinary matrix can
contribute to a more flexible and interactive approach to urban design and planning. Fur-
ther investigations of this approach generate new questions: is it possible to intervene with
a “fertilizing” and low intensity action to promote the Commons? Can we act at the local
scale in order to foster connections and opportunities in a broader urban context?
The combination of the matrix of analytical interpretations with the design practice en-
sures the articulation of different spatial scales and of linking different elements of the matrix
to secure the spatial continuity and coherence. Instead of the rigid hierarchy, regulations,
and restrictions of the past, the spatial coherence between different scales can be secured by
reestablishing connections—as networks of uses, spaces, relations, and meanings—by add-
ing and sharing new elements in the processes of planning, programming and designing.
In designing public space systems, priority should be given to the attributes that increase
their lifecycle by determining transversal, diverse and interdependent actions which lead
to greater adaptability. This systemic perspective enables the process of transition to unfold
in incremental steps instead of proposing drastic changes. We find the practical matrix for
 Public Space Infrastructures  351
urban design not in a specific discipline, specific scope, or spatial attributes, but in the pos-
sibilities opened up by framing public space as an organising urban system, in its interaction
with infrastructural and landscape systems, integrating all the different and simultaneous
“spaces in between” to configure the elements of the new ‘Commons’.

Acknowledgements
The authors gratefully acknowledge the support of Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnolo-
gia (FCT) under the PhD grant SFRH/BD/69911/2010 and the research project PTDC/
ECM-URB/2162/2014.

Notes
1 The definition from the Digital Library of the Commons is: “The commons is a general term for
shared resources in which each stakeholder has an equal interest”.
2 PSSS—Public Space’s Service System is a research project the authors are pursuing in an international
and interdisciplinary team between Lisbon, Oporto and Barcelona Universities, developing some of
presented intentions.
3 As a disciplinary concept in some academic traditions (such as in Portugal), Landscape Architecture
is connected to a life production process of territorial nature. So landscape as an Urban Design part
is less significantly based regarding “image”, “skyline” and other visual features and more on eco-­
systemic concepts.

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352  Ana Brandão and Pedro Brandão
Monderman, H. (2007). Designing Shared Space [Mov] (Vol. 7). London: Urban Design London. Retrieved
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Figures 7.0.5  L ower Manhattan barrier island network. Source: dlandstudio and Architecture Research
Office (ARO).
7.5 Elastic Landscape: Seeding
Ecology in Public Space and Urban
Infrastructure
Susannah C. Drake
Source: Drake, S.C. (2010). “Elastic Landscape: Seeding Ecology in Public Space
and Urban Infrastructure,” in Hauck, T., Keller, R. and Kleinekort, V. (eds.), Infra-
structural Urbanism: Addressing the In-Between. Berlin: DOM publishers, 317–333.

Infrastructure exists in web-like structures across cities as a conduit for the transportation
and distribution of singular resources. Layers act with focused purpose to maximise the
efficiency of one distinct role within rigid structures and forms that limit the possibility of
modification of space to accommodate ancillary programmes. Existing urban infrastructure
is often viewed as a constraint to sustainability; however, with a shift in perspective it can
be seen as an opportunity. This line of applied research offers ecological perspectives on

Figures 7.5.1  A New Urban Ground site plan depicting saltwater wetlands, sunken forests, sponge slips,
brackish water wetlands, barrier islands and permeable street networks. Source: dlandstudio
and Architecture Research Office (ARO).
 Public Space Infrastructures  357
retrofitting urban infrastructure and identifying new opportunities for the integration of
ecological solutions with public space. The intent is to maximise the potential for urban
landscapes to absorb and process stormwater, mitigate air particulates and toxins, reduce
urban heat island effect, and store carbon while also functioning as occupiable urban pub-
lic space. In short the city can be fundamentally transformed in experience and ecological
function with strategic modifications to infrastructure.
[…]

Lower Manhattan: A new urban ground

MOMA Rising Currents
The need to address the urgent challenge of climate change is the focus of “Rising Currents:
Projects for New York’s Waterfront,” a 2010 exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art and the
P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center in New York City. As a part of an architects-in-residence
program at P.S.1, dlandstudio and Architectural Research Office (ARO) worked to develop
a new vision for the infrastructure of Lower Manhattan.

Paradigm for new form of infrastructure

The threat of rising sea levels in the Palisades Bay presents an opportunity to rethink the
relationship between ecology and infrastructure in Manhattan and to fundamentally recon-
figure the character of the city. Today, Manhattan is defined by an oppositional relationship
between built city and water with a hard-edged, engineered coastline. The once integrated
ecosystem was progressively segregated from the growing city over the past 400-year evo-
lution of the island. The proposal for a new integrated and reciprocal organisation of natural
systems with the city’s existing infrastructure aligns the advantages of naturally occurring
and man-made systems. This new model of urban infrastructure can transform the city
both in use and experience.

New York now: The challenges

Climate change is causing an incremental rise in the world’s ocean level and increased fre-
quency of stronger storms. Scientists predict that given rapid ice cap melt there will be a 6’
rise in sea level by 2100. Along with this there will be more frequent intense storm activity
that can bring storm surges up to 24’. These new conditions put low-lying coastal areas at
risk from inundation and flooding, but that is only one part of the problem. Like many
cities whose sewage infrastructure was built in the early 20th century, New York City
has a combined sewer system that processes both sanitary sewage and storm water runoff
together. This infrastructure is frequently overwhelmed by even light rainstorms. The 433
combined sewer overflows (CSOs) release an average of 400 million gallons of effluent per
week directly into the Upper New York Bay.1

New York 2100: The possibilities

Given the increased threat of flooding due to climate change and the high value of Lower
Manhattan real estate, a major intervention is necessary to protect existing assets, make new
development space, and re-integrate former ecologies. Through a combination of formal
strategies, a raised urban edge, and modified in-street infrastructure, the approach will pro-
tect the island from flooding while providing a more flexible system to respond to climate
change. The required investment can and should be leveraged into a rethinking of ecology
358  Susannah C. Drake
and infrastructure as a sustainable partnership, thus changing the direction of the last 400
years of development. The proposal consists of two basic components that form an inter-
connected system: porous green streets and a graduated edge.

A new street ecology

Within the island, city streets offer an opportunity for a new ecological infrastructure. To
solve the current CSO problem, 80 acres of freshwater wetland are necessary to ame-
liorate the impacts of the upland runoff for Lower Manhattan. This acreage provides an
opportunity to integrate an interior porous street network and exterior marsh system. Up
to the reach of a Category 2 Storm surge, the streets are rebuilt as a connected series of
porous conduits that drain storm water without impeding vehicular circulation. Parking
becomes a park in a new vision of streets with fewer automobiles, new interior parking,
and less traffic. Specific plantings are used to phyto-remediate the toxins that accumulate
from urban runoff and tidal waters. This highly efficient system includes existing services
(water, sewer, gas, and electric) relocated in accessible waterproof vaults beneath the side-
walk. The vaults are divided into two pans: private utilities (dry systems), such as electric
and telecommunications, and public utilities (wet systems), such as water, gas, and sewers.
This new conception of street will not only provide more productive park space within
the city, but also reconstruct the urban experience through a greater understanding of
sustainability.
The individual green streets are calibrated to accommodate three different carrying ca-
pacities for absorption, retention, and distribution of water. Level 1 streets, located within
the inundation zone of a Category 2 Storm surge, act like a sponge, absorbing surface
water runoff to irrigate new plantings in the street bed. Level 2 streets distribute excess
water flows to the freshwater marshes at the perimeter of the island. These conduits extend
through to the centre of the island, connecting to Broadway, which acts as a spine for the
Level 2 system. In addition, streets connect to small collect ponds (embedded in existing
city fabric) that store water for redistribution during dry periods. Level 3 streets are located
parallel to the shoreline and are specifically designed to hold storm surge volume and drain
back to the harbour.

A graduated edge
On the edge of the island, three interrelated high-performance systems are constructed
to block higher sea levels and mitigate storm surge force and flooding: a productive park
network, freshwater wetlands, and tidal salt marshes. This continuous, layered ecosystem
attenuates waves, manages the urban watershed, filters interior surface runoff, enhances
biodiversity, and introduces a new system of public green space. The morphology of this
graduated edge adapts to the unique urban conditions on the east and west sides of Lower
Manhattan.

West Side urban estuaries

The west side of Manhattan is defined by a new crenelated pattern of urban estuaries and
city fabric. Due to the steep bathymetry of the harbor adjacent to Battery Park City, these
crenelations are cut into the island, in order to create shallow water that supports a bio-
logically rich ecosystem. Coves vary from one to another; streams, boats, ferry stops, and
recreational activities provide a rich juxtaposition between the intensity of the city and
the tranquility of the wetland. This wetland zone is submerged twice daily, exposing the
 Public Space Infrastructures  359

Figures 7.5.2  Sunken forest, Sponge Slip network. Source: dlandstudio and Architecture Research Office
(ARO).

varying temporal qualities of the new softened edge. As the cove patterns continue north
of Battery Park City, the shallow profile of the Hudson allows land to be added to the city,
creating a balance between ecological and economic sustainability. The sheltered urban
coves are composed of salt and freshwater marshes fed by the porous green streets and the
harbor. Throughout the coves are a series of pile-supported walkways called transverses,
which connect city streets and allow people to occupy the landscape without disrupting the
natural habitat. At unique points, the structured salt marsh threads through the city block
to provide continuity within the harbour ecosystem. A watershed park has been created to
include structured programmed spaces, such as sports fields, as well as passive recreational
areas with a rougher more natural ecology. The park spaces are linked through a recon-
structed West Street, renamed Western Parkway. Much of the width of the roadbed has
been converted into green space, a new light-rail transit loop, pedestrian walkways, and
bike paths.

The Battery breakwater

At Battery Park, the salt and freshwater marshes weave through a series of breakwater is-
lands and feather into the existing park. These islands, structured with geo-textile tubes
and covered with marsh plantings, are strategically placed to dampen the force of storm
surge. They also create a new large natural habitat that supports the Atlantic migratory fly-
way with selected recreational opportunities for kayaking and canoeing through portions
of the habitat. Part of the inland park is designed as a large collect pond that draws water
from several Level 2 streets.
360  Susannah C. Drake
East Side esker and salt marsh
The East Side of Lower Manhattan is extended with a landfill by one block to create areas
for new development, a linear park, and a salt marsh. A linear forest 18 feet below street
level runs parallel to the new development up to the Brooklyn Bridge. The tree canopy
aligns with the top of the large berm or the urban esker (The name “esker” refers to the
snake-like ridge, a post-glacial geological formation common to the region). This special
ecology is modeled after the naturally existing sunken forests on Fire Island, and provides
a first line of defense against storm surge. The linear park spans between the sunken forest
and the river. Historic slips once allowed boats to bring goods deeper into the island, and
now provide the opportunity for natural systems to do the same. The slip parks slope down
from the highest street level at Broadway and tie into the sunken forest band at the pe-
rimeter of the island. These landscapes extend the permeable street system to further filter
surface water runoff. The slip parks are paired with a series of constructed breakwaters and
stops along a new Lower Manhattan ferry route.

A continually evolving urban ground

This holistic proposal unites harbour ecologies and urban infrastructure to create a flexible
and adaptive future for Lower Manhattan. Over time, currents, tides and storms cause an
evolution of the morphology of the coastline. Climate change and increasing population
are now challenging us to be an active part of this morphology. A rich, varying ecologi-
cal succession is set in motion for generations of New Yorkers to experience. In essence,
­Manhattan will re-invent itself yet again by developing in tandem with natural systems.

Note
1 New York City, Office of the Mayor, PlaNYC: Sustainable Stormwater Management Plan (New York
City 2006).
8

Experiential Dimensions and

Evaluation of Public Space
Experiential Dimensions and
Evaluation of Public Space

Aside from its physical and sensory qualities, the experience of public space depends on
myriad socio-cultural factors as well as the biases each individual or group brings to a set-
ting. For decades, the creation of the experience of space and its qualities were considered
esoteric and “qualitative”—assigned exclusively to the domain of art. In the twenty-first
century, with growing interest in public space, increasing collaboration between scholars
and researchers of public space across planning, design and social sciences, as well as the
augmented abilities and access to technology, the experiential aspects of space are more
fathomable. Architects, landscape architects, urban designers, planners, sociologists, an-
thropologists, geographers, ethnographers, and others have scrutinized the urban condition
and developed abilities to evaluate the experience of space as well as its intrinsic and ex-
trinsic qualities in an attempt to measure the immeasurable. Research in urban public space
now recognizes the vast number of physical, use, and management components that can be
assessed even as the composition of those remains the open-ended domain of design and art
for the ultimate experience of public space. This section combines these two aspects—the
experiential qualities and the evaluation of public space.
The European Prize for Urban Public Space was established in 1999 by the Centre of Con-
temporary Culture of Barcelona (CCCB) as a biennial “observatory of European cities.” The
purpose of the Prize has been to recognize the emergence of a pan-European civic realm and
the ability of designers and planners to represent it and visualize it by configuring the emanci-
patory potential of public spaces. In 2008, after presiding over the jury for the Prize, Manuel de
Solà-Morales wrote ‘The Impossible Project of Public Space’ for the catalogue In Favour of Public
Space published to commemorate the tenth anniversary of the Prize. He raised the central ques-
tions about the definition(s) of public space that must be confronted to award such a prize. In do-
ing so, he challenges us to consider the two meta aspects of public space—the design quality of
public space versus the publicness of public space—that have been polarized with the influence
of capital in the contemporary city. Public spaces fortified by capital inevitably deliver a higher
design quality even as they compromise and diminish the publicness of such spaces. The author
urges us to consider the overlaps and confluence of urbanity and public space and argues for the
need for a “material urbanity” where we pay close attention to the civic, aesthetic, functional
and social meanings explicitly expressed by the design of space. De Solà-Morales identifies four
types of public space projects considered for the award: projects that invent new ways of being
public; projects that propose new forms of collectivization; projects that expand the previous
sphere of public space; and, projects which tidy-up and re-order existing spaces. Today, he
writes, designers ought to find new expressions for the idea of public space, of a political place,
and of a possibility of civic identity.

Figure 8.0  Lantern festival in a public cemetery in Cincinnati, Ohio. Photo @ Vikas Mehta.
364  Experiential Dimensions and Evaluation
The tension between community and society, the social and the civic, or intimacy and
solidarity—the Gemeinschaft-Gesellschaft dichotomy—is at the center of the text by Koch
and Latham. The authors attempt to expand the narrative of experience of public space and
publicness beyond the dominant tales of exclusion and encroachment of the commons by
emphasizing the practical possibilities of public space. Not unlike Crawford (see Section 1),
they critique the dominant accounts of public space “becoming increasingly exclusionary,
commercialised, securitised and depoliticised.” The authors argue, instead, for examining
how public space interacts with and plays a role in the routines of everyday life—how
public space constantly transforms and reinvents. They urge us to consider public life (the
ultimate desired product of public space) as a collective grammar of various types of social
actions and interactions. Using examples of shared street design, street markets, and cycling
in London they show readers the value of everyday urbanism enacted in numerous ways
highlighting the domestic qualities of public spaces through, what they call, the micro-
orderings of public life.
The Internet, social media platforms, and all aspects of cyberspace have altered the ex-
perience of publicness and public space. Social media has enabled and strengthened cy-
berspace as the virtual public space for effortless and instant contacts and exchange that
transcends the dichotomy of local-global space. Virtual public space, through its ability
of instant and perpetual connectivity and information sharing is now, in numerous ways,
aiding the activation, use and appropriation of public space. Once dreaded as the demise
of real public space, cyberspace and digital technology have expanded the public square
(see also Section 4). The seamless linking of virtual and physical space now creates a new
typology and delivers a unique experience of publicness. The chapter by Hampton, Livio,
and Goulet examines the impact of wireless Internet use on urban public spaces and how
this new technology is related to processes of social interaction, privatism, and democratic
engagement. Through observations and interviews in parks, plazas, and markets they find
that Internet use within public spaces affords interactions with existing acquaintances that
are more diverse than those associated with mobile phone use. The authors conclude that in
this context, online activities in public spaces, that may seem distracting and disconnected,
do contribute to broader participation in the public sphere and result in higher overall lev-
els of democratic and social engagement than what is afforded by exposure within similar
spaces free of Internet connectivity.
Emerging from the quest to understand and define public space, an important question
has emerged recently. How do we measure and evaluate public space and the publicness of
public space? Since public space itself is multidimensional, it must be examined in ways that
address issues of politics and democracy, sociability, leisure and recreation, economic ex-
change, symbolic value, and beyond. Public space and publicness can be measured through
observations and metrics but the perceptions of the individuals and groups who are (or not)
able to make space public are equally valuable. Synthesizing the literature on public space,
Varna and Tiesdell provide us with a systematic tool to gauge the publicness of public space.
Building on previous work they propose a comprehensive Star Model that measures five
distinct meta dimensions of public space: ownership, control, civility, physical configura-
tion, and animation. The primary purpose of the model is to act as an analytical measure
to compare with more subjective interpretation of publicness of public space but the au-
thors also show its value as a normative tool to achieve desired outcomes that could align
with the publics’ expectations from public spaces. The central question posed by Manuel
De Solà-Morales regarding the definition of public space inherent in the oft paradoxical
situation of the design quality of public space versus the publicness of public space is the
topic of Vikas Mehta’s paper. Addressing the quality of public space as well as its publicness
from an experiential perspective, Mehta proposes five dimensions—inclusiveness, safety,
 Experiential Dimensions and Evaluation  365
comfort, meaningful activities, and pleasurability—to construct a Public Space Index as a
way to empirically evaluate public space. These dimensions require objective and subjective
inputs (observable and perceptual variables) from researchers as well as the public—the users
of the space. With the constant evolution in the management and control of public space,
such an evaluative index can aid in the review and assessment of the performance of critical
aspects of public space over time. The index can aid planning and design practitioners as
well as managers of public spaces and may be used by citizens to determine the quality of
public spaces in their cities to demand definitive changes based on their priorities. Aside
from being useful to the public space researcher, the Public Space Index, working as a tool
to assess the geography of the public realm, can capture the pulse of a society’s cultural and
political attitudes. It can inform the citizens of the condition of equity, securitization, and
individual and group rights in their public realm and ultimately provides a glimpse into the
state of their civil society.

Figure 8.0.1  La Rambla, Barcelona, Spain. Photo © Vikas Mehta.

8.1 The Impossible Project of Public
Space
Manuel de Solà-Morales i Rubió (1939–2012)
Source: De Solà-Morales, M. (2010). “The Impossible Project of Public Space,” in
Carrera, J. et al. (eds.), In Favour of Public Space: Ten Years of the European Prize for
Urban Public Space. Barcelona: CCCB/ACTAR, 24–32.

A deliberation such as this is confronted with a terminological problem: the semantic

­debasement of the term “public space”, which is indiscriminately used for any exercise in
land-filling, transforming or prettifying vacant land. All too often, the category of “public
space” is used without taking into account the requirement of real urban quality that the
term entails. This urbanity is the quality of significant places of collective and political
content in their very material form. “Material urbanity”, the ability of urban material to
express civic, aesthetic, functional and social meanings, is a basic concept when it comes to
defining public space and, hence, intrinsic to the aims of this Prize.
[…]
The pervasive magnitude of such practices, the growing number of projects (whether in
squares and streets, parks, service installations and facilities or other places) would seem to
make it necessary to re-propose a strict notion of public space as a material condition (locus)
of political space.
Civic space is very difficult. Some projects merely reform outmoded spaces which are, on
occasion, of great urban significance, to give them innovative or surprising, subjectively affirm-
ative forms. Others confront new spheres of urban growth in order to procure therein some
expression of public dignity. Still others understand the site as an available empty area, making
the most of the occasion to invent new artifices, installations of a new urban symbology.
Yet, whatever the case and for all these limitations, there appears the indisputable fact of
the high average quality attained in different municipalities by the methodological effort
and technological training of the professionals concerned, the growing attention of public
authorities and the great degree of satisfaction among the citizens with these projects. This
is an extraordinary process of the invention, over 20 years, of a socially and culturally rec-
ognised quasi-discipline.
[…]
Hence, if all urban space is more or less public (and all public space is more or less of or
for private interests), what would be the specificity of what we conventionally call “public
spaces”? What would a Prize (European or otherwise) for “public space” projects be about?
Can we determine which projects count and which ones don’t as such spaces? And once
they are singled out, should the projects be evaluated for the intensity in which they are
“public” (the more “public” a project, the higher the grade), or according to how good the
spaces are (more attractive, more functional, more impressive), or for the degree to which
they incorporate certain critical questions that the contemporary city has not yet managed
to collectivize (traffic, segregation, largeness of scale, sustainability)?
These are questions that are interesting not only for jury members since they also re-
bound on the definition itself, questioning the specific nature of public space and maxi-
mally so when the deliberation is not so much about real public spaces but about “projects”
of would-be real spaces. Does this, then, belong to the jurisdiction of inventiveness, design
 Experiential Dimensions and Evaluation  369
or innovation? Is it formal surprise or thematic modernity that has greater value? Is it diffi-
culty overcome or is it effectiveness of transformation?
To go still further, what is it that constitutes public space as real experience? Over and
above sociological, political and functional reflections, what has just made public space
recognizable is a material fact. A fact where aesthetics is frequently distorted and distorting,
yet where expression and communication pass through a particular material configuration.
The great amount of work carried out in recent years on public spaces, the mushroom-
ing of assignments and projects, the tireless energy of architects and engineers, designers
and artists, landscapers and botanists – all of them set on enhancing scraps of non-built-up
urban land – the ideological discussion and the intellectual strivings towards bestowing
a theoretical status and/or disciplinary entity to these matters, have extraordinarily en-
riched professional practices and heightened the attention of public administrators. Interest
in public space seems to be self-justifying. And this, if exaggerated, can lead to unintended
results. Not only words can lose their sense but the works themselves can too. The number
of interventions, the arbitrariness of the projects, the frequency in space and time, the cop-
ying of cliché models and figures, the fashions and squandering of economic resources can
pervert the original nature of public space as collective space par excellence: space that is not
appropriated for any fad, or author or actor, or any currently prominent politician, a place
that is available for open interpretation and an intersection of interests.
Public space or show room? The very valuable collection of projects that CCCB [Centre
de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona] has been putting together over the years, as with
the European Archive for Urban Public Space, can simultaneously give rise to contradictory
feelings of admiration and misgivings. This is a catalogue of excellence that permits one
to discover what terms – old and new – have captured the attention of administrators and
project designers, and what examples have been giving rise to prototypes and sequences.
[…]
It would appear that the proliferation of these sorts of jobs is tending to bring about a
new form of autonomous professional practice which sees the precinct where the work
is to be done as a free range in which zero-elevation architecture might be invented, an
unconstrained exercise in which – relatively – low-cost forms and images can be explored
in freedom that could not exist in construction that is constantly submitted to the much
stricter requirements of the programme, costs, functions, structure and client.
In dealing with public space, one finds that it may be the leading issue of urban form
or it can be mere anecdote. It depends on the scale (not the measure) in which we look at
it. Public space as a combined structure of different streets and squares is the essence, the
substance of coexistence, interaction and the redundancy that shared life brings. Designing
the structure of spaces for the mobility, leisure and representation that link spaces of activity
is what traditional urban planning is all about. In a certain sense, thinking that the quality
and form of shared spaces is prior to and more important than pinpointing particular func-
tions is now a methodological option that is rarely taken. Yet it is not the scale of the urban
whole that we usually have in mind when we speak of “public spaces”. To the extent that we
keep circumscribing the idea of public space to a precise, delimited place, we are losing our
perspective on it as a basic urban structure and giving priority instead to the singularity –
morphological or environmental – of each site as an autonomous urban lot, as an occasion
for independent formalisation. Hence, the many commissions for designing large or small
public spaces viewed as specific objects turn into drawings of a closed lot, self-referencing
designs frequently with an arbitrary perimeter. The site is thus converted into a platform
of experimentation, a show room in which to play with paving and lamp posts, slopes and
corners, with the utmost independence.
[…]
370  Manuel de Solà-Morales i Rubió
After all, at bottom, almost all the projects are works of repaving, more or less initiatives
of replacing the urban skin, a surface that is in itself a deep structure. Paving, with ground
as support and link, has an extensive and not a singular condition and proclaims the central
role of interdependence. Public spaces will be just that when they construct the combined
system of urban space and not merely a closed work. When they are defining elements of a
model of the city without perimeters, rather than zero elevation architecture. When they
become the representation of mobility, coexistence and conflict rather than stylised, neatly
resolved landscape.
Scrutiny of the projects present in the European Archive for Urban Public Space sug-
gested to me that they should be sorted according to their stance as proposals, their meth-
odological pretensions. It is not easy, I believe, to produce the usual typological, thematic
or scale-oriented classifications. The precise intention behind the project, which is not easy
to divine either, can help us, however, to advance in critical knowledge of public space
practice. Four types may be distinguished here:

1 Tidying-up projects: there are many projects (the greater part) that re-order spaces on
top of themselves, making them more useful, more attractive and more novel. They
respond to political intentions of visible investment, which are specific to more difficult
or more representative spaces. They set out to bring them up to date and spruce them
up. Rarely do these projects convey any content other than a good makeup job. The
evaluation to be made in this case is primarily functional.
2 Projects that expand the previous sphere of public space and that, even while sticking
to known typological guidelines, set about designing new areas, different in scale and
location, either because of topographical difficulties or thematic complexity. This is
basic urban planning activity. These works have a technical value.
3 Projects that collectivize. These projects, the most incisive, accept the strategic goal
of creating public space with private ingredients, on the basis of an understanding of
collective space (public+private) as a defining substance of what is urban. Explicitly or
otherwise, such projects take the view that urbanising means collectivising, and they
may have a lot or a little in terms of form, but they do not shape. Rather, they are ac-
tions of mental strategy. In their intimate sense, they have a political value.
4 Projects that invent. These are the few initiatives that are born of an ill-defined occa-
sion, without any specific programme, without purpose and without clear limits. They
propose uncommon images on the basis of inventing a type of public space for which,
precisely, there is no type. It is the invention of form and programme at the same time
and means accepting the risk – of error, or failure – as a premise of planning. The value
here is artistic.

However, it is also necessary to stipulate that not all public space entails urban quality just
because it has been successfully organized. A project can value the characteristics of the
place and can express landscaping or utilitarian qualities without managing to give material
form to any notion of urbanity.
[…]
All public space projects are precisely that in the sense of public conception and adminis-
tration. But not all of them constitute spaces of urbanity in the civic, political and figurative
senses that go with the good city. Some are spaces for the public and others are urban public
spaces. Public space combines “urban things”, physical materials that are able to make per-
ceptible an idea of the city. Hegel said that beauty is the perceptible expression of an idea.
And this is the grandeur and difficulty of public spaces. Ground and mud, cobblestones and
slabs, asphalt and concrete, wood and leaves on the trees shift here from being generic to
 Experiential Dimensions and Evaluation  371
components for making urban quality a material thing. Walls, land, lamp posts, doorways,
ramps, vehicles, corners and crannies establish the sensations of the mind that bring people
into relation.
The city, made of conflict and solidarity, stability and dynamism, connection and dis-
tance, appears in the material condition of public space. Over and above sociological, polit-
ical and functional considerations, public space imposes itself as a material fact, a substratum
joining matter and idea, trying to ensure that it turns out to be beautiful.
[…]
The urban nature of urban materials also lies in the sense of touch. Even more than in
sight, perhaps. In public space, personal experience, the route and comfort are fundamen-
tal. Walking on a hard or soft surface, stone or sand, on corrugated or slippery ground
brings about very different sorts of contact between body and brain. The idea is transmitted
through the different sensations of the material used. And the proximity of the hands to
railings, walls and benches makes us experience, more than in any other sense, the character
of space. If by means of sight we understand shaping, size and setting, by touch we experi-
ence identity, treatment and character.
In the contemporary city, we can no longer see public spaces with reference to a notion of
urban, functional or semantic structure, as we did in the years of structuralism but, like the
Greeks, we need to read civilized space as a topological, tactical order. We must go beyond
landscaping decorativeness and recognize the warp and weft of materials, which is what the
proto-modern Gottfried Semper studied and called for.
In the thinking of the 1970s and the following years, little was said about public space ex-
cept, perhaps, the notion of centrality as the symbolic locus of life in common. Henri Lefe-
bvre, who showed great foresight at the time, criticised the city of the Modern Movement,
saying that “la ville est du trans-fonctionnel durable”, already seeking rupture in the paradigm
of structure as the idea of a city. Today, perhaps, leaving aside all the many tricky metaphors
used as an excuse for a project, one must seek instead an idea (of public space, of a bit of
city, of urban quality, of a political place) in the absence, precisely, of symbolic images, or
picturesque novelty (all, alas, globalized) and a possibility of civic identity in the dissolution
of the individual place in the collective milieu, in pure citizenship.

Figure 8.0.2  L ondon Cycling Campaign stall, 14 September 2015, Orford Road, London. Photo ©
Sludgegulper. Source: Wikimedia Commons, Creative Commons CC-BY-2.0.
8.2 Inhabiting Cities, Domesticating
Public Space: Observing Change in
the Public Life of Contemporary
London
Regan Koch and Alan Latham
Source: Koch, R. and Latham, A. (2014). “Inhabiting Cities, Domesticating Public
Space: Observing Change in the Public Life of Contemporary London,” in Mada-
nipour, A. and Knierbein, S. (eds.), Public Space and the Challenges of Transformation in
Europe. London: Routledge, 144–210.

Thinking differently, the everyday domestication of public space

To attend more carefully to how public life in cities is put together, we think that urban
scholarship needs to be more expansive in how it thinks about publicness. With this in
mind, we would like to offer some alternatives to the usual framings of exclusion, en-
croachment, and claim-making. We want to explore how certain kinds of spaces come
to afford a home in the city. In focusing on this notion of home making, we want to link
into a diverse tradition of urban scholarship concerned with the practical possibilities of
public space—how they can foster mutually beneficial ways of living together in cities.
These include the progressive tradition with its notion of ‘civic housekeeping’ ( Jackson,
2001), the activist-scholarship of writers such as Jane Jacobs (1961) and William H. Whyte
(1980, 1988) concerned with the micro-orderings of public life, and urban designers like
Hans Monderman (Vanderbilt, 2008) and Jan Gehl (1987, 2010) who attend to the role that
objects of different kinds play in the fostering of everyday urban life. It is also to connect
with the more recent scholarship of urbanists such as Richard Sennett (1994, 2010), Gary
Bridge (2005), and Ash Amin (2006, 2008, 2012) who, in various different ways, theorise
public life as a collective grammar of social interaction. We also want to argue that think-
ing about the necessarily domestic qualities of public spaces makes it imperative to think
carefully about how such spaces—and the social action that occurs within them—come to
be domesticated.
Within critical urban studies, domestication has primarily been used pejoratively. It is
synonymous with words like taming and pacification as a way of critiquing changes seen to
corrode public life (see Atkinson, 2003; Jackson, 1998; Munoz, 2003; Zukin, 1995, 2009).
In other disciplines, however, domestication is viewed in a more pragmatic light. Studies
in anthropology (Cassidy & Mullin, 2007; Ingold, 2000; Vitebsky, 2006), media and tech-
nology (Berker, Hartmann, Punie, & Ward, 2006; Silverstone & Hirsch, 1992), social his-
tory (Kasson, 1978; Thomas de la Pena, 2003), and post-socialism (Creed, 1998; Stenning,
Smith, Rochovska, & Swieek, 2010), for example, share a common conceptualisation of
domestication as a process through which certain kinds of (variably) beneficial relation-
ships between humans and other things—be they objects, sets of ideas, or other forms of
life—take shape. In this sense, domestication is not a normative concept, but an analytical
one. It provides insights into how relationships that might at first be alien or novel evolve
in various indeterminate ways to become familiar, ordinary, routine, and useful. We think
the concept of domestication can usefully be extended to scholarship on urban public space
 Experiential Dimensions and Evaluation  375
precisely because it draws attention to this kind of becoming mundane. It frames the analy-
sis in terms of the social practices that populate public space and how these practices are en-
meshed with particular objects, materials, and material configurations. Thus, domestication
might equally be deployed to inform understandings of broad social transformations across
cities, or as a practical conceptual aid in matters of urban design or management.
So, how exactly might the concept of domestication help to make sense of public spaces?
We would like to suggest three heuristics—inhabitation, materiality, atmosphere—that are
helpful in organising our understandings of how processes of domestication are enfolded
into the everyday public life of cities.
The first heuristic, inhabitation, refers to corporeal (and corporeally extended) forms
of action and routine activity that populate urban public space. It speaks to the fact that as
publics we are embodied beings-in-action. Our regular movements through the city, our
day-to-day activities, our relatively unthinking habits of interaction are largely what urban
public spaces are taken up with. As Amin notes:

The movement of humans and non-humans in public spaces is not random but guided
by habit, purposeful orientation, and the instructions of objects and signs. The repeti-
tion of these rhythms results in the conversion of public space into a patterned ground
that proves essential for actors to make sense of the space, their place within it and their
way through it. Such patterning is the way in which a public space is domesticated,
not only as a social map of the possible and the permissible, but also as an experience
of freedom.
(2008: 12)

Spaces become public not only because laws or discourses recognise them as such, but
through all sorts of corporeal, largely routinized practices. In public space, we are walk-
ing, working, driving, sitting, cycling, resting, and riding transport. Some of us are
at work, others at leisure. And in a whole range of ways our gestures, actions, use of
objects, spacing, and movement amongst one another have collective effects (Bridge,
2005; ­L aurier & Philo, 2006). Our analyses of urban public space can be strengthened by
attending more carefully to how forms of inhabitation are woven together, and how the
presence of certain practices offer affordances for some people and activities and not for
others (Thrift, 2005; Whyte, l980).
Second, we can think about the domestication of public spaces in terms of their mate-
riality. The concept of materiality focuses attention on how the materials that comprise
public spaces—the objects, surfaces, architectures, hard and soft technologies, amenities,
and provisions—act into the life of a space. To think about materiality is to recognise that
materials are not mere substances, but rather ‘transductive field[s] in which physical, techni-
cal and affective realities precipitate’ (MacKenzie, 2002, p. 35). The matter that surrounds
us thus ‘matters’ depending not just on how it is arranged, but how we encounter or relate
to it, how it works through or upon us, and how it generates feelings, moods, behaviours,
problems, and responses.
Materialities are constitutive of the types of public action and address, as well as the
collective actors (publics) that come to form relationships within a space (Degen et al.,
2008; cf. Iveson, 2007), and often in ways that are unanticipated. We can better understand
public space in a multidimensional sense by thinking through how different materialities
act together, are accounted for or overlooked, to generate particular material ecologies and
affordances for domestication.
Third, we need to consider that public spaces swirl with a whole range of relational in-
tensities or atmospheres. Thinking in terms of atmosphere is a way of trying to attend to the
376  Regan Koch and Alan Latham
prevailing moods, feelings, emotions, and meanings that collectively shape the experiences
within a given site. It is about recognising that many aspects of domestication—how forms
of exchange take place, the way rules of acceptable behaviour are established, how feelings
of inclusion or exclusion are produced—are in large part constituted through forms of ex-
pression independent of or beyond individual human subjectivity (Bissell, 2010; Dewsbury,
Harrison, Rose, & Wylie, 2002; Latham & McCormack, 2004; Massumi, 2002). They are
about the ways in which public spaces can be experienced as crowded, empty, festive, mun-
dane, dangerous, inviting, and so on. The relationships people come to develop with public
spaces take place within these atmospheric contexts. They shape the extent to which spaces
and practices are made routine and familiar. They can also help to prefigure expressions of
the common good, of a baseline sense of democracy, and of the pleasures and potentials of
cosmopolitan urban life (Amin, 2012).
We recognise that as so far presented these ideas may appear rather abstract. So, let us
turn to some specific examples to illustrate how the heuristics of inhabitation, materiality,
and atmosphere can orient our readings of the changing shape of some of contemporary
London’s public spaces.
[…]

Shared space street designs, new foundations for street life

Some of London’s newest streets are missing many taken-for-granted forms of ­demarcation—
street markings, traffic signs, stop lights, guardrails, and even kerbs. These omissions are a
deliberate design strategy, part of a set of ‘shared space’ principles first developed in H
­ olland
by traffic engineer Hans Monderman (Hamilton-Baillie, 2008; Vanderbilt, 2008). The
most high-profile example in London is Exhibition Road in South Kensington. Aside from
the street’s tremendous width, Exhibition Road’s most striking feature is its paving. Clad in
a checkerboard of granite slabs, there is little delineation between what is meant to be the
domain of motorised traffic and what might be used by pedestrians or cyclists. The design
concept echoes classical notions of public space as the site of face-to-face interaction: The
very point is to force drivers to interact with and therefore show responsibility towards
non-motorised users of the street. This approach is a radical shift in how traffic safety has
been typically framed by London’s planners. Much of the city is currently defined by a
chaos of traffic engineering, the product of decades of incremental interventions to the
streetscape: signs, lights, rails, bumps, and bollards all jostling to direct drivers and pedes-
trians through the city. These thickets of engineering clutter are the product of two parallel
ideas. First, that to keep pedestrians safe from vehicular traffic they must be kept separate
from it; and second, that the orderly flow of traffic should be not be disrupted by the pres-
ence of pedestrians. In these respects, London’s streets are generally effective, but they are
also frequently inhospitable to pedestrians. Navigating the city on foot—never mind by
wheelchair or stroller—is often about getting through an unpleasant, noisy, crowded maze
of narrow footpaths, pelican crossings, and guardrails.
Shared space schemes like Exhibition Road, or Seven Dials in Covent Garden, thus
involve an innovative reordering of the materiality of streets as the domain of automobile
traffic. They are not about removing cars, vans, or buses from streets, but about reorienting
their relationship with pedestrians. They force drivers to view pedestrians as having an
equal claim to street space, and they prompt an ongoing awareness of the risks generated
through the presence of motorised traffic. They are also the most visible examples of a
whole series of new developments and experiments across London aimed at engineering
streets and junctions to better accommodate a plurality of demands. Trafalgar Square has
been pedestrianized; Oxford Circus has been redesigned with an enhanced Shibuya-style
 Experiential Dimensions and Evaluation  377
diagonal crossing; High Street Kensington has been substantially decluttered. In examples
such as these, transport planners and designers are thinking very seriously and in novel ways
about material objects and their arrangement to shape interactions in public space. Im-
portantly, these interactions are consciously reconfigured as personal interactions between
morally responsible agents. As experiments in domestication, they are about allowing the
multiple publics that travel the city’s spaces to negotiate how they do so situationally rather
than letting traffic engineers or the brute force of vehicular transportation predetermine
this in advance. They are about trying to produce more pleasant, accessible, and democratic
ways of configuring London’s public spaces.
These changes have been controversial. Many people find shared space principles discon-
certing and dangerous. Exhibition Road’s redevelopment took nearly a decade and involved
extensive consultations and debates about safety. There was a lawsuit demanding conces-
sions for persons with visual impairments, which along with demands for resident parking,
compromised a pure application of the shared space philosophy. Conflicts such as these are a
reminder that the politics of public space are often about rather mundane details, competing
demands, and decision-making processes that take place away from more obvious sites of
public life. Importantly, they also highlight that laying foundations for better public spaces
are about more than the material. In terms of street configuration, for example, they are
also about the legal and the regulatory—about things like road codes, liability law, vehicle
licensing and registration, and speed limits.
They are also about atmospheres and feelings that shape perceptions about risk, trust, and
appropriate behaviour. Sometimes they are about making the unimaginable something that
can be experienced or experimented with. Efforts to redesign London’s streets illustrate
how altering the configuration of public space is far from a straightforward process. It is
often about small, incremental changes that can sometimes raise rather profound questions.
In this case, the question is about what and whom streets are for, and how best to organise
them.

Street markets, new invitations to inhabit old public spaces

London has had street markets for as long as it has been a city. Some, like Borough and
Smithfield, have run continuously since the Middle Ages […] [M]any of London’s boroughs
have come to view markets as strategic tools for enlivening public spaces, often with the
broader aim of generating economic activity. It is possible to read these changes as the con-
tinuous commercialisation of the urban landscape. However, markets can play a vital role in
providing invitations for public life to come together (Watson, 2009; Watson & Studdert,
2006), for publics to cohere through collective routines of inhabitation.
Take the example of The Prince of Wales Junction in West London. Long a notorious
crime hotspot, the junction was redeveloped through a local partnership which placed the
new Maida Hill Market at the centre of broader changes in how the space was designed,
managed, and policed. Prior to its redevelopment, the Junction had possessed a public life,
albeit one primarily focused on street drinking, drug dealing, and prostitution. The intro-
duction of the market offered a range of new ways for people to inhabit the Junction. It in-
volved setting up new patterns of use: the thrice weekly running of the market, the routines
of people breakfasting or lunching, of residents reading the morning paper over a cup of
tea, doing the Saturday grocery shopping, and so on. The materials and objects assembled
to facilitate these desired changes also acted in some surprising ways to bring new publics
together. The moveable chairs and tables at the centre of the market, for example, were not
just available for market customers. They were also used by residents from a nearby care
home, by the families of traders, and by men reading The Racing Times before heading
378  Regan Koch and Alan Latham
across the street to the bookmaker. Atmospheres previously marked by the presence of illicit
activity were altered by new patterns of foot traffic, routines of traders setting up and taking
down stalls, of residents browsing, buying, eating, socialising, or just people watching. In
short, we could say that the Junction became domesticated—became useful, familiar, trust
worth, as a better kind of public space for most people.
[…]
Our point is not that new street markets are inherently good or bad. Rather, we think
that they are interesting for die new arrays of practical activities and furnishings and they
bring to public spaces. They can help to reimagine even the most struggling of neighbour-
hoods as potentially hosting a richer variety of offerings, and they provide a smaller-scale,
locally based alternative to the seemingly insatiable growth of large supermarkets and shop-
ping malls. As possibilities for configuring the consumption needs of urban inhabitants,
they are entangled—as we have seen from the Maida Hill example—in the continuous
invention and reinvention of a city’s public life in ways that allow for experimentations,
innovations, and improvements in how people live together in cities.

Cycling in London, new forms of mobile publics-ness

London is not an easy place to be a cyclist. In common perception and everyday practice,
the city’s streets were long given over to motorised traffic. Yet in the past decade, cycling
has seen a remarkable renaissance, and not because of some substantial shift in public policy.
[…] The growth of biking as a form of everyday mobility has occurred as a broad range
of people have discovered it to be a practical, environmentally friendly, inexpensive, and
enjoyable way to get around. The widespread and visible growth of cycling not only gives
the practice a greater material presence, it acts as a kind of invitation for others to cycle.
Fold-up bikes can be seen under the arms of suited city workers as they board the Tube;
fixed-gear bikes have become a must-have accessory for east London hipsters; bike shops
and ‘cycle cafes’ have been popping up around the city; and the London Cycle Campaign
has more than 11,000 members.
[…]
What we want to highlight that is not simply that bicycles have been added to the mix of
London’s traffic, but that cyclists have become involved in domesticating the city in two dis-
tinct ways: first, by way of practice, and second, by way of politics. In terms of practice, the
material presence and routine habits of cyclists means that bikes have become understood
as an ordinary, useful, and routine (if not controversial) part of the everyday urban fabric of
London. They are objects that planners, architects, developers, property managers, business
owners, and landlords have to reckon with, or face pressure to do so. Cyclists are people
with whom automobile drivers can expect to share the road. In terms of politics, what is
notable is the clear emergence of a cycling public, a diverse body politic asserting its pres-
ence in London’s public sphere in various ways. Following John Dewey, we can understand
this cycling public in a processual sense, as constituted through all those who are affected by
the indirect consequences of transactions such to the extent that it is deemed necessary to
have those consequences systematically cared for (1927, 15–16). Publics thus come together
as a relatively spontaneous form of collective action that attempt to meet particular needs or
assert particular demands, and not necessarily in coordination with the state (Davidson &
Entrikin, 2005). We can see this in the small, loosely organised, and sometimes ephemeral
collectives London cyclists have been engaged in: the rise of cycling clubs and coalitions,
cycling cafes, cycling fashion shows, critical mass bike rides, bike repair workshops, and
online discussion forums. We can also see cycling moving into more formal channels of
municipal politics. Debates about the public provision for cyclists were central to both the
recent London mayoral elections of 2008 and 2012. Strikingly, the debates did not centre
 Experiential Dimensions and Evaluation  379
on whether candidates were pro- or anti-cycling. All candidates professed an enthusiasm for
cycling and vigorously courted the ‘cycling vote’. […]

Conclusion
[…]
Positioned against grand narratives of urban transformation, new and shifting forms of
inhabiting public life might seem quite mundane. Yet considered in the aggregate, they
are important. In thinking about what are apparently smaller stories and practical changes,
the grand narratives about the transformations happening in our cites often start to reveal
themselves as less coherent, unified, or stable as they are sometimes made out to be. A great
deal of the time, cities like London possess a remarkable continuity of form; changes in
their public life are often subtle and easy to overlook. For all the attention that sweeping
transformations and big mega-projects get, cities and public life are primarily defined by
small adaptations, reinventions, and reinterpretations. We have been arguing for the use-
fulness of domestication as a concept for interpreting urban public space because it provides
an expansive set of analytics through which we might attend to subtle processes of change
and gradual transformation. To think in terms of inhabitation is to attend more closely to
how, exactly, people populate public spaces. The concept of materiality focuses attention on
how particular materials and relations between them provide affordances for some kinds of
inhabitation and not others. Atmosphere helps in thinking about intensities of feeling and
emotion that swirl through cities; they can imbue public spaces with a sense of collective
well-being, but also with a sense of unease or even outrage. As an alternative approach to
framing analyses of public space in terms of normative concerns for exclusion, encroach-
ment, and claim-making, the concept of domestication offers a set of heuristics that can be
put to use in attending to these matters. It can help us make sense of many of the practical
problems and potentials right in front of us as we go about urban life.

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Figure 8.0.3  Love Park, John F. Kennedy Plaza, Philadelphia, PA. Photo © Vikas Mehta.
8.3 The Social Life of Wireless Urban
Spaces: Internet Use, Social
Networks, and the Public Realm
Keith N. Hampton, Oren Livio and Lauren Sessions Goulet
Source: Hampton, K., Livio, O. and Goulet, L. S. (2010). “The Social Life of Wire-
less Urban Spaces: Internet Use, Social Networks, and the Public Realm.” Journal of
Communication 60, 701–722.

Internet access in public parks, plazas, markets, and streets has been made possible through
the proliferation of broadband wireless Internet in the form of municipal and community
wi-fi (e.g., NYC Wireless) and advanced mobile phone networks (e.g., 3G). The experience
of wireless Internet use in the public realm contrasts with traditional wired Internet use,
which is confined primarily to the private realm of the home and the parochial realm of the
workplace […] This type of use carries with it significant implications for urban planning,
the structure of community, and the nature of democracy.
[…]
During the last 2 decades, the structure of people’s social networks has changed signif-
icantly. The interpersonal component of the public sphere has become increasingly pri-
vate. Participation in activities that are likely to be socially, culturally, and ideologically
cross-cutting (such as voluntary organizations) are in decline (Putnam, 2000). […] People’s
closest social ties increasingly consist of densely knit networks that center on the home,
with fewer strong ties to more loosely coupled networks. This trend toward privatism­
­(Fischer, 1992) supports cohesion within tightly knit personal networks, but sacrifices inter-
action with more diverse social ties. Dense networks provide generalized social support and
are high in reciprocity, but they can also be repressive and tend to be culturally and ideolog-
ically homogeneous (McPherson, Smith-Lovin, & Cook, 2001). Close homophilous ties are
also the first stop for social comparison and validation in attitude formation (Cross, Rice, &
Parker, 2001; Erickson, 1997). The likelihood of attitudinal similarity, reinforcement, and
conversion among strong, tightly bound, homophilous ties means that these ties are also
likely to be the last stop in opinion formation. Although other foci of activity remain im-
portant for some (mainly the neighborhood and workplace—the parochial realm) and offer
more diversity than the private realm (Mutz, 2006), such spaces are still more likely than
the public realm to be a focus of activity for those with common interests, lifestyles, back-
grounds, behaviors, and beliefs (Marks, 1994).
[…]
In urban public spaces, the mobile phone is frequently lamented as an unpleasant dis-
traction for strangers and colocated companions (Katz, 2006). […] The resulting inter-
action space resembles other temporary private or parochial “bubbles” that protrude into
the public realm, such as weddings, birthday parties, and reunions held in public parks
(Lofland, 1998). These bubbles provide the individual with a space of comfort, familiarity,
and security within what is primarily a realm of strangers (Ito, Okabe, & Anderson, 2008).
However, with the mobile phone, such bubbles need not be temporary. They can be used
 Experiential Dimensions and Evaluation  385
habitually to insulate the individual from the social diversity of urban public spaces and
completely remove the public realm from everyday experience that provide access to mes-
sages and people that are absent from the intimate networks of the private realm.
Mobile bubbles of private and parochial interaction within the public realm erase or
significantly curtail the potential for interaction between strangers and mobile users. These
users who were once a source of social diversity and a potential point of interaction become
little more than the microcosm of a spectacle (Rousseau, 1758/1960; Sennett, 1977) […]
This leads to the presence of silent spectators rather than potential participants. The mobile
phone thus changes the character of urban public spaces not only for the mobile user, but
for all participants in that space.

New media in the public realm

What differentiates wireless Internet use from traditional mobile phone use is the po-
tential for access to a full range of applications and experiences associated with home-
and work-based Internet use. […] Like the mobile phone, traditional wired Internet use
has been linked to more frequent communication with intimate social relations (Boase,
­Horrigan, Wellman, & Rainie, 2006), but there is also evidence that participation in some
types of online activities contributes to larger and more diverse social networks (Ellison,
­Steinfield, & Lampe, 2007; Hampton et al., in press).
This study examines the impact of wireless Internet use on urban public spaces, Internet
users, and others who inhabit those spaces. […] Qualitative and quantitative observational
methods, as well as survey methods, are used to examine a variety of urban public spaces in
four cities in two countries.
[…]

Discussion
Are wireless urban spaces a part of the public realm?
This study evaluated the role of Internet use in urban public spaces from within this frame; to
examine the social implications of wireless Internet use in terms of its influence on the social
diversity experienced by Internet users, companions, and strangers who share the public realm.
An urban public space is a public realm only to the extent that the space offers: (a) a low
density of acquaintanceship and (b) exposure to social diversity.
For wireless Internet users, the number of colocated ties in urban public spaces was low:
only a minority was in colocated groups, and when groups were present, the number of com-
panions was typically small. Yet, for wireless Internet users the number of copresent ties was
high. That is, although they were not physically surrounded by acquaintances, they were in
direct contact through e-mail, instant messaging, and other social tools, such as blogging
and social networking websites.
When online and offline contact were combined, the number of acquaintances wi-fi
users maintained while in urban public spaces was very high. However, the intimacy of
those acquaintances was mixed. Those colocated ties that accompanied wireless Internet
users were not typical of those found in the private realm; they were predominantly friends
and workmates, not kin. In addition, the extensity of e-mail and IM contact afforded by
the Internet diverged from the tele-mediated contact afforded by the mobile phone, in
that there was considerable role diversity. Moreover, other dominant activities engaged in
by wireless Internet users online, such as using social networking websites and blogging,
are associated with maintaining and forming large and diverse social networks. Density of
386  Keith N. Hampton et al.
acquaintanceship is a function of both size and intimacy. If the intimacy and number of
acquaintances in urban public spaces afforded by mobile phone use can be characterized as
resembling the closeness of a family dinner, the breadth of connectivity afforded by wireless
Internet use more closely resembles that of a large wedding party.
Wireless Internet use within urban public spaces affords interactions with existing ac-
quaintances that are broader and more diverse than the private “bubbles” of interaction
characterized by mobile phone use. At the same time, although the density of acquaint-
anceship is not so extreme that it resembles the private realm, wireless Internet use in public
provides enough familiarity among copresent actors that it resembles the “home territory”
of the parochial realm, in that people are surrounded by others with whom they share much
in common.
The diversity of social ties maintained by wireless Internet users is high, but these users
are not exposed to the same level of social diversity within places as other participants in
urban public spaces. Wireless Internet users tend to shelter themselves in areas within public
spaces that are less populated and less active than the space as a whole. The “heads-down”
nature of devices that support this technology suggests that users are less attentive to their
surroundings than users of any other media, including book readers with a similar posture.
This tendency toward private activities on screen over public activities in place is amplified
when accompanied by colocated acquaintances. Similarly, in response to place-based stim-
uli, such as a sudden loud noise, wireless Internet users were found to be more attentive to
their surroundings than mobile phone users, but less attentive than those using portable
music players, reading a book, or using a PDA or portable gaming device. The outward
appearance of wireless Internet users was also more likely to be one of “frustration,” “ten-
sion,” and “seriousness,” when compared with those using any other media. This appear-
ance made Internet users less approachable by some—the homeless and panhandlers—but
also by those engaged in the time-honored practice of distributing informational flyers, a
media unique to urban public spaces. The reduced contact with “undesirables” may obvi-
ously appeal to those who wish to sweep them from public visibility, but it also represents
a reduction in cross-class exposure of the type so aptly described in Charles Baudelaire’s
“The Eyes of the Poor” (1864/2008)—avoidance and segregation of the have-nots by
the haves within public spaces. The tendency for reduced exposure to surroundings was
modified only by direct social contact with strangers (other than “undesirables”). The
serendipity or frequency of chance encounters experienced by wireless Internet users
resembled that of book readers and was markedly higher than observations of those us-
ing a mobile phone or portable music player. Thus, with the exception of serendipitous
encounters, the level of social diversity to which wireless Internet users were exposed
within urban public spaces was typically less than that of most, with the possible excep-
tion of those using mobile phones.
Findings reveal that Internet use affords both a high density of acquaintanceship and re-
duced exposure to social diversity within urban public spaces. Wireless Internet use makes
existing social networks even more portable and readily accessible than what is afforded by
the mobile phone. However, wireless Internet use affords interactions that are more exten-
sive than the small, intimate, private sphere of the mobile phone. This leads to more diverse
social interaction with a larger segment of existing networks than is typical of mobile phone
use. Yet, within urban public spaces even this level of social familiarity is inconsistent with
the public realm. In addition, the activities associated with wireless Internet use reduce the
ability of urban public spaces to afford exposure to social diversity for Internet users, be-
cause they are simply less attentive to their surroundings. It is also possible that the spatial
patterns of wireless Internet use, through clustering of activity within specific areas, reduce
the opportunity for interaction and exposure to social diversity for non-Internet users who
 Experiential Dimensions and Evaluation  387
share the same space. However, this tendency was observed within one field site, but it was
a result of site-specific issues related to urban design and the type of wi-fi users attracted to
that place. Therefore, although wireless Internet users are, to some extent, excluded from
the public realm, for other urban inhabitants, public spaces do not become less of a public
realm as a result of a wireless infrastructure. This is unlike public spaces where people are
surrounded by dense mobile phone use and suffer reduced opportunity for interaction as a
result.

Will wireless Internet use reshape the use of urban public spaces?
The influence of wi-fi use on urban public spaces is uneven and heavily influenced by the
character of the space. Some public spaces are more likely to experience heavy wi-fi use
than others. The popularity of a site for wireless users is determined by the role of repu-
tation, free wi-fi, pre-existing population density, urban design, surveillance/harassment,
and local culture. […]
Our observations suggest that those public spaces that are successful, that is, they benefit
from a good urban design and a pre-existing population of users, are most likely to attract
wi-fi use. Indeed, many wi-fi users are new users of urban public spaces, and pre-­existing
users of a public space become more frequent visitors as a result of wi-fi availability. How-
ever, we cannot definitively conclude that the availability of a wireless infrastructure at-
tracts new participants to urban public spaces. Likely, there is a modest effect, but probably
many of those we interviewed were at a stage in their life (young, single adults) when they
would have begun to inhabit urban public spaces with more regularity, regardless of the
wireless infrastructure. A wi-fi infrastructure by itself will not populate an urban public
space, nor will it revitalize urban public spaces that are in decline as a result of poor design
or other factors.
The composition of wi-fi users in urban public spaces is far from diverse: They are young,
single, well educated, and predominantly male. If anything, social inequality in urban pub-
lic spaces may increase by the addition of users who are exceptionally privileged in human,
social, and financial capital [W]i-fi activities do not significantly disrupt urban public spaces
for other people. There is, in fact, something of a paradox: wireless Internet use represents
yet another diverse activity within urban public spaces, like book reading, picnicking, and
“undesirables.” At the same time, participation in this activity largely precludes participa-
tion in the public realm.

The public sphere and wireless Internet use

Perhaps the most striking finding of this study relates to the types of activities participated
in by Internet users while online and in urban public spaces. Although urban public spaces
are not a public realm for Internet users, findings indicate that the activities engaged in by
Internet users contribute to broader participation in the public sphere. Wireless Internet us-
ers found in urban public spaces were embedded in large, diverse social networks. While in
urban public spaces, their online activities were directed at maintaining those networks—
networks described as an extension of the parochial realm. They were heavily involved in
e-mail and instant message exchanges and were using social networking websites; a sub-
stantial number were consuming online news and political information. Access to news and
political information, in concert with interpersonal communication with networks of both
homophilous and heterophilous ties, represents many of the variables commonly equated
with ideal participation in the public sphere. This may generate positive outcomes related
to the quality of opinion formation and political participation.
388  Keith N. Hampton et al.
The online activities of wireless Internet users may provide more opportunity for delib-
eration and broader discursive participation than the casual, fleeting exposure offered by
the public realm. The availability of ubiquitous wireless Internet access may allow people
to renegotiate time to consume a broader range of news and political information online
than they otherwise would. It may also facilitate communication within existing social
networks. The character of these networks is not that of the closed, inward looking private
realm or the truly diverse and broadly reaching public realm, but somewhere in-between.
The informal interactions of the parochial realm, whether centered on the workplace
(Mutz, 2006), the neighborhood (Hampton, 2007), or communicative practices—like the
Internet—that allow for the maintenance of overlapping networks, may better balance op-
position and like-mindedness to maximize tolerance, deliberation, and democratic engage-
ment than exposure to provocative and contested public settings. Indeed, for some segments
of the population, the public realm may be a setting of extreme provocation and opposition.
Middle-class youth, raised in the suburbs and accustomed to a “Disneyfied” main street
(Zukin, 1995), may feel entirely alienated in the urban public realm. The finding that
young adults, who are, in general, less civically engaged than previous generations (Delli
Carpini, 2000), use wireless connectivity in urban public spaces to communicate with
broad reaching networks and to consume and create information, suggests that an infra-
structure for wireless Internet connectivity within urban public spaces may have unantici-
pated and positive consequences for participation in the public sphere—including political
and diverse social engagement—beyond what could have previously been afforded by urban
public spaces that are free of Internet connectivity.

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Figure 8.0.4  Bryant Park, New York City. Photo © Miodrag Mitrašinović.
8.4 Assessing the Publicness of
Public Space: The Star Model of
Publicness
Georgiana Varna and Steve Tiesdell
Source: Varna, G. and Tiesdell, S. (2010). “Assessing the Publicness of Public Space:
The Star Model of Publicness.” Journal of Urban Design 15(4), 579–598.

This synthesis of the public space literature leads to the identification of five meta dimen-
sions of publicness: ownership, control, civility, physical configuration and animation. Each
dimension ranges from ‘more public’ to ‘less public’. Although meaning, and indeed power,
is not discussed as a specific dimension of publicness, it informs and affects the perception of
the five dimensions (i.e., the sense of publicness). There is a return to the issue of meaning
in the conclusion of this paper.

(1 ) Ownership. Ownership refers to a place’s legal status. Marcuse (2005, p. 778) offers a
scale of six levels of legal ownership on a spectrum from public to private ownership,
and, for further differentiation, considers function and the place’s use:

• Public ownership/public function/public use (street, square).

• Public ownership/public function/administrative use.
• Public ownership/public function/private use (e.g., space leased to commercial estab-
lishments, cafe terrace).
• Private ownership/public function/public use (e.g., airports, bus stations). Private own-
ership/private function/public use (e.g., shops, cafes, bars, restaurants).
• Private ownership/private use (e.g., home).

The ‘more public’ situation is where it is owned and used for a public function, that is, owned
by a public body mandated to act in the public/collective interest and accountable to elected
representatives of the community. The ‘less public’ situation is where it is privately owned by
an entity that is not publicly accountable, and used for a private purpose. Intermediate po-
sitions exist where ownership is vested in a public-private partnership or joint venture, and
where a public function exists. Signs stating that a place is public are rare, but increasingly
there are cases where signs proclaim a place as private. Corporate branding also indicates a
sense of proprietorship and ownership.

(2 ) Control. The second and third dimensions, control and civility, are the managerial di-
mensions of publicness.

The control dimension of publicness refers to an explicit control presence. It exists on a spec-
trum where the more public situation is ‘Big Father’ (a policed state) and the less public one
is ‘Big Brother’ (a police state). Each might involve the creation of formal rules. In the latter,
they are enacted in the wider public/ collective/ community interest (i.e., they protect people,
rather than property, from harm). In the former, they are enacted in a narrower private interest
 Experiential Dimensions and Evaluation  393
(e.g., rules enacted to prohibit certain behaviours objectionable to certain (dominant) groups for
reasons of profitability or marketability) and are about ensuring ‘control’.
Many commentators give a flavour of the ‘less public’ situation.1 Oc & Tiesdell (1999), for
example, identified four approaches to creating safer environments.2
Control corresponds to what they term the panoptic approach, featuring explicit control
of space; the privatization of space; the private management of publicly accessible space;
an explicit policing presence (especially the presence of security guards); CCTV systems
as tools of control; covert surveillance systems; exclusion of people/ groups; and the ero-
sion of civil liberties. Nemeth & Schmidt (2007, pp. 288–291) discuss control in terms
of ‘surveillance and policing’, highlighting such features as (lack of ) public ownership or
management; location within a Business Improvement District (BID); security cameras;
the presence of (primary) security personnel; and the presence of secondary security per-
sonnel. Similarly, for Loukaitou-Sideris & Banerjee (1999, pp. 183–185), ‘hard’ or ‘active’
control uses vigilant private security officers, surveillance cameras and express regulations
either prohibiting certain activities from happening or allowing them subject to the issue
of permits, programming or scheduling or leasing. Control also relates to Flusty’s ‘jittery
space’—places that cannot be used unobserved due to active monitoring by roving patrols
and/or surveillance technologies (Flusty, 1997, pp. 48–49).
[…]
(3) Civility. Civility refers to how a public place is managed and maintained, and involves
the cultivation of a positive and welcoming ambience. A key quality here is that the place
is—and, as importantly, appears to be—cared-for. This is the most difficult dimension to
define. Kohn (2004, p. 3) highlights the core tension between commentators calling for
“… more civility and vigorous enforcement of community norms in the form of policing
and laws against begging and loitering…” and others “… arguing that the vitality of public
space comes from its diversity, heterogeneity, and even its disruptive quality”. This requires
a balance but it is a difficult one to achieve. Lynch & Carr (1979) identified four key public
space management tasks:

• Distinguishing between ‘harmful’ and ‘harmless’ activities, controlling the former

without constraining the latter.
• Increasing the general tolerance toward free use, while stabilizing a broad consensus of
what is permissible.
• Separating, in time and space, the activities of groups with a low tolerance for each
other.
• Providing ‘marginal places’ where extremely free behaviour can go on with little
damage.

Civility thus involves awareness of and respect for other people’s use of public space (see
Boyd, 2006; Fyfe et al., 2006; Philips & Smith, 2006). As Brain (2005) explains:

Civility is a matter of respect expressed in the form of social distance and discretion,
a recognition of the distinction between those things that it is appropriate to share (or
impose on one’s fellows) and those that are best kept private. It is not simply a tolerance
of difference but recognition and allowance for occupation of a shared world without
demand that differences be either erased or ignored.
(p. 223)

This requires recognition that freedom of action in public space is a ‘responsible’ free-
dom. According to Carr et al. (1992, p. 152), it involves “… the ability to carry out the
394  Georgiana Varna and Steve Tiesdell
activities that one desires, to use a place as one wishes but with the recognition that a
public space is a shared space”. Civility is also necessarily associated with incivility and
incivilities, which La Grange et al. (1992: 312) define as “… low level breaches of com-
munity standards that signal an erosion of conventionally accepted norms and values”
(see also Ellickson, 1996).
As well as behavioural norms, civility also relates to the maintenance and cleansing
regimes employed. Lack of adequate maintenance can precipitate a spiral of decline. As
­Wilson & Kelling’s (1982) broken windows theory of crime prevention contends: “… one
unrepaired window is a signal that no one cares, and so breaking more windows costs
nothing”.
[…]
(4) Physical configuration. The fourth and fifth dimensions—physical configuration and
­animation—are the two design-oriented dimensions of publicness. Distinction can be made
between a place’s macro-design—its relationship with its hinterland, including the routes into
it and its connections with its surroundings (i.e., beyond-the-place)—and its micro-design—
the design of the place itself (i.e., within-the-place). The former is discussed as physical
configuration, the latter as animation.
Physical configuration affects whether the public can reach and enter the place, and how
much effort it takes. It corresponds to Oc & Tiesdell’s (1999) fortress approach, which in-
cludes such features as walls; barriers; gates; physical segregation; privatization and control
of territory; and deliberate strategies of exclusion of people. Nemeth & Schmidt (2007,
pp. 288–291) discuss this in terms of ‘access and territoriality’, highlighting entrance acces-
sibility; orientation accessibility (i.e., visual permeability); areas of restricted or conditional
use; and constrained hours of operation.
Physical configuration can be considered in terms of three key qualities:
Centrality and connectivity. Places that are strategically well-located (i.e., those with cen-
trality and connectivity) within a city’s movement pattern have greater potential movement
and thus greater potential for different social groups coming together in space and time
(see Hillier, 1996a, 1996b; Porta & Latora, 2008). How the place itself is designed makes
a difference to the density of use but only as a multiplier of the basic movement pattern.
The design of a place matters little in terms of density of use if it is poorly located within
the local movement pattern, as it is unlikely to ever be well-used unless there are changes
in the wider area, either greater density of uses or changes to the movement network that
increase connectivity and/ or reduce severance.
Visual access. Visual permeability or access is the ability to see into a place. Various com-
mentators have identified deliberate design strategies obstructing visual access into a place.
Evaluating ‘public’ plazas in central Los Angeles, for example, Loukaitou-Sideris & Baner-
jee (1998, pp. 96–97) found ‘introversion’ and a ‘deliberate fragmentation’ of the public
realm, with plazas designed to inhibit visual access and, thus, to be exclusive. Techniques
included places being hidden with exteriors giving few clues to the place; being isolated
from the street; having street-level access de-emphasised; having major entrances taken
through parking structures; etc. Flusty (1997, pp. 48–49) describes this as ‘stealthy space’—
places that cannot be found, are camouflaged or obscured by intervening objects or level
changes—and as ‘slippery space’—places that cannot be reached due to contorted, pro-
tracted or missing paths of approach.
Thresholds and gateways. Potential access into a place can be obstructed by thresholds and
gateways. These may be largely symbolic and passive (e.g., changes of flooring materi-
als or the transition from an open to a roofed place), or physical and active (e.g., gates or
manned checkpoints). The latter is Flusty’s (1997, pp. 48–49) ‘crusty space’—places that
cannot be accessed, due to obstructions such as walls, gates, and checkpoints. Thresholds
 Experiential Dimensions and Evaluation  395
are important because they become decision points (i.e., whether to proceed further, tum
back, find another route, or, alternatively, whether that individual is denied further access).
The more evident the threshold, the greater its potential significant as a decision point.
Thresholds also relate to physical access, that is, whether the place is physically available
to the public, with physical exclusion being the inability to access or use the environment,
regardless of whether or not it can be seen into. Physical barriers that exclude—steps, for
example, exclude wheelchair users make the place less public.
The ‘more public’ situation regarding access relates to three qualities-being central and
well-connected (on-the-beaten track) with potential for plenty of comings-and-goings by
different groups; being visually permeable and connected to the public realm beyond the
place itself; and not having explicit thresholds. The ‘less public’ situation relates to not hav-
ing the advantage of centrality within the movement network (off-the-beaten track) with
few comings-and-goings by different groups, limited visual connection between the place
and the external public realm, and explicit thresholds (e.g., gates and manned checkpoints)
acting as access controls, resulting in a filtered admission. The consequence is that the place
is a de facto ‘fortress’—a place that, in different and various ways, is difficult to find; difficult
to see into; and difficult to enter.
(5) Animation. The fifth dimension is animation, which involves the degree to which the
design of the place supports and meets human needs in public space, and whether it is ac-
tively used and shared by different individuals and groups. The core element of animation
refers to the specific physical configuration and design of a place, although this forms the
potential environment and animation is the effective environment (Gans, 1968). While
there are various aesthetic ideas about the desirable shape and configuration of public places,
various functional considerations relating to how design features support use and activity
are particularly important.
Animation corresponds to Oc & Tiesdell’s ‘peopling approach’, which features people
presence; people generators; activities; a welcoming ambience; accessibility and inclusion;
cultural animation; inclusion; 24-hour and evening economy strategies (Oc & Tiesdell,
1999). Nemeth & Schmidt (2007, pp. 288–291) discuss this in terms of ‘design and image’,
highlighting such factors as the availability of restrooms; diversity of seating types; various
micro-climates; lighting to encourage night-time use; design to imply appropriate use (e.g.,
bollards to constrict circulation or to direct pedestrian flow); presence of sponsor advertise-
ment (e.g., signs, symbols and plaques tied to the place’s infrastructure, which, since their
company name is visible, can push sponsors to dedicate resources for upkeep); the presence
of small-scale food vendors; and art, cultural or visual enhancement (e.g., as prompts for
‘triangulation’).
Animation requires meeting human needs in public space, identified by Carr et al. (1992)
as ‘comfort’, ‘relaxation’, ‘passive engagement’, ‘active engagement’ and ‘discovery’. Car-
mona et al. (2010) add a sixth-display, relating to both visibility and self-presentation in
public space (see Strong & Henaff, 2001).
Passive engagement. This involves “… the need for an encounter with the setting, albeit
without becoming actively involved” (Carr et al., 1992, p. 103). The primary form of
passive engagement is people-watching. Whyte (1980, p. 13), for example, found that the
most-used sitting places were those adjacent to the pedestrian flow. Street cafes, for exam-
ple, provide opportunities, and excuses, for people-watching, as do fountains, public art,
commanding views and activities occurring in public places, ranging from formal lunch-
time al fresco concerts to informal street entertainment.
Active engagement. This represents a more direct experience with a place and the people in
it. Carr et al. (1992, p. 119) note that while some find sufficient satisfaction in people-watch-
ing, others desire more direct contact, whether with friends, family or strangers. The simple
396  Georgiana Varna and Steve Tiesdell
proximity of people in space and time does not ipso facto mean they will spontaneously
interact. Whyte (1980, p. 19) found public places were ‘not ideal places’ for ‘striking up
acquaintances’, and that, even in the most sociable, there was ‘not much mingling’. The
coincidence of people in time and space does, nevertheless, provide opportunities (affor-
dances) for contact and social interaction. Discussing how design supports interaction, Gehl
(1996, p. 19) refers to ‘varied transitional forms’ between being alone and being together
and suggests a scale of ‘intensity of contact’ ranging from ‘close friendships’ to ‘friends’,
‘acquaintances’, ‘chance contacts’ and ‘passive contacts’. If activity in the spaces between
buildings is missing, then the lower end of this contact scale also disappears. Well-animated
places provide opportunities for varying degrees of engagement, and also the potential to
disengage or withdraw from contact. Design can create, or inhibit, such opportunities for
contact. Benches, telephones, fountains, sculptures, coffee carts, etc., for example, can be
configured in ways that are more, and less, conducive to social interaction through what
Whyte (1980, p. 94) calls ‘triangulation’.
Discovery and display. Representing the desire for new experiences, ‘discovery’ depends on
both variety and change. Discovery may require some sense of unpredictability and even
danger, whether real or imagined, with various commentators (Sennett, 1990; Shields,
1991; Lovatt & O’Connor, 1995; Zukin, 1995; Hajer & Reijndorp, 2001) highlighting the
value of ‘liminality’—places formed in the interstices of everyday life and outside ‘normal’
rules, where different cultures meet and interact—which, in different ways, bring together
disparate activities, occupiers and characters, creating valuable exchanges and connections.
In any public place, we are on display: how we appear, dress and behave not only represents
a display for other users of the public place.
The design (and management) of public places often needs to accommodate these needs,
while also handling any conflict between them. To better support active engagement, play
and discovery, places need to allow for spontaneity and unscripted, unprogrammed activ-
ities (see Stevens, 2007). Frank & Stevens (2006, p. 23) discuss the notion of ‘loose space’,
and develop a typology around ideas of ‘looseness’ and ‘tightness’. Loose space is adaptable,
un-restricted and used for a variety of functions, ad hoc as well as planned. Tight space is
fixed, physically constrained or controlled in terms of the types of activities that can occur
there.
[…]

The Star Model

In contrast to Nemeth & Schmidt’s three axes, the Star Model has five axes each cor-
responding to the five meta dimensions of publicness outlined above. In this model
the axes radiate out from a common nucleus, which is regarded as ‘less public’ (or ‘not
public’); the outreaches of the star’s points or limbs are ‘more public’ (Figures 8.4.1 and
8.4.2). Unlike a cobweb diagram, the limbs are independent and the star is not materi-
ally affected by the sequence of the dimensions around the core. Once modelled, a full
star represents a high state of publicness, while an eroded star represents a diminished
publicness.
Note that a place’s publicness does not lie in any particular dimension, but derives
from the interaction between the dimensions. As discussed later, for any particular pub-
lic place the Star Model offers the possibility of an analytic star and multiple ­‘normative/
perceptual’ stars, the latter based on the perceptions of publicness held by individuals
or social groups.
 Experiential Dimensions and Evaluation  397

Figure 8.4.1  Characteristic attributes of ‘more public’ places. Note that the left-hand side of the Star
Model is more design-oriented and ‘physical’ and the right more managerial and ‘social.’

Figure 8.4.2  Characteristic attributes of ‘less public’ places.

398  Georgiana Varna and Steve Tiesdell
Operationalizing the Star Model
Operationalizing the model involves three tasks-identifying appropriate indicators for each
meta dimension, calibrating and then combining (i.e., by weighting or a formula) those
indicators into a single score/rating for each meta dimension.
This is not, and cannot be, an exact science; judgements have to be made and can be
debated, challenged and contested. This formation of the Star Model is thus offered as a
proposition for debate.
Indicators. As each dimension is itself a broad concept, to translate the Star Model into a
tool for synthesizing and quantifying a place’s ‘publicness’, a set of indicators for each di-
mension was developed. The intention was to be parsimonious with indicators, with the
set of indicators being sufficient and necessary to describe the place’s publicness for that
particular dimension. As the number of indicators grows, there is a problem of indicators
tending to cancel each other and all places having an intermediate level of publicness […]
Calibration. Recognizing that subjectivity and judgement cannot be entirely removed,
rather than a free form subjectivity (i.e., the evaluator does what s/he likes), it was decided
to structure it with the evaluator exercising discretion and judgement within identified
limits. This increases consistency, while also providing a rationale for, and defence of, the
choices made. For each indicator, qualitative descriptors were associated with a grading
system from 1 (least public) to 5 (most public), with a descriptor at each end of the scale
and, where useful, an intermediate descriptor. Based on site visits and other research, the
evaluator assesses the place against these descriptors and assigns a rating.

Notes
1 Note that previous commentators’ discussion of the meta dimension does always not map directly
onto the interpretation and definition of the meta dimension in this paper.
2 Control often purports to be about safety, but it is often the safety of property (and hence of an in-
vestment) rather than of people. Oppressive control is not the sole provenance of the private sector,
but can be by the state, albeit it would typically be the state acting in a private interest.

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Figure 8.0.5  Gaslight Park in downtown Tampa, FL. Photo © Vikas Mehta.
8.5 Evaluating Public Space
Vikas Mehta
Source: Mehta, V. (2014). ‘Evaluating Public Space.’ Journal of Urban Design, 19 (1),
53–88.

Qualities of public space

For a long time, urban designers, architects, planners and scholars of urbanism have been
concerned with the quality of public space. Lynch’s essays ‘The Openness of Open Space’
(Lynch 1965) and ‘Open Space: Freedom and Control’ (Lynch and Carr 1979) addressed
concerns of access, control and equity along with stimuli and social contact. Whyte’s (1980)
study of urban plazas resulted in guidelines adopted by the New York City Planning De-
partment and these have become common knowledge. Several other compilations and em-
pirical studies have assembled a great deal of knowledge on the nature and use of public
space such as streets, plazas and urban parks (Anderson 1978; Moudon 1989; Carr et al.
1992; Jacobs 1993; Celik, Favro, and Ingersoll 1995; Cooper-Marcus and Francis 1998;
Fyfe 1998; Low 2000; Forsyth and Musacchio 2005; Loukaitou-Sideris and Ehrenfeucht
2009; Mehta 2013). Many other studies have focused on specific groups in public spaces,
such as women, poor, specific racial groups, the disabled and the elderly. Although urban
designers have been working towards developing measures of public space for a long time,
much more empirical work is required to better measure the performance of public spaces.
However, generating such tools is a complex and arduous task, particularly since the reli-
ability of these measures depends on data collected through first-hand field observations,
surveys and interviews in public space.
Using the definition put forth by Carr et al. and the framework suggested by Gehl, this
paper suggests a theoretical framework to evaluate public space: good public space is acces-
sible and open, is meaningful in its design and the activities it supports, provides a sense of

Five Dimensions of Public Space

Inclusiveness

Pleasurability Meaningfuness

Safety Comfort

Figure 8.5.1  The five dimensions/aspects of public space.

 Experiential Dimensions and Evaluation  405
safety, physical and environmental comfort and convenience, a sense of control, and sensory
pleasure (Figure 8.5.1). These are discussed in detail below.

Inclusiveness
Public space is a space of participation. It is an arena for the collective voice and shared in-
terests, but is also the space where the differences and conflicts of various groups play out. In
discussing the publicness of public space, Mitchell (2003) suggested that the appropriation
and use of space by a group to fulfill its needs makes the space public. Subsequently, it could
be suggested that the extent of inclusiveness of any space is only revealed when some activ-
ity takes place in it. In addition, the range of activities a public space is able to support and
the actors it is able to include may determine its inclusiveness. The discussion and debate
on public space is often the discussion on which activities and behaviors are deemed appro-
priate in space. In many ways, public space may be thought of as ‘flexible and ambiguous’
(Loukaitou-Sideris and Ehrenfeucth 2009)—ever changing to accommodate the activities
and behaviors of its users. […] However, public spaces have never been completely inclusive.
Historically, when public space played an active role in supporting daily life, certain groups
were not allowed to participate. Nevertheless, the idea of an inclusive and accessible public
space is worthy as an ideal, even though the space may never be able to support all activities
and behaviors or be open to people from all walks of life […] The public space index is
designed to measure the inclusiveness of public space by rating how accessible the space is
to varying individuals and groups and how well their various activities and behaviors are
supported or not.

Meaningful activities
Place meaning is a complex phenomenon influenced by both individual and collective ex-
periences and by the narratives of places that help construct place identity. There are several
factors that contribute to meaningfulness, such as prior familiarity, and historic and political
events. However, this paper measures meaningfulness in the context of the ability for space
to support activity and sociability and the resultant place attachment […] To be specific, the
study is interested in the aspect of place meaning where space becomes meaningful when
it is useful, when it supports activities that are symbolically and culturally meaningful
to individuals or groups, and when it supports sociability […] Studies in phenomenology
suggest that by satisfying day-to-day needs, environments encourage repeated visits and in-
creased frequency of use that translate into a familiarity with the environment and become
a routine, creating a sense of place and place-attachment (Seamon 1980). Such seemingly
ordinary time-space routines make the space useful to people, and these were at the core of
Jacobs’ (1961) observations on the life of the streets.
For a long time, sociologists have emphasized the significance of the symbolic di-
mension of shared experiences of people. Both Maslow (1954) and Steele (1973) recog-
nized the sense of belonging and shared symbolic identification as basic human needs.
A sense of belonging and emotional attachment along with an ability to influence and
fulfill certain needs is required to achieve a sense of community in a neighbourhood
in order to define it as a community rather than just a group of people (McMillan and
Chavis 1986). It has been suggested that associations with people, places and events
contribute to a sense of familiarity and belonging to the community (Hester 1984;
Oldenburg 1989). Places that help shape community attitudes, that provide a continuity
from past to present, that may often cater to mundane but essential everyday functions,
that help in establishing their community’s identity, become significant to people and
406  Vikas Mehta
achieve a social value and meaning (Lofland 1998; Johnston 2005). Often these are
small local businesses or informal community-gathering places and are what Oldenburg
(1989) termed ‘third places’. […]
While all meaningful public space does not need to be (and is not) sociable, this paper
is interested in this aspect of public space—that sociable spaces are meaningful to people.
Hence, the public space index is designed to measure the meaningful activities of public
space by rating whether the public space supports any community-gathering third places,
the suitability of the layout and design of the space to support activities and behaviour, the
number of businesses that offer food and drinks, and the variety of uses and businesses.

Safety
Safety is often cited as the first concern in public spaces. Several environmental characteris-
tics affect the real and perceived safety of public space. Present times have seen a heightened
concern regarding safety, and policies addressing such fears have dominated the design and
management of public space. A sense of safety may be achieved using explicit means and
controls, although some suggest that over-securitization and policing can itself make the
space perceptibly unsafe (Davis 1990). Alternatively, a feeling of safety may be achieved
simply by the constant presence of people and ‘eyes on the street’ where the space becomes
self-policed. Regardless, perceptions play a significant role in making places appear safe or
unsafe. Empirical research shows that the sense of perceived safety from crime is affected by
the physical condition and maintenance, the configuration of spaces, the types of land uses,
the alterations and modifications made to the environment, and the presence or absence of,
and the type of, people. […] In her treatise on city streets, Jacobs’ (1961) identified stores,
bars, restaurants and other ‘third places’ as basic components of surveillance and safety.
Safety from traffic is another important factor related to the use of public space. Studies
regarding real and perceived safety from traffic have suggested the importance of many
measures and physical features (Clarke and Dornfeld 1994; Craig et al. 2002). Appleyard’s
(1981) landmark work on street activity and traffic clearly established the inverse relation-
ship between traffic volume and neighboring behaviours. Thus, in the context of public
space, safety is a person’s ability to feel safe from the social and physical factors—from crime
and traffic. The public space index is designed to measure the safety of public space by rat-
ing how safe people feel in the space during different times of the day, the appropriateness
of physical condition and maintenance of space, and if the presence of surveillance measures
in the public space makes them feel safer or not.

Comfort
The feeling of comfort in a public space depends on numerous factors, including perceived
levels of safety, familiarity of the setting and people, weather, physical conditions, conven-
ience and so on. Many of these factors, such as safety, have been addressed in this index
independently and comfort only refers to the physical and environmental effects of the
public space. While humans are known to sometimes function in very challenging envi-
ronmental conditions, the satisfaction of basic physiological needs, including environmental
comfort, protection from the natural elements and the provision of shelter, precedes the
accomplishment of higher order needs such as belonging, esteem, cognitive and aesthetic
needs (Maslow 1943, 1954). Existing literature on the effects of environmental factors on
human behavior shows that comfortable microclimatic conditions, including temperature,
sunlight, shade and wind, are important in supporting outdoor activities in public spaces
 Experiential Dimensions and Evaluation  407
(Bosselmann et al. 1984). […] Good microclimatic conditions that may largely be a con-
sequence of man-made conditions altering the natural climate become a prerequisite for
supporting outdoor activities in public spaces.
At the same time, beyond offering protection from sun, wind and rain, and providing a
physiologically suitable setting, the public space as a milieu also needs to provide the various
activities and standing patterns of behavior that may potentially occur in the public space
within its cultural context (Barker 1968; Rapoport 1969, 1977). To do so, the design of
the public space needs to be anthropometrically and ergonomically sensitive (Croney 1971;
Kanowitz and Sorkin 1983, cited in Lang 1987) […] By rating the physical comfort and
convenience and environmental comfort, the public space index is designed to measure the
physiological level of comfort the public space is able to provide its users.

Pleasurability
Spaces become pleasurable when they are imageable, have a high level of spatial quality and
sensory complexity […] There is no doubt that some places are highly imageable because
of their strong negative attributes. However, this paper associates and measures imagea-
bility of public space for its positive attributes. Along with imageability, spatial quality is
particularly important for public spaces. Although several factors contribute to the spatial
quality of open spaces, this study is concerned with two—human scale and sense of enclo-
sure. Humans feel comfortable in spaces with physical elements that can be related to the
size of our bodies and body parts. Spaces achieve human scale by way of the size, texture
and patterns of the materials and elements that make up the floor, vertical edges and any
overhead elements as well as any fixed or movable elements. Sense of enclosure is the de-
gree of definition of a space by way of physical elements that surround it. Enclosure may
be achieved by the fixed features bounding the space such as building edges, walls, trees
or by semi-fixed or movable objects such as awnings, canopies, parked vehicles and so on.
A space is considered to have a sense of enclosure if it has a room-like quality that evokes
a feeling of being ‘inside’ the space as distinct from being outside it. Although several very
memorable and large public spaces may not have a distinct room-like quality, most small
and mid-sized urban spaces that are well defined such that they create ‘outdoor rooms’ are
considered psychologically and physiologically comfortable.
Pleasure derived through a sensory experience of the public space depends on various
stimuli perceived from the environment—from lights, sounds, smells, touches, colours,
shapes, patterns and textures of the natural and man-made fixed, semi-fixed and movable
elements (Lang 1987; Bell et al. 1990; Rapoport 1990; Arnold 1993; Porteous 1996; Elsh-
estaway 1997; Stamps 1999; Heath, Smith, and Lim 2000) […] The public space index is
designed to measure the pleasurability of public space by rating the imageability, spatial
quality, sensory complexity and attractiveness of the public space.

Evaluating public space using the PSI

The public space index (PSI) is constructed from 42 to 45 variables to evaluate the five
dimensions of public space. The index captures and measures both observed behavior (use)
and perceptions of public space. Twenty-nine or 32 variables (depending on type of space)
of the survey are observable and are rated by the researchers by observing the space and the
interaction between the space and its occupants. Thirteen variables are perceptual and have
to be rated by the people using the public space. The scoring criteria for each variable are
based on a rating scale ranging from 0 to 3.
408  Vikas Mehta
Weighting the variables. Weighting the variables in an index or measure is a complex
task. In the case of the public space index, it could be argued that the weighting should de-
pend on what is expected from a particular public space […] In order to arrive at a generally
agreeable weighting, the study based the weighting of the variable on its significance in
contributing to some dimension of public space as determined by the literature (particularly
empirical work), the empirical studies of numerous public spaces conducted by the author,
and by the users of public space. For the 13 perceptual variables in the public space index,
first, 15 users in four public spaces were asked to rate their importance (on a 0 to 2 scale).
Next, an independent study was conducted and 18 users of the same four public spaces were
asked to rate the importance (on a 0 to 2 scale) of the same 13 perceptual variables. The
weighting of variables that received a mean rating of 1.5 or more on this scale was doubled
to 2. For inclusiveness, users considered ‘perceived openness and accessibility’ to be more
important than other variables (mean rating over 1.5 on a scale of 0 to 2). Hence, the rating
for the variable ‘perceived openness and accessibility’ was doubled to 2 (see Figure 8.5.1).
For meaningful activities it was ‘perceived suitability of space layout and design to activities
and behaviour’, for comfort it was ‘perceived physical condition and maintenance appropri-
ate for the space’, for safety it was ‘perceived safety from crime during daytime’, ‘perceived
safety from crime after dark’ and ‘perceived safety from traffic’, and for pleasurability it
was ‘perceived attractiveness of space’. Therefore, the rating for these six variables was also
doubled to 2.
For the remaining variables, the author weighted them based on other empirical lit-
erature on similar public spaces and on the empirical studies of numerous public spaces
mentioned earlier. The variables that were most important in contributing to the quality of
public space per the empirical literature and author’s studies were rated higher.
[…]
Each of the five dimensions of public space has a total weighting of 10. The maximum
score for each dimension is 30. Hence, any public space can have a maximum score of 150.
All scores are converted to percentages to achieve a final PSI out of 100.

Using the Index

At least two researchers each need to independently visit the space six times over the week-
day and weekend spread out during the day to capture the range of activities and behaviors
in the space. On site, the researchers complete a survey, part of which is filled out by the
researcher by observing the characteristics of the space, its use and management and the
interaction between the space and its users (Researcher input). The other part of the survey
is also conducted in the public space by getting inputs from users of the space (User input).
Since the researchers observe the space multiple times during the day and week, the results
of the researcher input must be averaged and means calculated.

Interpreting the PSI

The index is designed to produce an evaluation of a public space in each of the five catego-
ries as well as an overall evaluation. For example, after evaluating a space it is possible to es-
tablish how inclusive (accessible) or how comfortable the space is. Looking at the evaluation
in detail can reveal, for example, whether the space is not accessible (physically or symbol-
ically) to a certain group or class of people or whether it discourages certain activities and
behaviours. Further, the evaluations of several spaces in a neighborhood or precinct may
 Experiential Dimensions and Evaluation  409
be combined to achieve a collective evaluation of the public spaces in the neighborhood
or precinct. Researchers may be able to look at any aspect of the public space in a neigh-
borhood or precinct. For example, much like the case in downtown Tampa, the PSI may
reveal that a public space is not very well used because it does not support any meaningful
activities even though it is safe and comfortable. […]

Weighting Measuring Criteria

Inclusiveness
Presence of people of diverse ages 0.4 Observations
Presence of people of different sex 0.4 Observations
Presence of people of diverse classes 0.4 Observations
Presence of people of diverse races 0.4 Observations
Presence of people with diverse physical abilities 0.4 Observations
Control of entrance to public space - presence of lockable gates, fences, etc. 1 Observations
Range of activities and behaviors 1 Observations
Opening hours of public space 1 Observations
Presence of surveillance cameras, security guards, guides, ushers, etc. 1 Observations
intimidating and privacy is infringed upon
Presence of posted signs to exclude certain people or behaviors 1 Observations
Perceived openness and accessibility 2 Public response
Perceived ability to participate in activities and events in space 1 Public response
Total 10
Meaningfulness
Presence of community-gathering third places 2 Observations
Range of activities and behaviors 1 Observations
Space flexibility to suit user needs 1 Observations
Availability of food within or at the edges of the space 2 Observations
Variety of businesses and other uses at the edges of the space 1 Observations
Perceived suitability of space layout and design to activities and behaviors 2 Public response
Perceived usefulness of businesses and other uses 1 Public response
Total 10
Comfort
Places to sit without paying for good and services 2 Observations
Seating provided by businesses 1 Observations
Other furniture and artifacts in the space 1 Observations
Climatic comfort of the space – shade and shelter 2 Observations
Design elements discouraging use of space 1 Observations
Perceived physical condition and maintenance appropriate for the space 2 Public response
Perceived nuisance noise from traffic or otherwise 1 Public response
Total 10
Safety
Visual and physical connection and openness to adjacent street/s or spaces 1 Observations
Physical condition and maintenance appropriate for the space 1 Observations
Lighting quality in space after dark 1 Observations
Perceived safety from presence of surveillance cameras, security guards, 1 Public response
guides, ushers, etc. providing safety
Perceived safety from crime during daytime 2 Public response
Perceived safety from crime after dark 2 Public response
Perceived safety from traffic 2 Public response
Total 10

Figure 8.5.2  Public Space Index: variables, weightings, and measuring criteria.
410  Vikas Mehta

Weighting Measuring Criteria

Pleasurability (for Detached Plaza, Square, Park)
Presence of memorable architectural or landscape features (imageability) 1 Observations
Sense of enclosure 1 Observations
Variety of sub-spaces 1 Observations
Density of elements in space providing sensory complexity 1 Observations
Variety of elements in space providing sensory complexity 1 Observations
De s ig n e le m e n ts p ro vid in g fo c a l p o in ts 1 Observations
Visual and physical connection and openness to adjacent street/s or spaces 1 Observations
P e rc e ive d a ttra c tive n e s s o f s p a c e 2 Public response
P e rc e ive d in te re s tin g n e s s o f s p a c e 1 Public response
Total 10
Pleasurability (for Attached Plaza, Square, Park)
Presence of memorable architectural or landscape features (imageability) 0.7 Observations
S e n s e o f e n c lo s u re 0.7 Observations
Va rie ty o f s u b -s p a c e s 0.7 Observations
Density of elements in space providing sensory complexity 0.7 Observations
Variety of elements in space providing sensory complexity 0.7 Observations
De s ig n e le m e n ts p ro vid in g fo c a l p o in ts 0.7 Observations
De s ig n e le m e n ts p ro vid in g fo c a l p o in ts 0.7 Observations
P e rm e a b ility o f b u ild in g fa ç a d e o n th e s tre e tfro n t 0.7 Observations
P e rs o n a liz a tio n o f b u ild in g s o n th e s tre e tfro n t 0.7 Observations
Articulation and variety in architectural features of building facades on the 0.7 Observations
streetfront
P e rc e ive d a ttra c tive n e s s o f s p a c e 2 .0 Public response
P e rc e ive d in te re s tin g n e s s o f s p a c e 1 .0 Public response
Total 10
Pleasurability (for Street)
Presence of memorable architectural or landscape features (imageability) 1 Observations
S e n s e o f e n c lo s u re 1 Observations
P e rm e a b ility o f b u ild in g fa c a d e s o n th e s tre e tfro n t 1 Observations
P e rs o n a liz a tio n o f b u ild in g s o n th e s tre e tfro n t 1 Observations
Articulation and variety in architectural features of building facades 1 Observations
Density of elements on sidewalk/street providing sensory complexity 1 Observations
Variety of elements on sidewalk/street providing sensory complexity 1 Observations
P e rc e ive d a ttra c tive n e s s o f s p a c e 2 Public response
P e rc e ive d in te re s tin g n e s s o f s p a c e 1 Public response
Total 10

Figure 8.5.2  (Continued).

Conclusions
[…] With the limited public funding, it is imperative to design and construct new public
spaces and make upgrades to existing ones in ways that benefit a wide range of needs of
citizens. By providing a clear outline of the dimensions and important variables to consider,
the index will be useful to planning and design practitioners to address specific issues to
improve the quality of public space. Further, with the considerable changes in management
and control of public space, it is important to constantly review and manage the critical di-
mensions of space that give it the designation of public space. Public, semipublic and private
agencies that manage and control public spaces may use the index as a tool to gauge the
performance of public space on several facets. Citizens may use this index to determine the
 Experiential Dimensions and Evaluation  411
quality of public spaces in their neighbourhoods or cities and demand definitive changes
and improvements based on the results of the specific dimensions and variables of the PSI.
Because the index provides a systematic evaluation, using the index to measure the state
of their public spaces repeatedly over time can provide the public agencies and citizens, in
current times of increasing privatization, with a much-needed yardstick to measure the
changing nature of their public realm. The index will be equally useful to the researcher
to measure the quality of public spaces; to the educator to teach and discuss important di-
mensions and issues of design and management; and to the student to learn about public
space through first-hand empirical evaluation. Most importantly, working as a tool to assess
a vital dimension of the public realm, the public space index captures the pulse of a society’s
cultural and political attitudes. It informs the citizens of the condition of equity, securitiza-
tion and individual and group rights in their local public realm, and ultimately provides a
glimpse into the state of their civil society.

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9

Global and Comparative

Perspectives on Public Space
Global and Comparative
Perspectives on Public Space

It is safe to suggest that in the last 20 years, public space has received a significant amount
of attention around the world: from citizens and local communities, to refugees and in-
ternational migrants, to municipal offices and national governments, to the non-profit and
non-governmental sectors, to corporate and business interests, as well as from global organ-
izations such as the United Nations and the World Bank. As we discuss in Section 4, it has
also been a focal point of large international protests, uprisings, demonstrations, and dissent.
The real challenge in developing global and comparative perspectives on public space
has been to establish an inclusive comparative framework for a globalized study of public
space. Any attempt to produce such a framework must begin with an attempt to define the
unit of analysis and the object(s) of study. As Kohn suggests in Section 3, public space is best
framed as a ‘cluster concept’ which allows for often contradictory definitions to be con-
tested. As this section suggests, public spaces are also cultural artifacts, and as such subjects
to a multiplicity of equally valid and plausible definitions and interpretations. The needs for
comparative global perspectives are multifold and complex. On the one hand, international
and supra-national organizations involved in investing in urban development via public
infrastructure and public space must develop clear evaluation and assessment criteria for es-
timating levels of investment and also for evaluating degrees of return. The United Nations
also has a keen interest in developing a transparent global framework for defining public
space because its purpose is to activate public space as sites of social and political emancipa-
tion, cultural and economic development, social inclusion, and the promotion of universal
human rights. Besides, developing a planetary agenda for The Right to Public Space has
been a part of the right to the city movement around the world. Brazil, for example, has
built the right to the city in the constitution, while Colombia has included the right to
public space in its constitution.
Changing notions and modalities of citizenship and evolving democratic practices in-
creasingly turn needs and claims to political demands for participation, co-creation, shared
decision making; public space and public realm play decisive roles in these processes. How-
ever, not all cultures and societies around the world share Western ideals of democratic
public space, broadly defined human rights, or the use of public space for enacting political
demands for change. A wide range of political ideologies, cultural concepts, indigenous
laws, and social contracts, to name but a few, actively shape an evolving global understand-
ing of publicness and of public space and make a comparative study of public spaces across
geographic scales and locations challenging.
In 2012, UN-Habitat established the Global Programme on Public Space. In 2013, the
Biennial of Public Space drafted a “Charter of Public Space” which was later included
in the 2015 UN-Habitat’s publication Global Public Space Toolkit: From Global Principles to

Figure 9.0  Elevated commercial street (Haide Square) in the Coastal City Nanshan, Shenzhen, China.
Photo © Miodrag Mitrašinović.
416  Global and Comparative Perspectives
Local Policies and Practice, in preparation for the 3rd United Nations conference on Human
Settlements in 2016. The basic premise of this document was that citizens should have the
right to participate in the processes of creation and management of public space because
public space is the key element of individual and social well-being, the place of collectiv-
ization and expressions of diversity. The document defines typologies of public space and
outlines processes of its conceptualization and creation, management as well as enjoyment.
UN-Habitat’s Global Public Space Toolkit goes a step further in arguing for a set of universal
principles and policies with direct implications for practice. This initiative has also led to
the emergence of global case studies, shared methodologies and tools, as well as targets,
indicators, and principles for evaluating the quantity and quality, distribution and acces-
sibility, and enjoyment of public space. All these efforts also facilitate research, mutual
exchange, and learning.
Given the above, Cecilia Andersson outlines why it is difficult for local governments to
plan and prioritize resources without a universal evaluative matrix and without shared prin-
ciples and policies. A significant further impetus in this direction was provided by, Anders-
son suggests, the adoption of the 2016–2030 UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) as
well as the New Urban Agenda adopted at the Habitat III in Quito, Ecuador: both argue
that public space holds the key to sustainable urban development. The emerging planetary
framework also implied that at the municipal level public space needs to be understood in
terms of relations and connectivities, as a system in action, and no longer as a set of indi-
vidual, strictly bounded places. Such an ecological understanding connects public space
systems with territorial and regional planning efforts and has the possibility of bridging the
urban–rural divide. In order to achieve such goals, municipalities must develop innovative
land use policies and value capture mechanisms in order to sustain healthy investments in
public infrastructure.
It is important to also note that establishing shared global standards for production and
evaluation of public space and public infrastructure is not value-free. It can also facilitate top-
down, direct foreign investments which demand significant returns on investments and types
of structural re-adjustments, management, and accountability not always productive for local
communities. One of the universal threads for public space research as well as action has been
the degrees to which the neoliberal agenda has employed public space to advance its objec-
tives, as Rachel Berney describes it in the case in Bogotá, Colombia (see Section 3). Another
parallel thread has been related to how multiple, subaltern publics have created new geogra-
phies of race, class, and politics through what Clara Irazábal calls the “reterritorialization of
public space.” Irazábal details the transformations in Latin American politics over the last 20
years, and the role public space has played in these changes. Namely, under the pressure of
international financial institutions, the democratically elected leftist governments have failed
to deliver on the promise of social transformations. Dissatisfied, citizens took to the streets
and public spaces in an attempt to establish “governing from the streets” as a political strategy.
In the context of most extreme social inequalities—with Afro-descendants being particularly
disadvantaged—and large percentage of people living in poverty and in slums, structural
transformations have been compulsory. However, under the pressure of neo-liberal devel-
opment policies the polarization has intensified further. Public space has been instrumental
in the struggles of the working classes and the indigenous peoples for social and economic
transformations as it has allowed them to expand the range of political actions and stage claims
for civil, human, cultural, and political rights. Irazábal argues that such extraordinary events
in public spaces produce “invented spaces of citizenship.”
Ali Madanipour suggests that Irazábal’s claims in relation to Latin America can indeed
be used to place public space development across the world in a comparative perspective.
He investigates the production of public space in contemporary cities by simultaneously
looking at development strategies and urban design practices through a set of international
 Global and Comparative Perspectives  417
case studies. The neoliberal restructuring has since mid-1980s followed exactly the same
growth algorithm around the world, thus if one follows the trail of direct international in-
vestments in public infrastructures and public space, one finds analogical developments in
many countries around the world. “Whose public spaces are they,” asks Madanipour, and
can they be contested? The evidence strongly shows that many public spaces of the neolib-
eral generation (1985–) are not created through inclusive processes and serve undemocratic
objectives. Such places are often fixed, exclusive, and rigid.
On the other hand, Madanipour reminds us, no matter what ideology, political struggle
or pleasure-seeking drives our understanding of public space, when the conceptualization,
development, and care of public spaces include multiple and diverse individuals and agen-
cies, through inclusive and responsive processes, public spaces will serve the interests of
many. A global comparative framework for the study of public spaces needs to be based on
the following criteria: (1) the universality of the need for and right to public space in cities;
(2) the degree to which multiple publics and democratically-elected representatives par-
ticipate in the development processes; (3) free-market logic for the development of public
spaces of the neoliberal generation (1985–); (4) the relationship between the character of
public space and technological change, particularly in relation to mobility, communication,
and surveillance technologies; and, (5) the withdrawal from public space due to fears of
crime, mistrust, alienation, social polarization, or the lack of care.
In his book Understanding the Chinese City, Shiqiao Li argues that Chinese traditional
and contemporary relationship with the concept of public space is mediated by “degrees of
care.” While caring for one’s community may be universal, the ‘care of strangers’ may be
the most important difference between the Western city and the Chinese city. The Chinese
city is organized around “the body in safety” which has its foundation in the “corporeal
preservation regimens, familial bonds, and concentrically cared spaces.” The concern with
safety and urban sanitation is at the basis of the main organizing principles of urbanization
in China, and it has been operationalized via “degrees of care.” They can be visualized as
system of concentric layers of corporeal defenses mapped onto the concepts of ‘inside’ and
‘outside.’ Since the interplay between two concepts is contingent upon individual under-
standings, the degrees of care are also practiced differently, which together renders public
spaces in China as complex and ever-evolving cultural artifacts. From spaces of intensive
and regular care, to spaces without care, public space operates as the medium which links
spaces of various degrees of care: from ceremonial squares which require intensive degrees
of care, to city streets as the ultimate ‘outside,’ “the archetype of carelessness.”
Tim Edensor explores manifold overlapping cultures of the Indian street, and its mul-
tiple functions which are spatially and temporally interwoven into a complex social and
cultural fabric. In contrast to the Western concept of spatial and temporal allocation of
distinct functions into districts, zones, and timetables, the Indian street celebrates diversity,
juxtapositions, and intense sensorial experiences. As a multi-purpose living space, it brings
together diverse constituencies through a perceived erasure between public and private
realms. Edensor’s central argument focuses on the sensual experiences and performativity
of the Indian street, and on diverse subliminal, tactile, and cognitive sensations which are
not gaze-driven: the complex soundscapes and rich “olfactory geographies.” These expe-
riential qualities of the Indian street are also produced by the systemic fragmentation and
multiplicity of urban actors whose sustenance is contingent on their presence on the street:
from barbers and open-air dentists, to food stalls and clothes sellers, these small-scale entre-
preneurs bring diversity and variety to the everyday urbanism of the Indian street.

Figure 9.0.1  Chinese street takeout opposite from Portuguese Café Caravela Pastelaria on Patio do Co-
mandante Mata e Oliveira, Macau, China. Photo © Miodrag Mitrašinović.
9.1 Public Space and the New Urban
Agenda
Cecilia Andersson
Source: Andersson, C. (2016). “Public Space and the New Urban Agenda.” The
Journal of Public Space 1(1), 5–10.

Public space-led urban development

Cities that improve the quality of life for their citizens experience higher levels of prosper-
ity; they are also likely to find themselves more advanced in terms of sustainability. Such
cities strive towards social equity and gender equality by increasing access to the urban
commons and public good, preventing private appropriation and expanding the scope for
improved quality of life for all. Cities that have a strong notion of the ‘public’ demonstrate
a commitment to an improved quality of life for their citizens by providing adequate street
space, green areas, parks, recreation facilities and other public spaces.
Public spaces are a vital ingredient of successful cities. They help build a sense of commu-
nity, civic identity and culture. Public spaces facilitate social capital, economic development
and community revitalisation. The liveliness and continuous use of public space as a public
good leads to urban environments that are well maintained, healthy and safe, making the
city an attractive place in which to live and work. It is important for local governments to
invest in public space:

• Public space = quality of life

• Public space supports the economy
• Public space contributes to a sense of civic cohesion and citizenship
• Public space fosters social and cultural interaction
• Public space enhances safety
• Public space improves health and well-being
• Public space increases mobility
• Public space improves the environment

Public space can lead urban development by ensuring that building will only be permitted
if public space has been organized prior to development. The link between public space and
urban development needs to be understood in each context and legal framework in order
to prevent the creation of unmanaged and/or public space deficiencies common to many
cities. Particularly in recent decades, many cities have put public space at the core of urban
development, for example Bogotá in Colombia.
Ensuring city-wide distribution of public spaces is a way for governments to reduce
inequalities and reallocate benefits. The benefit of preparing a city-wide strategy/policy is
the protection and creation of a network of high-quality public spaces. City-wide policies
and strategies should ensure planning, design and management of public spaces at different
scales. Without a clear strategy/policy, it is difficult for local governments to prioritise,
spend and plan resources and to show how much public space is valued, and to mitigate the
negative impacts of site-specific interventions (e.g., gentrification).
 Global and Comparative Perspectives  421
The relevance of public space and the global mandate
Globally, the growing attention to public space informed the 23rd Session of the Governing
Council of The United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UN-Habitat) in 2011,
where member states mandated UN-Habitat to consolidate agency-wide work on public
space, to develop and promote public space policy, coordination, disseminate knowledge
and directly assist cities in public space initiatives.1 In addition, UN-Habitat established
in 2012, a Global Programme on Public Space now working in 30 cities. In 2013–15, the
Future of Places (FoP) initiative also significantly contributed to raising awareness around
the public space agenda on a global level. A multi-stakeholder initiative which was estab-
lished by Ax:son Johnson Foundation, UN-Habitat and Project for Public Spaces (PPS)
brought together a large and diverse network of stakeholders around the issues of public
space through a series of annual conferences. The Future of Places gathered global thinkers,
academia, decision-makers, practitioners, UN Agencies, media, communities, and private
sector which subscribe to the transformative power that good quality public spaces can have
in a city. The initiative has shown the commitment of a wide range of actors with a stake in
public space, as well as highlighted the global importance of this theme.

The opportunity: The Global SDG and the New Urban Agenda
Another great milestone is the adoption of the 2016–2030 Sustainable Development Goals
(SDG) which adopted Goal 11, ‘Build cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient
and sustainable.’ One of the proposed targets set out to “by 2030, provide universal access
to safe, inclusive and accessible, green and public spaces, particularly for women and chil-
dren, older persons and persons with disabilities”. Support for SDG 11, and in particular
public space Target 11.7, is important to ensure adequate means of implementation and a
sound monitoring framework that will be necessary to catalyse action on public space as a
contribution to sustainable cities and human settlements.
The adoption of SDG 11.7 and the elaboration of the New Urban Agenda provide signif-
icant recognition of the importance of public space to sustainable development and whilst
it is a critical first step, on its own it will have little impact without an appropriate follow
up mechanism. Therefore, there is a need for supporting local and national governments in
developing legislation, policy, norms and practices, which support governments in adopting
a holistic and integrated approach to the planning, design development, creation, protection
and management of public space. This will require that cities invest in public space and in
the spirit of the new urban agenda cities and local governments should take a trans-­
disciplinary approach by working in partnership with a range of stakeholders and organi-
zations, including civil society, academia and the private sector to ensure inclusive, safe and
accessible public spaces for all.

Towards Habitat III: The road from Vancouver to Quito

In 1976, the United Nations General Assembly convened the first United Nations Confer-
ence on Human Settlements (Habitat I) in Vancouver, Canada. Governments had just be-
gun to recognize the consequences of rapid urbanization driven by rural poverty, growing
urban economies, reduced infant mortality and longer life spans. Along with this shift came
unplanned urbanization and in some cities urban slums and evictions became common-
place, whilst others struggled with urban sprawl and decaying inner cities. While Habitat
I was notable for bringing urban issues to an international stage for the first time, the Sec-
ond United Nations Conference on Human Settlements (Habitat II) which took place in
422  Cecilia Andersson
Istanbul, Turkey, in 1996 was notable for being the first UN conference to invite NGOs
and civil society organizations to provide input and participate in drafting recommenda-
tions. The result of the conference was the Habitat Agenda containing 600 recommenda-
tions organized around five central objectives meant to guide UN policy regarding cities:
(1) adequate shelter for all, (2) security of tenure, (3) support for vulnerable groups and
women, (4) adequate and equitable access to services, and (5) promotion of decentralization
and good urban governance. Despite the success of bringing urban issues to the global stage
and the inclusion of a broad range of stakeholders, Habitat II was criticized for failing to
produce a lasting and meaningful impact on urban policy.
In the period since Habitat II, cities have become centres of unprecedented wealth and
prosperity. As Habitat III approaches, the New Urban Agenda (NUA) is being articulated.
The NUA is guided by the following interlinked principles: (a) Leave no one behind, (b)
Sustainable and inclusive urban economies, and (c) Environmental sustainability as well as
reflecting the SDG 11. Promoting socially inclusive, integrated, connected, accessible, gender-
responsive, environmentally sustainable and safe public spaces is key in achieving the
NUA. Good quality public space provides connectivity and access, protection from crime,
shelter from climate, seclusion from traffic and the opportunity to rest, work and meet.
Through its multifunctional and multidisciplinary nature, public space offers a holistic view
of the city, such as social inclusion, gender equality, the benefits of nature and green spaces,
governance, health, safety, education, climate change, transport, energy and the local urban
economy. Therefore, in the spirit of the new urban agenda, cities and local governments
should take a trans-disciplinary approach by working in partnership with a range of stake-
holders and organizations, which should include civil society (taking into consideration in-
digenous people, women’s and grassroots women’s organizations), academia and the private
sector to ensure inclusive, safe and accessible public spaces for all.
The enabling components of the NUA are mutually reinforcing and vital in ensuring
prosperous cities. Rules and legislation protect access to public spaces, urban planning and
design provides adequate quantity and good quality public space and urban finance and
economy share values, promotes income, investment, wealth creation and provides em-
ployment and decent job opportunities for all. When planning focuses on providing an
adequate public space structure in terms of supply and connectivity, it is possible to move
forward with infrastructure, land subdivision and development in a much more efficient
and sustainable way. Streets and public spaces need to be planned first with a view of sup-
porting adequate urban density and connectivity. Furthermore, public space can lead the
implementation of the new urban agenda and urban growth. This link between public
space and urban development is critical and needs to be understood in each context and le-
gal framework in order to prevent the creation of unmanaged and unimproved open spaces
and/or public space deficiencies common to many cities. Public space offers an integrated
and holistic approach to sustainable urban development.
Building on the interlinked principles of the NUA:

a public space lends itself well to participatory, gender and age-responsive approaches,
and to landscape planning that catalyzes on the benefits of ecosystems to health and
quality of life, providing equal access and making sure to leave no one behind. Ad-
equately planned and designed public space raise issues regarding the right of people
to freedom of artistic expression, political assembly and civic empowerment, to enjoy,
engage and exchange with each;
b public space creation, protection, management and enjoyment are ideal opportunities
for the involvement of all citizens, ensuring that individual and differentiated inter-
ests are transformed into collaborative practices. The commons provides the space for
 Global and Comparative Perspectives  423
participation of urban stakeholders from different classes of society to advance sustain-
able and inclusive urban economies. Investments in streets and public space infrastruc-
ture improve urban productivity, livelihoods and allows better access to markets, jobs
and public services, especially in developing countries where over half of the urban
workforce is informal;
c Public space is critical for environmental sustainability. Adequately planned and de-
signed public spaces play a critical role in mitigation and adaptation strategies to climate
change. Green open spaces can minimise carbon emissions by absorbing carbon from
the atmosphere. Green spaces can act as sustainable drainage system, solar temperature
moderator, source of cooling corridors, wind shelter and wildlife habitat.

Key drivers for action: Implementation of the New Urban Agenda

Some of the key drivers that have been distilled from the issue paper on public space, and
the dialogue leading up to the adoption of the New Urban Agenda, include:

1 At regional and city level, city-wide strategies need to focus not only on places and
spaces but on the form, function and connectivity of the city as a whole.
2 Local authorities should be able to design the network of public space as part of their
development plans;
3 At neighbourhood level, urban design should work with communities to foster social
inclusion, gender equality, celebrate multiculturalism and biodiversity, and enable ur-
ban livelihoods, thus creating rich, vibrant spaces in the urban commons;
4 Laws and regulations need to be reviewed, to establish enabling systems to create, re-
vitalise, manage, and maintain public space, including participatory processes to define
their use and manage access to public spaces;
5 Land value sharing and land readjustment tools to be widely adopted and promoted
for municipalities to capture private values generated by better public spaces to sustain
investment in public space;
6 Investing in public space needs to be harnessed as a driver for economic and social
development, as well as for gender equality, taking into consideration urban–rural
linkages;
7 As cities expand, the necessary land for streets and public spaces as well as public in-
frastructure networks must be secured. Urban projects need to ensure adequate public
space in planned city extensions, planned city infills and participatory slum upgrading
projects. Instruments to enable the creation of public space from private-owned land
are of critical importance;
8 Debate on targets, indicators and principles on measuring the distribution, quantity,
quality and accessibility of public space.

Note
1 UN-Habitat Resolution 23/4 on Sustainable Urban Development through Access to Public Spaces.

Figure 9.0.2  Street protests in Santiago, Chile, 8 March 2020. Photo © Amalia Galvez Paillacar. Courtesy
of Amalia Galvez Paillacar.
9.2 Citizenship, Democracy and Public
Space in Latin America
Clara Irazábal
Source: Irazábal, C. (2008). “Citizenship, Democracy and Public Space in Latin
America,” in Irazábal, C. (ed.), Ordinary Places, Extraordinary Events: Citizenship, De-
mocracy and Public Space in Latin America. New York: Routledge, 11–34.

Cautionary tales from the urban south: Latin American ‘Grand

Refusal’
How is Latin America’s politics changing, and what is the role of public space in these trans-
formations? How are people in Latin American countries expressing both their discontent
with unrepresentative national regimes and also with the neoliberal agenda, which often is
imposed ‘from above’ by multinational institutions and encouraged by the United States?
Within this context, how do urban street politics transform local and national politics and
relations with the USA and the rest of the world? Taking to the streets in Latin America
today is a response to international issues (for example, protests against World Bank or
Monetary Fund policies, or the presence of US dignitaries) and domestic ones (such as the
escraches against torturers in Buenos Aires, or demonstrations in support or opposition to
Chávez in Caracas). To analyse these processes, I employ Alain Touraine’s concept of ‘grand
refusal’, in which he refers to the reaction of the masses in social movements to the oppres-
sive economic conditions caused by global neoliberalism. A ‘grand refusal’, however, can
be more than a reaction, and can catalyse a vision for alternative socio-political projects.
Politicians critical of US foreign policy and the ensuing reign of neoliberalism are once
more to the fore. In Venezuela, gubernatorial and mayoral elections favoured Chavistas –
supporters of president Hugo Chavez in 2005, and re-elected Chavez as President on 3
December 2006. In October 2004, the left won the presidency in Uruguay – with Tabaré
Vázquez – for the first time. The left had further success in the mayoral elections of May
2005. For the first time ever, eight leftist mayors took office in July 2005. In Brazil, Presi-
dent Luiz Inácio (Lula) Da Silva was re-elected in October 2006 and the Labour Party also
gained ground in regional and local elections. In Chile, the leftist Michele Bachelet won the
presidency in January 2006, Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua and Rafael Correa in Ecuador in
November 2006, while in Peru the indigenous leftist leader Ollanta Humala was a serious
run-off election contender in June 2006. Nine out of twelve countries in South America
are now ruled by leftists, with the addition of Cuba, Nicaragua, Panama, the Dominican
Republic, and Costa Rica, which have left-of-centre presidents.
In most cases, taking to the street was a crucial political strategy. Recent events in Bo-
livia’s capital, La Paz, also deserve attention. Since 2003 sustained street demonstrations
have been significant in ousting two presidents from power. As Gamarra concedes, “[t]he
notion of governing from the streets is very, very prevalent in Bolivia” (cited in McDonnell
2005: A3). Through street protests, road closures and strikes, indigenous and poor people
demanded attention to their plight and opposed the privatization of the country’s natural
resources. Street politics have affected ballot box politics, as demonstrated in the elections
of 18 December 2005, which resulted in a landslide triumph for the indigenous leader Evo
Morales. He joined the ranks of leftist leaders Hugo Chávez in Venezuela, Luiz Inácio
 Global and Comparative Perspectives  427
(Lula) Da Silva in Brazil, and Néstor Kirchner in Argentina in opposing neoliberal dictates
from Washington and multinational interests.
In Latin America, the International Monetary Fund and other global organizations have
exerted great pressure for the adoption of a neoliberal agenda. While arguably some reforms
were necessary and benefited some sectors of the population, others have had dramatically
negative consequences. In Latin America, social inequalities are among the most extreme in
the world. The richest tenth of the estimated 559 million people in the continent in 2005
earned 48 percent of the total income, while the poorest tenth earned only 1.6 percent.
These inequalities are racially and ethnically biased, with indigenous and Afro-descendant
peoples at a considerable disadvantage. The disparities are also clearly evident in the polar-
ization of urban space and the existence of slums (UN-Habitat 2005, p. 111). The rate of
population growth and pace of urbanization have both increased rapidly. Latin America’s
population tripled in the 50 years to 2000, reaching 519 million. During the same period,
the urban population grew fivefold. In 2001, 3 percent were living in slums, more in South
America (35.5 percent), and several major cities with a much higher percentage. The struc-
tural transformation in the region’s economies was instrumental in accentuating the social
and spatial polarization in Latin American cities. But those conditions are being challenged
in unprecedented ways, with social groups reconstituting citizenship by reterritorializing
public space. New geographies of race, class, political consciousness, and political affiliation
are transforming power, knowledge, subjectivities, and ultimately, space. Significantly, the
process goes both ways – transformations of space cause transformations of power, knowl-
edge, and subjectivities. These social mobilizations continue to be propelled to a great
extent by reactions to neoliberalism as disenfranchised masses demand alternative models
of development. The organization, focus, and political repertoire of social movements in
Latin America have changed as the eras of military and oligarchic rule ended (Foweraker,
2005). The expanding repertoire of political action includes, but is not limited to, meetings,
rallies, demonstrations, concerts and performances, strikes, barricades, sit-ins, cacerolazos,
escraches, and media events of all sorts. Many actions are motivated by material demands, but
are often transformed or expanded into claims of civil, political, human, and cultural rights.
Opinions are mixed regarding the impact of such movements and actions in a context
where every human, social, and political right has had to be won through social and po-
litical struggle against democratic regimes of ‘low-intensity citizenship’ (O’Donnell, 1999;
cited in Foweraker, 2005, p. 123). At the height of the neoliberal era of the 1990s in which
the emphasis was on economic rather than political or social development, some Latin
Americanists assessed that it was ‘impossible to mobilize and press for effective rights of
citizenship, or strive to hold newly democratic governments to account’ (Ibid., p. 130).
However, “a historical perspective shows that social mobilization, whether in Latin Amer-
ica or elsewhere, always occurs in waves” (Ibid., p. 133). Accordingly, today several Latin
American countries are arguably entering the era of leftist post-neoliberal regimes with a
consequent heightened use of public space for both everyday and extraordinary events, all
of which grounds my claim about a new wave of social mobilization à la Alain Touraine’s
‘grand refusal.’
This charged use of public space for political protests, however, is not restricted to Latin
America. Around the world, the World Trade Organization (WTO), International Mon-
etary Fund, World Bank, the Group of 8, and the European Union have had to deal with
protest during summits. Taking to the streets during the WTO meeting in Hong Kong in
December 2005 had been preceded by similar demonstrations in Seattle, USA, Cancun,
Mexico, and elsewhere. With unprecedented world-wide coordination, on 15 February
2003, more than 30 million people in 600 cities and around the world marched for peace
and against the war in Iraq. “[T]he world witnessed the largest coordinated protests in
428  Clara Irazábal
history [O]rdinary people the world over took to the streets to assure that their voices were
heard and their sheer numbers seen” (Mitchell and Staeheli, 2005, p. 796).
There has also been a steady shift from reactive to proactive demonstrations, mainly rep-
resented by the World Social Forum (WSF). The forum meetings have become an impor-
tant venue for trade unions, women’s groups, and peasants’ and environmental movements
from around the world to learn and share organizing strategies, canvas support, coordinate
world campaigns, and build alliances around a platform of justice. In this ‘movement of
movements’ the different organizations attempt to work through the conflicts between
reality and utopia, “between real achievement and contestation of the official notion of the
real” (Ruggiero, 2005, p. 297).

Ordinary places, extraordinary events

In Latin America, cities are crucial to the negotiation of citizenship and governance. From
celebrations and affirmations, to protests and violent acts, the case studies in this book
illustrate the expanded terrain of citizenship practices challenging the ‘post-justice city’
(Mitchell, 2001) and exploring alternative models of development and urban solidarity. In
times of crisis, and also during extraordinary collective celebrations, it is common for the
population to mobilize in public spaces. Social groups and ad hoc collectives have taken
to the streets in response to the privatization of energy resources and primary sources of
employment, the globalization of commerce and communication, the politics of austerity
and inflation, the degradation of urban and regional infrastructure, unsatisfactory urban
services and investment in education, and paucity of jobs. Identity politics – issues of legal
status, gender, sexuality, race and ethnicity – are also increasingly played out in public
space. In this sense, many authors concur that “[t]he most sensible and dramatic scenario for
the struggle between the neoliberal globalization and the defense of the local is the city […]
The city is the spatial articulation of this dispute in a world of generalized urbanization”
(Cantú Chapa, 2005, p. 28).
The need to respond collectively to contemporary urban problems and to defend the
right to express identity have transformed Latin American capitals from ‘revanchist
cities’ (Smith 1996) to ‘contesting cities’ (ciudades contestatarias) (Ibid., p. 100) or to par-
aphrase Holston and Appadurai, ‘insurgent cities’. The Zócalo and the streets of the
historical centre of Mexico City are a good example. Since the neoliberal transforma-
tion of the economy in Mexico in the early 1980s, demonstrations have been an almost
daily occurrence. In 1995, there were on average seven demonstrations daily, and 10.4
in 1996, 70 percent of which were organized by groups arriving in the capital from the
interior (Cantú Chapa, 2005, p. 101).
Across Latin America, the transformation of the physical landscape is evident in new
gated communities, new global architecture, the privatization and gentrification of older
districts, and the creation of new ghettos and edge cities (Borja, 2003a; Borja and Muxí,
2002; Irazábal, 2005). In her treatise on contemporary Buenos Aires, Zaida Muxí describes
it as a ‘gapped city’ (Muxí, 2004, p. 163), designed with ‘the strategy of fragmentation’
which “observes reality with a zoom – cutting, isolating, and resolving in a piece-meal fash-
ion – not looking for connections” (Ibid., p. 165). This concept is akin to that of ‘splintered
urbanism,’ discussed by Graham and Marvin (2001). Take the example of historic preser-
vation in Mexico City, where Capron and Monnet (2003) expose how seemingly progres-
sive gestures paradoxically exacerbate political, social, and economic inequalities. These
findings are further elaborated on by Scarpaci (2005), who found that public-private part-
nerships, centralized planning, and globalization conditioned historic centre revitalization,
 Global and Comparative Perspectives  429
including in Havana, favoring private commercial and tourist development and gentrifica-
tion over affordable housing (the sole exception in this study is Trinidad, Cuba). The cases
of Lima and Havana in this book provide evidence of some of these realities.
The spatial barriers resulting from these processes – the lack of public space, or its re-
duction, privatization or over-regulation (through restrictions on activities and access);
the lack of access due to land use regulations, the shape of the urban grid, or availabil-
ity of transport – can significantly hamper the practice of citizenship and democracy.
However the processes leading to these spatial conditions do not go uncontested. Many
authors, who agree that public space is essential to the maintenance of democracy in
making it possible to publicize dissent, also recognize that its privatization has poten-
tially negative political ramifications (Zukin, 1991; Sorkin, 1992; Kohn, 2004). Or, as
McBride (2005, p. 1002) says, ‘When we lose public space, we lose democracy’. Con-
tributing to the privatization of the urban landscape in both North and South America
is the reorganization of common space in the service of consumption, the creation of
new layers of undemocratic governance – for example, through Development Districts
and Home Owners Associations – and jurisprudence leaning in favour of private inter-
ests (Kohn, 2004).
Rosenthal (2000) claims that the process of decline of public space in Latin America
has not been as pronounced as in the United States since World War II as cars, skyscrap-
ers, suburbanization, television, and consumerism are less prevalent, while widely used
public transport systems, the interest of elites in preserving downtowns, café-oriented
societies, and nationalist memory processes that valorize public places are mitigating
factors. Notwithstanding these assurances, the stakes are high, and having access to
public places in which people can exercise freedom of speech and relate to other social
groups with shared interests is considered a prerequisite condition for democracy (Low,
2000; Low and Smith, 2006). However, taking to the streets cannot be romanticized
as a panacea for all grievances or as resulting in the enactment of just laws and policies.
On the contrary, street politics is often the last recourse after all formal claims against
injustice have failed. However, we do not want to overplay the role of street politics.
Although they often have measurable impact, public demonstrations are sometimes the
last resort in an ongoing struggle against inequality. Their effectiveness in ameliorating
injustice varies with the power of demonstrating groups vis à vis power holders, the
commitment the latter have to issues of social justice and democracy, and the mate-
rial and non-material resources available to respond to people’s claims. Paradoxically,
sometimes achieving a positive result, however partial, can void a social movement of
its power and may result in the abandonment of the public space as a fruitful and dy-
namic arena of the political public sphere.
The alternative to the ‘invited spaces’ of citizenship is the ‘invented spaces’ of citizenship,
informally created by the people, which can vary in character (Miraftab, 2004; Miraftab
and Wills, 2005). Here, we advance the notion that extraordinary events in public spaces
have the potential, under certain circumstances, to expand dramatically invented spaces of
citizenship. Evidently, “peaceful negotiations and clever, persuasive tactics are not always
effective at expanding the spaces of citizenship practice” (Miraftab and Wills, 2005, p. 208).
In effect, most of these demonstrations in public spaces do not cause radical transformation,
and many go almost unnoticed. But there are a few that result in radical transformation, and
sometimes it is the cumulative effect of several or even many that bring about significant
change. This book bears testimony to all these different possible scenarios. The effective-
ness of street action is also limited if ‘street fatigue’ ensues when sustained mobilization
is without proportional gain in the political arena. Such was the case of the opposition to
430  Clara Irazábal
Chávez in Venezuela. After taking their politics to the streets of Caracas for years against
Chávez’s regime to no avail, maintaining the level of mass mobilizations sustained earlier
became impossible.
[…]

Public space
We recognize that the public has come to encompass the a-spatial world of the media, the
Internet, and other trans-local conduits, but we aim to recover a focus on the physical space
of plazas, streets, boulevards, parks, beaches, etc. We also continue a tradition of equating
public and urban in our analyses of space: “Stretching back to Greek antiquity onward,
public space is almost by definition urban space, and in many current treatments of public
space the urban remains the privileged scale of analysis and cities the privileged site” (Low
and Smith, 2006, p. 3). There are several criteria in the making of ‘publicness.’ First, the
public refers to that which is general, collective, and common. Second, public is that which
is visible and ostensible. Lastly, public is that which is open and accessible to all (Rabot-
nikof, 2003). Public spaces facilitate encounters, and thus social learning.
Public spaces embody the tension between cultural diversity and social integration, and
are crucial to the expression and resolution of complex socio-spatial transformations in cit-
ies around the globe. Discussions about public space try to address the need to strengthen
both the sense of citizenship amidst the fragmentation of identities and the acknowledg-
ment and celebration of plurality (Ramírez Kuri, 2003). The ideal of public spaces – open,
accessible, inclusive, and capable of supporting respectful encounters of differences – makes
them privileged sites in this quest (Makowski, 2003). As common ground for sociability and
conflict, public spaces are terrain for the dialogical and dialectical practices of citizenship.
The symbolic aspects of public spaces, a collective imaginary of memories, histories, and
meanings, complements the physical characteristics of places (Ibid.). The places analysed
in [Citizenship, democracy, and public space in Latin America] play a definite role in the con-
struction of ‘imagined communities’ in the nations they belong to (Anderson, 1983). As an
example, Alejandro Encinas, former Secretary of the Environment in Mexico City, asked
those living in the vicinity of the Zócalo if they wanted the plaza landscaped. Though
approved by voters, he faced protests from those claiming that this was not a decision
for neighbours or even the city to make, because the space belonged to the whole nation
(Tomas, 2004, p. 169). Citizenship and public space are tightly intertwined and to a great
extent define each other, as ‘both are the result of the interactions and struggles to generate
and expand citizenship spaces’ (Tamayo, 2004, p. 154). Not only a mise-en-scène for diversity
and difference, public spaces are sites for the negotiation of values, rights, duties, and rules
of sociability in a community.
Ideally, public space has to be multifunctional and capable of stimulating symbolic identifi-
cation and cultural expression and integration (Borja, 2003b, p. 67). Regrettably, the recent
growth of most Latin American cities has occurred without much expansion of public spaces.
On the contrary, the prevalent trend has been to focus on transport infrastructure, shopping
centres, and exclusive communities. The loss in quantity and quality of public space has af-
fected the quality of life of city residents. Spaces abandoned by the middle- and high-income
classes were colonized by the poor while others were renovated to serve the tourist and elite
classes, as semi-private spaces were created within gated residential and business enclaves
(Caldeira, 2000; Duhau, 2003). The resulting socio-spatial reorganization often results in
‘the coexistence, without co-presence, of the poor with the middle- and high-income classes’
(Duhau, 2003, p. 163). Most literature on public space with a focus on the United States and
 Global and Comparative Perspectives  431
Europe also decries its privatization and commodification often linked with the expansion of
the capitalist society. According to Low and Smith (2006, p. 4) in ‘the Western world today,
truly public space is the exception not the rule’. Nevertheless, it is important to acknowledge
significant efforts that are being made in many Latin American cities to recover or create
effective public space, signalling a ‘renaissance of interest in public space in the current Latin
American urbanism’ (Borja, 2003a, p. 94).

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Marcelo, Jordán, Ricardo and Simioni, Daniela (eds.) La Ciudad Inclusiva. Santiago de Chile: Naciones
Unidas.
Borja, Jordi (2003b) La ciudad es el espacio público, in Kuri, Ramírez (ed.) Espacio Público y Reconstrucción
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blico y Reconstrucción de Ciudadanía. Mexico: Flacso and Miguel Angel Porrúa Grupo Editorial.
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Figure 9.0.3  Domestic foreign helpers on a Sunday morning gathering in Hong Kong’s CBD. Photo ©
Miodrag Mitrašinović.
9.3 Whose Public Space? International
Case Studies in Urban Design and
Development
Ali Madanipour
Source: Madanipour, A. (ed.) (2010). Whose Public Space? International Case Studies in
Urban Design and Development. London: Routledge, 1–15 and 237–242.

Public spaces mirror the complexities of urban societies: as historic social bonds between
individuals have become weakened or transformed, and cities have increasingly become
agglomerations of atomized individuals, public open spaces have also changed from being
embedded in the social fabric of the city to being a part of more impersonal and fragmented
urban environments. Can making public spaces help overcome this fragmentation, where
accessible spaces are created through inclusive processes? Do the existing and new public
spaces of the city serve the public at large, or are they contested and exclusive? Whose public
spaces are they? [Whose Public Space?] offers some answers to these questions through case
studies of making public space in different countries.
[Whose Public Space?] investigates the making of public space in contemporary cities,
through analysing the process of urban design and development in international case stud-
ies, focusing on the changing nature of public space and the tensions that arise between
different perspectives and groups. Two broad frameworks of place and process are used to
study and analyse the urban public spaces in transition. Public spaces, it is argued in this
book, should be accessible places, developed through inclusive processes. With these two crite-
ria, therefore, it would be possible to analyse and evaluate the spaces that are being devel-
oped in cities around the world.
[…]
Crossing the cultural divides, the book brings these investigations together to examine
the similarities and differences of public space in different urban contexts, and engage in a
critical analysis of the process of design, development, management and use of public space.
While each case study investigates the specificities of particular cities, the book as a whole
outlines some general themes in global urban processes. It shows how public spaces are a key
theme in urban design and development everywhere, how they are appreciated and used
by the people of these cities, but are also contested by and under pressure from different
stakeholders.
[…]
The book’s key argument is that, although the social and spatial composition of cities
differ considerably across the world, there are a number of general trends that can be ob-
served: that public spaces play a significant role in the life of cities everywhere, and that
for cities to work, there is an undeniable need for public space; that the nature of this role,
and therefore the nature of public space, in modern cities has radically changed; and that
the development and use of these spaces mirror the way a society is organized, shaped by
unequal distribution of power and resources, which creates tension and conflict as well as
collaboration and compromise. Public spaces, it is argued [in Whose Public Space?], should
be produced on the basis of equality for all by being accessible places made and managed
through inclusive processes.
 Global and Comparative Perspectives  437
Why has urban public space become a subject of interest?
[…] Recent attention to public space is rooted in the structural changes that societies around
the world have experienced in the past thirty years whereby the provision of public goods,
such as public space, has been under pressure through the ascendancy of the market-based
paradigm. The aftermath of the Second World War was characterized by structural inter-
vention by the state in the economy, resulting in large-scale public-sector schemes in urban
development, particularly in western countries. Local authorities and their architects and
planners were at the leading edge of urban renewal whereby cities were expanded and rede-
veloped with high rise public housing schemes, motorways and new towns, implementing
the ideas developed earlier by the garden city movement and the modern movement in
architecture. As the prosperity of the 1960s was followed by economic decline in the 1970s,
the post-war Keynesian accord between the state and the market came under pressure.
Industrial decline deprived the public sector of its funds, and urban renewal projects and
new town development schemes were abandoned. The solution that was introduced in the
1980s in the United Kingdom and the United States was to dismantle the age of consensus
and stimulate economic growth through market revival and competition. Radical de-in-
dustrialization, reduction in the size of the state, privatization, individualization, globaliza-
tion and liberalization of the economy were the new structural directions for the state and
society, which spread around the world and lasted for three decades until coming to a halt
with a global financial crisis. This paradigm shift had major implications for urban design,
planning and development.
With reduction in the size and scope of the state, urban development was transferred to
the private sector. The private sector, however, was interested in those aspects of urban
development that would ensure a return on its investment. Private companies were an-
swerable to their shareholders, and not to the urban community as a whole. Public goods,
such as public space, therefore, were seen as a liability, as they could not be sold and had no
direct profit for the private investor. Local authorities and their elected politicians, mean-
while, could not, or would not, invest in those public goods that did not have an imme-
diate political or economic return. They also saw public space as a liability, as something
that required higher maintenance costs and was a burden on their dwindling budgets. As
a result, both public- and private-sector agencies abandoned public spaces as cities suffered
from accelerated decline.
Large-scale schemes, however, could not be developed without some sort of mediating
space, some public areas that would link different buildings and spaces. Private developers,
therefore, preferred to control these spaces, so that the return on their investment could not
be jeopardized by what they saw as potential threats to their operation. New public spaces
that were developed after the 1980s, therefore, were controlled and restricted, in contrast
to the more accessible and inclusive places of the past. This was a widespread phenomenon,
and became known as the privatization of public space. It generated a fear that the city had
become private territory in which people could not move easily and the democratic aspi-
rations of liberty and equality would be undermined. This would be a fragmented city, in
which some people would be free to go almost anywhere, whereas others would be trapped
inside their ghettos or prevented from entering the exclusive spaces of the elite, facilitated
through a process of gentrification. The loss of public space symbolized the loss of the idea
of the city.
[…]
The extent of marketization and the crisis of public space has not been the same every-
where, as is best evident in the differences between European and American cities. How-
ever, the global neoliberal trend posed a major challenge to public goods everywhere, as
438  Ali Madanipour
partly evident in the threats facing public space, which has resulted from the restless process
of globalization.
[…]

Inclusive processes
Different stages in design, planning, development and management of public spaces have a
direct impact on their accessibility and identity. If public spaces are produced and managed
by narrow interests, they are bound to become exclusive places. As the range of actors and
interests in urban development varies widely, and places have different dimensions and
functions, creating public spaces becomes a complex and multidimensional process. To un-
derstand places, and to promote the development of accessible public places, therefore, it is
essential to study this process and to encourage its broadening, to make it inclusive.
[…]
A key question in [the international and comparative analysis of the] development process
is: who is involved? An associated question is: who do the process and its outcome serve?
An inclusive process would involve a larger number of people and agencies and would
spread the benefits of the process to larger parts of society, while an exclusive process would
limit the number and range of agencies and would reward a smaller number of people.
The process of building cities involves complex regulatory frameworks and large financial
resources, both of which are often closely entwined with political and financial elites. This
tends to give these elites a powerful influence over the process and its outcome.
In market economies, financial resources are generated by the private sector, and it is
taken for granted that private investors expect to maximize rewards on their investment. In
democracies, the elected representatives are expected to act on behalf of their constituen-
cies. However, the disadvantaged groups, who do not have access to financial resources and
are frequently disconnected from the political process, end up having no control or stake
in the city building process. The places that are created are not designed to serve them, as
these groups are not often part of the decision making formula. This tends to make city
building dominated by powerful agencies and individuals, rather than involving a broad
range of citizens. In the development process, development agencies work with resources,
rules and ideas in response to the needs of society and demands of the market. However, if
the needs and demands of the disadvantaged parts of society are not strongly represented,
politically or financially, as is often the case, the process and its outcome may not serve
them at all.
[…]
What is needed, therefore, in investigating, as well as making, the urban space is a mul-
ti-dimensional and multi-agency process involving as many individuals and agencies as
possible, and a dynamic process that can accommodate time and change. The result will be
a dynamic multiplicity, in which city building is envisaged and organized as an inclusive and
responsive process. The public spaces that are created by this process will be more inclusive
and accessible than the ones that serve narrow interests; will be driven by technical and
instrumental concerns; or will be envisaged as fixed, exclusive and rigid places.

An interdependent world
Some readers may wonder why [Whose Public Space?] has brought together what appear to
be disparate experiences from such a wide range of countries. What can African, European,
Asian and Latin American cities have in common? Each city and each country has its own
history and culture, with different social and economic conditions and prospects. What can
 Global and Comparative Perspectives  439
we gain from bringing these cases together? On the surface, the differences between our
case studies are large and wide, to the extent that the existence of any links or comparisons
between their public spaces may seem improbable. Some of these cities are rapidly growing
while others are shrinking. They belong to different cultures and economic conditions,
each embedded in a completely different reality. What might we find, these readers may
ask, in any attempt at placing them alongside one another?
A key answer is the universality of the existence of, and the need for, public space in cities
[…] While the character and use of these public spaces may differ, the universal existence
of some form of public space and its social and economic significance for the city cannot
be denied.
Another, related, similarity between the cities is in the converging methods of city build-
ing, in which the markets and new technologies are prominent. In our time, the spread of
capitalism and the extent of global interdependency characterize cities everywhere. Be-
fore the arrival of the dramatic economic crisis of 2008, a global consensus seemed to
have emerged in which markets were given free rein to come up with solutions to all the
economic problems. All of the cities we have studied are part of the global market, albeit
occupying different positions in the marketplace, from more central to more marginal. In
all cities, the process of city building is subject to the logic of the market, in which land as
a finite resource is the subject of competition. What connects these cities and their spaces,
therefore, is the mechanism of the market. Even if it operates completely differently in each
city, it is subject to the same general principle of risk and reward, and distinction between
private and public interests. It also tends to generate, or accelerate, social stratification and
division, creating tensions between the rich and poor, and social inequalities that become
manifest in the making and use of public spaces.
Also, all cities are subject to the impact of technological change. Transport technologies
have allowed them to spread, creating new social and spatial distinctions between the centre
and periphery […] More than anything else, they are part of the same global urban process,
different components of the same phenomenon and sharing many features of modern ur-
ban societies. Judging by the universal presence and social significance of public space, and
the converging economic and technological methods of city building, we can see how the
experiences of making public space in different continents of the world can show different
aspects of the same phenomenon.
[…]

Whose public space?

[…] Public spaces, as significant material and social components of cities, are therefore sub-
ject to intense processes of social interaction through which their quality and character are
determined.
Claims could be made by powerful individuals and institutions, such as a supermarket
chain or a shopping mall in England, a local authority in France, a local prince in Nigeria,
or housing designers and developers in Saudi Arabia and Iran. Claims could also be made
by individuals or informal groups of people who try to shape the space, such as youth
subcultures in the United Kingdom, public housing residents in the Netherlands, street
drinkers in Germany, low-income households in Mexico, local businessmen in Taiwan, or
middle-class South Africans, each with widely different views and outcomes. Depending
on their level of political, economic and cultural power and influence, these individuals and
organizations can shape and determine some of the features of the urban space, creating the
structural conditions within which others live and use the city. Their resources allow the
more powerful individuals and institutions to make substantial physical and institutional
440  Ali Madanipour
changes in cities, while the claims by the less powerful groups may take softer, temporary
forms.
[…]
Public spaces are shaped not only by claims, but also by the absence of claims, by with-
drawal from the public sphere. Withdrawal from public space may be due to a fear of crime,
mistrust of other social groups, and intensified social polarization. This withdrawal is re-
flected in neglect and decline, poor maintenance, accumulation of waste and refuse, or lack
of care and attention. Neglect of public spaces may be a result of exaggerated preferences
for vehicular movement, which was the dominant theme in shaping cities for much of the
industrial era. Such neglect may also reflect the absence of local governance – that is, coor-
dinating mechanisms to facilitate negotiation between different claims over space. Public
spaces provide linkages between private spheres, and represent the character and quality
of a city as a whole. The decline of public space reflects a breakdown in social and spatial
linkages and a deterioration of the city as a whole.
[…]
There is a large degree of overlap between [the international case studies]. Overall, they
show the gaps that exist between different perspectives and how the tension tends to be
resolved in favour of more powerful groups. The power resides with the designer who
shapes the place, the developer who initiates and coordinates the production of space, the
investor who brings forward financial resources, the public-sector agencies that promote
and regulate the transformation of the place, the homeowner who wishes to be in control
of the neighbourhood, the male domination that prevents women from entering public
arenas, the higher-income groups that demand exclusive places, the majority populations
who keep minorities and subcultures out – and so on. Those who do not control resources
and have no voice in political representation, those who remain silent in the process of
spatial transformation, or those who are physically weak can be at the receiving end, and
potentially lose out in a contest over the use and control of space. This is an interdependent
process, with no one party in full control, although the degree of power and influence of
agencies varies according to their economic and political capital or their relations with the
others around them.
[…]
The prevalence of economic justification for public spaces, therefore, becomes the norm
rather than the exception. It becomes an integral part of the logic of place making; anybody
who questions this logic may be accused of naivety or lack of economic awareness. As the
aim of the urban development process is often economic regeneration, place finds an instru-
mental value, as a tool through which economic vibrancy can be delivered. Developers and
local authorities may both look for quantity rather than quality.
Public space, urban regeneration and economic development, therefore, are closely en-
twined. In some cases, the only way that public spaces can be developed and maintained
is through engaging private-sector resources. So, the solution is not to exclude private in-
vestment from the process, and thus argue for poorer places and more deprived cities. The
argument is that individual interests should not be given free rein. The aim is to allow the
character and quality of places to be established through a variety of criteria and at the in-
tersection of different voices, giving ultimate primacy to the public and its different layers.
Powerful groups inevitably try to exert a stronger influence in the process, and negotiations
never become altruistic dialogues, which is why participation, inclusivity and transparency
become essential
[…]
The principle by which the claims are evaluated and the character of public spaces ex-
amined should be the principle of equality. If a place is equally accessible to everyone,
 Global and Comparative Perspectives  441
irrespective of their physical abilities, age, gender, ethnicity, income level and social status,
it can be called a public space. It is on this basis that public spaces should be designed and
developed, as places that embody the principles of equality, by being accessible places made
through inclusive and democratic processes. Democratic and inclusive processes that cre-
ate public space as a common good appear to be the best way of ensuring a better physical
environment with social and psychological significance for the citizens. Where everyday
needs for public spaces are met through participative processes, the result is both physical
improvement and social development, laying the foundations for further enhancement of
democratic practices.

Figure 9.0.4  Contemporary housing blocks with balconies behind metal cages, Gongbei border district in
Macau, China. Photo © Miodrag Mitrašinović.
9.4 Degrees of Care
Shiqiao Li
Source: Li, S. (2014). “Degrees of Care,” in Understanding the Chinese City. Thousand
Oaks: SAGE, 98–116.

The exercise gym and the idling centre, as spatial epitomes of intellectual conceptions of the
body, exist in an urban context that may be described as having been constructed through
degrees of care. Care giving, no doubt stemming from parental care, is fundamental to
human communities; what is interesting is not the act of giving care, but the forms in
which care is given. The ‘care of strangers’ in the city is perhaps the most important point of
difference between the Western city and the Chinese city. The care of strangers – manifested
as an Aristotelian loyalty to citizens of the polis above that to the family, as a Christian caritas
providing care for all, and as the ideal of social welfare in our time – is inseparable from the
care of public space in the Western city. In this equation of corporeal and spatial care, public
space becomes an important measurement of other forms of care in the Western city. The
care of strangers and common spaces in the Chinese city seem to be differently formulated;
the Chinese city seems to have been conceived not with this ‘universal care’ emanating from
those for citizens, strangers, and public space, but by the body in safety with ‘ranked care’
originating from corporeal preservation regimens, familial bonds, and concentrically cared
spaces. The body in safety produces a far-reaching consequence in the city: it desires to barri-
cade itself against a potentially hostile exterior instead of engaging with this potential danger
through a moral and aesthetic framework that prescribes rules of engagement in peace and
violence. The body in safety prefers concealment and the privileges and pleasures within that
enclosure. This basic instinct, among myriad forces shaping the Chinese city, must be seen to
be one of the most definitive in relation to the development of cities. If the notion of the pub-
lic space mediates between homes and institutions in the Western city, this deep commitment
to safety in the Chinese city applies degrees of care in cities; the resultant cities present a strong
contrast of spatial care – from exquisite imperial and literati gardens to filthy common streets
and water channels – which historically seems to be a persistent feature of the Chinese city.
One of the greatest concerns in the governance of Chinese cities has been in the area of urban
sanitation; tremendous endeavours and resources were poured into public health improve-
ment programmes in twentieth-century China under all political and cultural conditions.1
One of the clearest manifestations of the degrees of care in Chinese cities is the ubiqui-
tous presence of walls. In the context of the combatant body in the Western city, walls are
often conceived as military instruments.
[…]
The differences between the traditions of wall building in Europe and China seem to be
those between ‘frontier defence’ and ‘corporeal defence’. Frontier defence requires pushing
of the ‘safety zone’ to the furthest edge; the ultimate goal – that of the perpetual peace –
would be the disappearance of the frontier. This conception of frontier defence seems to be
deeply rooted in Western civilization, from Roman military campaigns in the north and
east to American wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, from understanding the American West as
the frontier to the conception of the expansion into extra-terrestrial space as the frontier.
 Global and Comparative Perspectives  445
The safety zone behind frontiers, in this conception, can be seen ideally as open, in the way
in which the ancient Greeks imagined their polis. For as long as the frontier defence was
solid, the Romans built their cities in relative openness and without walls. The Chinese
corporeal defence begins with the guarding of the interior of the body in safety. The Chi-
nese conception for this defence is weisheng, the guarding of life, which is materialized as a
bewildering range of corporeal preservation regimens of diet and routine, which is very dif-
ferent from the dialectic functions of health and pleasure in the Western culture of diet and
routine. The wearing of facial masks and the expulsion of ‘toxic’ phlegm, still practised in
China outside hospitals, is instinctive and primary in this imagination of the defence of the
corporeal interior. The mouth – as the metaphorical gate of the corporeal interior and the
entry point of all illness (bing cong kou ru) – becomes a critical threshold of intake and expul-
sion. From this primary defensive post of the body, layers of safety zones unfold through an
astonishing variety of mechanisms; among them the most visual and influential are those of
architecture and urban design. In Hong Kong, for instance, urban edges – between the sea
and the shore, the path and the ground, the road and the pavement – are heavily protected
by defiant walls and robust handrails. These may indeed be exaggerated by the legal im-
plications in the system of litigation in Hong Kong, but legal conceptions are grounded in
cultural constructs, in this case, of internalization and externalization of danger in relation
to the body. Hong Kong’s heavy-handed protections contrast starkly with Italian and Dutch
port cities where the sea and the shore exist without walls or railings between them. In
this conception of corporeal defence for the body in safety, the interior and exterior of the
body appear as a continuum. The Chinese city, in this sense, can be understood as complex
layers of systematic corporeal defences that have undergone modifications through time; it
is deeply committed to the spatial construction and reconstruction of the inside (nei) and
the outside (wai) so that the social spheres can also be described in terms of the inside part
(neibu) and the outside part (waibu). Degrees of care are then mapped onto these notions of
inside and outside. This set of complex, layered, blended, and ever-changing social–spatial
constructs of inside and outside leaves the city with a web of spaces in different degrees of
care. Puzzling though it may be at first glance, it is nevertheless possible to understand the
productive mechanisms behind the vastly different features and qualities of ‘public spaces’
in the Chinese city. The apparent confusing signs in Chinese ‘public spaces’ – treated by
some as a rubbish dump and by others as the bedroom as they trod through the streets in
pyjamas – would seem to be less perplexing when we see them as a set of outcomes of the
spatial imaginations of the body in safety: the inside and the outside can be seen to have
been defined not absolutely, but relative to personal perceptions. The sum total of all the
individualized conceptions of the inside and the outside contributes to the seemingly
incomprehensible features of the Chinese ‘public spaces’. While the clarity and simplic-
ity between the public and the private in the Western city cultivated highly visible and
relatively consistent standards of public behaviour, in the Chinese city, it depends on the
individual schemes of the degrees of care. Inside the work unit compounds (danwei) and
walled residential communities (xiaoqu) the care of the ground and buildings are meticu-
lous, dedicated, and exquisite. Outside these walled communities, the care of the ground
and buildings is often absent: rubbish, phlegm, rudeness, and violence can, it seems, le-
gitimately exist on the outside without moral predicament. Since the Opium War in the
mid-nineteenth century, many cities in China such as Hong Kong, Guangzhou, Shang-
hai, and Tianjin had both been established and undergone significant transformations as
they came under the control of European powers; in the twentieth century, the cleaning
of streets and markets, the construction of sewage systems, the protection of rivers and
lakes have all become routine urban issues, revising many of the long-established con-
cepts of diseases and hygiene in traditional medicine.9 However, despite these changes in
446  Shiqiao Li
the twentieth century, Chinese cities have insisted on their deep-rooted conceptions of
the inside and the outside, modifying the transformations of ‘public spaces’ in Chinese
cities in most intriguing ways.

Intensive care: The protected home and its derivatives

[…] Among all the examples of the protected home and its derivatives, perhaps the most
magnificent expression is that of the Forbidden City in Beijing; the seat of imperial power is
the ultimate example of a massively expanded protected home, the most complex and richly
decorated example consistent with the family archetype. Despite the differences in num-
bers, sizes, colours, degrees of ornamentations, the archetype of the protected home has
been consistent in the use of walls, courtyards, and halls of varying degrees of importance.
Perhaps the most sophisticated expression of this spatial archetype of the protected home
is that of the interiorized literati gardens; here, the intricacies of designs inside the gardens
are as astonishing as the starkness of their exterior appearances. The aesthetic potential of
intensive care is rich and limitless, while the opaqueness of its interior is a common feature
in Chinese cities. It is perhaps this immense web of endless permutations of the protected
home that twentieth-century Chinese writer Lu Xun (1881–1936) thought of as having
spun an ‘endless interior’ from which it is impossible to escape.
[…]
One of the recent mass strategies to reinvent the protected home in the contemporary
context of high-rise residential buildings is to build metal cages around the apartment.
These defiant and robust metal cages in the air maintain some of the essential features of
the defensive strategy: emphatic divide between the inside and the outside. The harshness
of the metal cages seems to be a reincarnation of the ferocious dog and fierce gods guarding
the peasant’s courtyard home. The metal cages are certainly re-enactments of the featureless
and forbidding exterior walls. As the protected home adapts to the condition of high-rise
living – the traditional Chinese house never left the ground – it is the balcony that captures
an intriguing moment of tension. The balcony – a feature of the high-rise living adapted
from the Western house of openness – oscillates between a symbol of modernity and lux-
ury and a source of potential danger in the Chinese city. More often than not, the Chinese
‘balcony anxiety’ overwhelms the body in safety, resulting in either enclosure with glass
panels or encasement with metal bars. The balcony has turned against itself in the Chinese
city, shifting from an access to air and view to a site of unacceptable risks; from the poor to
the well-off, apartments and houses often have their balconies protected with enclosures. The
caged home is perhaps a great source of comfort for the body in safety in the Chinese cultural
context, while it is no doubt a clear trigger of anxiety for the body in danger in the Western
cultural context. Between protection and imprisonment, the body in safety made a clear
choice in the Chinese city. Few people can afford a plot of land in contemporary Chinese cit-
ies, when one can rely on traditional methods of wall-building to protect the home; for most
residents in Chinese cities, the protected home becomes a state of mind brought into existence
by a thin layer of metallic cage that is often gratuitous in relation to its function.
[…]

Carelessness: Jianghu
Within this immense and complex network of spaces of intensive and regular care, there is
an equally immense and complex network of spaces without care. The incessant differenti-
ations of spatial inside and outside in Chinese cities also map two distinct categories of peo-
ple: the ‘cooked people’ (shouren) of the inside and the ‘raw people’ (shengren) of the outside.
 Global and Comparative Perspectives  447
If the protected home is the archetype of intensive care, and the village is the archetype of
regular care, then jianghu – literally meaning ‘rivers and lakes’ but by analogy meaning an
absolute outside – is the archetype of carelessness.
Historically connoting both hermitage and opposition, jianghu is perhaps most deeply
informed by the literary imagination found in the Ming dynasty (fourteenth-century) novel
Water Margin (Shuihu Zhuang), which evolved over time and is now believed to have a
collective authorship.18 Set in the Southern Song dynasty (twelfth century), this highly
popular novel is about rebellious characters who gathered in Mount Liang Marsh, raised
a powerful army, and were eventually granted amnesty by the government in order to
defend China from foreign invaders. The meaning of jianghu elaborated in Water Margin is
dependent on the double meaning of care – provision and control – in the sense that jianghu,
through the absence of care, is a place of self-sufficiency and a place for the possibilities of
justice. Instead of a Western triad of utopia, dystopia, and reality, it is a Chinese terra non
grata. In its real and imagined forms, jianghu is on the one hand dangerous and filthy, and on
the other rewarding and enticing.
[…]
Understanding the spaces of jianghu, in place of public spaces, is crucial to an access to the
spatial framework of shared territories in Chinese cities. ‘Rivers and lakes’ not only invoke
analogous meanings of infinite free paths and forbidding natural barriers, but also bring
forth literal meaning of water spaces. Water spaces are neither cultivatable nor inhabitable;
in China, water spaces – rivers, lakes, the ocean – are often among the first to be carelessly
treated with litter, sewage, and industrial discharge.21 One common fate for rivers in Chi-
nese cities is to be cleaned up and rebuilt like a sewer, with straight concrete channels and
hard edges as if to anticipate and to fight future contamination. For similar reasons, beaches
are particularly conducive places for careless behaviours; if water spaces are dangerous,
beaches – as places where that danger begins – are unsuitable for cities. Imperial Chinese
cities were historically not constructed next to water, unlike the cities founded by Western
influences such as Singapore, Hong Kong, and Shanghai. Keeping shared water spaces from
abuse has been one of the most difficult tasks to accomplish in Chinese cities; their literal
connection with the spaces of carelessness can perhaps explain this urban feature which
otherwise remains incomprehensible. It is the huge range of possible spaces that can be anal-
ogously regarded as jianghu that gives rise to some of the most potent forces shaping Chinese
cities. Some would certainly consider the space immediately outside the windows and doors
as jianghu, and feel comfortable to discard rubbish there in accordance with its status. Like
the traditional alley ways (hutongs) outside the courtyard house in Beijing, the streets out-
side the contemporary micro-district can be regarded as a space of jianghu. Like rivers and
lakes, streets in Chinese cities can often induce careless behaviours; their possible status as
spaces of jianghu – as unclassified spaces linking spaces of various degrees of care – may have
contributed towards their general neglect. The inside and the outside, in mapping spaces
of intensive care and carelessness, is demarcated with physical boundaries and practised in
everyday life. The regimes and nature of care in cities are visible through the demarcation
of spaces, but they are also observable through the distribution of rubbish; in Chinese cities,
rubbish distribution mimics their concentric regimes of spatial care to form, in the case of
Beijing, a ring of rubbish mountains outside the perceived spatial boundary of the city.22
In countless attempts to wrestle the streets from the clutches of jianghu, many Chinese cit-
ies have run campaigns of public hygiene by requesting people to consider streets as home.
The most effective strategy, even for colonial cities such as Hong Kong and Singapore, is
to employ a large number of cleaners to keep up with endless elimination of litter. Other-
wise, jianghu rules the streets. Hong Kong’s experience with public space is an interesting
example of adaptations of the Chinese sensibility of jianghu in the twentieth century. The
pre-1997 colonial government legislated the standards of public space provision, but these
448  Shiqiao Li
are primarily dominated by prescribed ‘uses’ such as walking paths, children’s playgrounds,
and chess-playing tables. ‘Public space’ in Hong Kong was reimagined primarily through
the provision of facilities. Managers of these spaces – often Chinese – were much removed
from the lofty ideals of the legislators; they tended to manage the use of the spaces with a
concept that may be seen to be closer to that of jianghu. Fences, restrictions, and controls are
frequently applied to many public spaces, both to care for the space and to prevent it from
abuse. A recent development in Hong Kong has been for the government to entrust the
private sector to provide ‘public space’ – privately owned public spaces – in shopping malls
and in the privately owned transportation infrastructure. While this strategy is both sensible
in relation to the Chinese tradition of degrees of care and successful in relation to the city
of maximum quantities in Hong Kong, it also places any possible realm of the public in the
hands of the capital which reconstitute ‘public spaces’ through a range of visual and spatial
manipulations. In Chinese cities, ‘public spaces’ tend to oscillate between those of intensive
care, such as Tiananmen Square and Chang’an Avenue, and carelessness, such as countless
open spaces and streets in Chinese cities with little care and with much filth and rudeness.
Between the 1950s and 1980s, when the work unit dominated Chinese social and spatial
reality, jianghu appeared to be an imagination of no great consequence; as the work unit
loosens its grip from the 1980s, and as the massive migration of peasant labour into cities
expands units of economic interests to an enormous degree, the notion of jianghu gains a
critically important dimension in contemporary life. Migrant workers have not been ab-
sorbed into the work unit and will likely not be treated as ‘strangers in the city’; instead,
they exist on the margin of society and cities without normative provision of welfare that
the members of a work unit enjoy. In the three decades since the 1980s, the migrant pop-
ulation in Chinese cities reached over 350 million; the conception of jianghu, in this age
of mass and rapid movement of people, formulates urban conditions in Chinese cities. The
ways in which jianghu reconstitutes itself in the twenty-first century in the Chinese city will
lead to tremendous consequences for the physical and intellectual make-up of the Chinese
city. In today’s Chinese cities, the family, the work unit, and jianghu – three powerful arche-
typal social and spatial constructs being transformed by fast social and economic changes –
define Chinese cities in important ways. Is it possible to make up a ‘public realm’ from a
combination of these archetypal social and spatial constructs to ground a sufficient degree
of equality, freedom, and justice? Spaces are cared for in their unique ways in the Chinese
city, and the degrees of care are deeply rooted in the conception, valuation, and elimination
of dangers that are so fundamental to the normative existence of the body in safety.

Notes
1 The greatest threat to public health improvement programmes was the worldwide spread of bubonic
plague in the late nineteenth century; the conditions of Chinese cities were particularly suscepti-
ble to the spread of diseases. This caused a wide range of responses from both foreign and Chinese
settlements in Chinese cities to contain the diseases and to sustain their urban life. See Carol Bene-
dict, Bubonic Plague in Nineteenth-Century China (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1996); Karrie
MacPherson, A Wilderness of Marshes: The Origins of Public Health in Shanghai, 1843–1893 (Maryland:
Lexington Press, 2001); Yu Xinzhong, ‘Night Soil and Waste in Modern China’, in Angela Ki Che
Leung and Charlotte Furth, eds, Health and Hygiene in Chinese East Asia: Policies and Publics in the Long
Twentieth Century (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2010), pp. 51–72.
9 Ruth Rogaski, Hygienic Modernity: Meanings of Health and Disease in Treaty-Port China (Berkeley: Uni-
versity of California Press, 2004); Angela Ki Che Leung and Charlotte Furth, eds, Health and Hygiene
in Chinese East Asia: Policies and Publics in the Long Twentieth Century (Durham and London: Duke
University Press, 2010); Marta E. Hanson, Speaking of Epidemics in Chinese Medicine (London and New
York: Routledge, 2011).
18 Wang Xuetai, Suihu, Jianghu (Xian: Sha’anxi renmin chubanshe, 2011).
21 Yu, ‘Night Soil and Waste in Modern China’, p. 57.
22 Wang Min’an, ‘On Rubbish’, trans. Li Shiqiao, Theory, Culture & Society 28 (2011), pp. 340–53.
Figure 9.0.5  A shopping street in Delhi, India. Photo © Vikas Mehta.
9.5 The Culture of the Indian Street
Tim Edensor
Source: Edensor, T. (1998). “The Culture of the Indian Street,” in Fyfe, N.R. (ed.),
Images of The Street: Planning, Identity and Control in Public Space. London: Routledge,
205–221.

In this chapter, I examine the culture of Indian streets to provide a contrast to the Western
streets considered elsewhere in this volume. It is important that explorations of the street should
not blunder into the ethnocentric pitfalls of so many social and cultural theories, which examine
distinct Western contexts and produce ideas that are taken as universally applicable. My princi-
pal aim is to highlight the increasingly regulated qualities of Western street life by examining
the rich diversity of social activity in Indian streets. It is not my intention to idealise or romanti-
cise the Indian street as a space of the ‘Other’ but I realize that my position as a Western scholar
will leave me open to the charge of ‘othering’. I recognize that Westerners seek out the different
experience offered by the Indian street partly because they have consumed fantastic narratives
and images of India. However, I go on to argue that these socially constructed pre-conceptions
may be mediated or undermined by the sensual and social experience of space. This is part of a
wider argument which insists that streets are not merely texts to be read. Those passing through,
living and working in streets, interpret their experience through social, sensual and symbolic
processes. Thus, whilst the description I provide of the Indian street is necessarily general, it
is not intended to convey any ideal, and although it may seem as if I am reinforcing a binary
distinction between West and ‘Other’, I insist that the material and social distinctions between
Western and Indian streets do exist, but they exist within an uneven global process whereby
space is becoming more commodified and regulated.
After a discussion about the social practices, forms of movement, regulation, and sensual
experience of Indian streets, there is a comparative section on the forms of social life and
regulation of the Western street. I then explore the relationship between Western and In-
dian streets, arguing that the latter are ‘othered’ partly because similar material and social
qualities have been expunged in the West by the intensification of consumer capitalism and
the Apollonian urge to rationalize and regulate. Accordingly, this ‘overdevelopment’ has
meant that ‘other’ spaces such as Indian streets retain a fascination for Westerners hungry
for temporary disorder.
[…]

Social practices
The Indian street is part of a ‘spatial complex’ which also comprises the bazaar and the fair
and together they constitute an unenclosed realm which provides a ‘meeting point of several
communities’ (Chakrabarty, 1991: 23). Thus, the street is located within a cellular structure
that suggests a labyrinth, with numerous openings and passages. The flow of bodies and ve-
hicles criss-cross the street in multi-directional patterns, veering into courtyards, alleys and
cul-de-sacs. The busiest streets, the main arteries of this spatial network, are never merely
‘machines for shopping’ but the site for numerous activities.
 Global and Comparative Perspectives  453
This is reflected in the diverse spaces in and around the Indian street. Shops co-exist
alongside work places, schools, eating places, transport termini, bathing points, political
headquarters, offices, administrative centres, places of worship and temporary and per-
manent dwellings. The multifunctional structure of the street provides an admixture of
overlapping spaces that merge public and private, work and leisure, and holy and profane
activities. This diversity contains a host of micro-spaces: corners and niches, awnings and
offshoots.
In the bazaar, a sense of familiarity is maintained through particular modes of address,
types of economic exchange and the maintenance of formalized and convivial obligations.
These strategies for dealing with the unfamiliar contribute to the formation of a gregarious
environment which privileges speech and removes barriers between backstage and front-
stage so that visual and verbal enquiry is facilitated. This provides a congenial environment
for economic exchange, typified by barter, which, as Buie describes, is a sensual as well as
economic activity; an ‘art’, a ‘ritual’ and a ‘dance of exchange’ (Buie, 1996: 227). Besides
this particular form of economic activity, the proliferation of spaces provides contexts for a
range of social practices that range from the commercial to the recreational, and from the
industrial to the ritual. Such streets are ‘centres of social life, of communication, of political
and judicial activity, of cultural and religious events and places for the exchange of news,
information and gossip’ (ibid).
As a commercial realm, the street is occupied by diverse enterprises, organized according
to a variety of time-space constraints. Whilst there are fixed shops, the street is also the
work place of mobile providers of services such as dentists, fortunetellers, shoe-shiners,
barbers, letter-writers, shoe repairers, bicycle fixers and tea-wallahs, as well as mobile stalls
of all kinds. Moreover, the open fronts of most workshops mean that the activities of engi-
neers, smiths, potters, bookbinders, metal workers and others spills out onto the side of the
street, further blurring the frontstage and backstage realms and activities.
As well as being a social space for transaction of news and gossip, particularly organized
around particular micro spaces such as rickshaw termini and tea stalls, the street is a site for
announcement, and is host to adverts transmitted visually or by loudspeaker. For instance,
vans publicize the current movie attractions with samples of the soundtrack, and when
there are elections or local political disputes, loudspeaker vans broadcast political slogans.
Demonstrations by political parties, and religious processions, theatrically transform the
street into a channel of embodied transmission, and striking workers hold meetings and oc-
cupy spaces. The street thus becomes a temporary stage where political dramas and religious
observances are played out.
As a site for entertainment, children make their own amusement, playing cricket and
other games, whilst adults play cards, chess and karam. Moreover, travelling entertainers,
such as musicians, magicians and puppeteers setup stalls and attract crowds. Besides these
travellers, there are disparate hawkers and beggars as well as bands of religious adherents,
saddhus and holy men, occasionally performing acts of abstinence and endurance. There
is thus a constant stream of temporary pleasurable activities such as loitering with friends,
sitting and observing, and meeting people that also form distinct points of congregation.
Since many dwellings are located at the side of the street, it is also the site for domestic
activities such as collecting water, collecting dung for fuel, washing clothes, cooking and
child-minding. For the pavement dwellers, the street is also a temporary home, necessi-
tating the carrying out of bodily maintenance such as washing. Such temporary sites and
activities dissolve preconceived notions of ownership, and question the distinction between
private and public (Chandhoke, 1993: 69).
This proliferation of multi-use spaces can be dramatically contrasted with colonial at-
tempts to demarcate single-purpose spaces, dividing cities into industrial, commercial and
454  Tim Edensor
domestic areas, and more dramatically, constructing a physical separation between coloniz-
ers and colonized. Central to European concerns was the perceived erasure between public
and private realms: colonizers were affronted by the ways in which open space was used for
the domestic tasks and rituals of washing, changing, sleeping, urinating and cooking. The
colonial enclaves built by the British testify to the urge to reconstruct urban and suburban
aesthetics and order upon what was imagined as urban chaos. The erection of private bun-
galows, gardens, administrative buildings, and the laying out of parks and leisure facilities
such as tennis courts, gymkhanas and golf courses, impose an alternative metropolitan
spatial order wherein a network of manicured, broad avenues are marked against the im-
agined disorder of the ‘native’ quarter. Today, in many Indian cities, the colonial quarter
has been reclaimed by bourgeois, commercial and administrative groups who attempt to
re-imprint a power-in-spacing by appropriating these boundary-marking distinctions. The
range of social activities and demands in the bazaar tends to deny the pedestrian the option
of seeking refuge in a distanced disposition; the social immersion that such an environment
demands disrupts any lofty detachment.

Movement
It is difficult to move in a straight line on an Indian street. The pedestrian has to weave
a path by negotiating obstacles underfoot or in front, avoiding hassle and ceasing, and
remaining alert about the hazards presented by vehicles and animals such as monkeys,
buffaloes, cows, pigs and dogs. Walking down the street cannot be a seamless, uninter-
rupted journey but is rather a sequence of interruptions and encounters that disrupt smooth
passage. The abundant simultaneous cross-cutting journeys means that purposive travel
towards an objective must take account of others who will cross one’s path. Rapid progress
is usually frustrated. The variety of activities that are played out on the street are enacted at
different speeds. Some linger or lounge, others gather in groups for long spells. Given the
diversity of social activities played out in the street, there are a host of differently constituted
time–space paths as people pursue diverse aims.
The miscellaneous collection of vehicles that use the street: bullock-carts, cars, bicy-
cles, motorbikes, auto- and cycle-rickshaws, buses and other diverse forms of transport, all
move at different speeds as they manoeuvre for space, providing an ever-changing dance of
traffic which contrasts with the controlled flow and pace of traffic movement on Western
thoroughfares. Thus passage is marked by disruption and distraction, not only by the exi-
gencies of avoidance and the physical collision with others, but also by the distractions and
diversions offered by these heterogeneous activities and sights. The choreographies of the
street, with intersecting movements differing in direction and tempo, and constituted by
humans, vehicles and animals, continually change, incorporating the necessarily contingent
character of the pedestrian’s dance.

Regulation
The bazaar and street are subject to regulation but this is contingent, contextual and local.
Rather than security guards, video surveillance and policing, local power holders exercise
policies of exclusion and control. Overall, however, surveillance is rather low-level. Whilst
there are formal traffic rules the various species of vehicles pay little heed to them as they
jostle for position. The street performers, beggars and tours are rarely advised to ‘move on’
and the mentally and physically handicapped are not confined to institutions. The domestic,
stray and wild animals that share the streets with people may suffer cruelly but there are few
systematic attempts at controlling their movements or numbers. As I have mentioned, in
 Global and Comparative Perspectives  455
most urban areas, small shops and makeshift dwellings spring up overnight on the borders
of streets without seeking planning permission.
In a similar fashion, streets and bazaars are not subject to aesthetic control other than by
force of convention. Streets are rarely planned to convey a particular overall impression
or theme, and neither are street dwellings and other buildings policed to maintain an ‘ap-
propriate’ appearance, with ad hoc signs, embellishments and crumbling masonry usually
permitted.
This seeming disorder and lack of regulation disguises the forms of power that are played
out in the street. For instance, a gendered distinction between private and public is evinced
in that most of the shopkeepers and artisans in the public realm are male, since it is gener-
ally considered unsafe and unrespectable for women to spend much time in certain pub-
lic spaces. Similarly, in many villages and towns, the spatial divisions of caste are rigidly
adhered to, although this is less marked in large urban areas. However, the demarcation
of religious quarters can be rigidly maintained and the brutal communalist policing of
religious others may flare up in times of political tension, as in the recent spate of ‘funda-
mentalist’ Hindu attacks on Muslim areas in mixed urban areas following the demolition of
the Babri Masjid in Ayodhya. Power also works its way onto the street in less obvious ways.
Bribes and favours are often needed to secure commercial sites and violence may be held
in reserve to control lower castes and religious minorities from occupying particular do-
mestic and work areas. Even in the most seemingly chaotic spaces of the shanty town, slum
lords may wield control (Chandhoke, 1993: 70). But even in the most regulated spaces, the
‘unintended city’ of the ‘shanty town’ insistently projects into and subverts ‘planned urban
spaces’, challenging the spatial ordering of cities and hence, the social order. Chandhoke
argues that the ‘urban poor make and remake space… seize spaces and reshape in this way
the entire urban form’;

They intrude into individual consciousness at traffic crossings… they inform us that
cities are unequally constructed and maintained… (they) disrupt the coherence of the
planned urban landscape, they retaliate and talk back to history and geography by mak-
ing the homelessness of these people dramatically visible
(Chandhoke, 1993: 64)

Whilst norms of movement, activity and appearance exist and are mediated by power,
the elastic attitudes to regulating them means char official intervention in one’s trajectory
through the street is less likely than that of the contingent decision of local power holders
to exercise regulation over what might locally be regarded as inappropriate.

Sensual experience
I particularly want to bring out the rich sensual encounter that is promoted by the afore-
mentioned processes of structuring, moving through, performing in and regulating the
Indian street. The relationship between sensual experience, and spatial form and practice,
has been rarely touched upon and represents a rich field for further exploration (although
see Porteous, 1990; Rodaway, 1994). Material spaces provoke particular forms of sense and
feeling, and are themselves produced out of local social practices and meanings, including
those which account for the senses. It is my contention that the pedestrian enjoys an in-
finitely more vivid sensual experience in the Indian street than in the Western street.
I have discussed the divergencies of movement in the Indian street, the crosscutting inter-
play of bodies and machines in motion. This panoply of living motion against a backdrop of
randomly arranged buildings and objects produces an ever-shifting series of juxtapositions.
456  Tim Edensor
Unforeseen assemblages of diverse static and moving elements provide surprising and
unique scenes. Such haphazard features and events dis-order the gaze and spatial regularity.
The flow of distracting sights negates scopic surveillance and easy visual consumption as
the eye continuously swivels, alighting on changing episodes to the left and right, far ahead
and close at hand. The norms of pleasurably jostling in the crowd, moreover, engender a
haptic geography wherein there is continuous touching of others and weaving between and
amongst bodies. The different textures brushed against and underfoot, and the heating of
one’s skin from nearby stoves, render the body aware of diverse tactile sensations which
interrupt concentrated gazing.
Visual imperialism is also denied by the powerful combination of other stimuli. The
‘smellscapes’ of the Indian street are rich and varied. The jumbled mix of pungent aro-
mas—sweet, sour, acrid and savoury—produces intense ‘olfactory geographies’. Equally
diverse is the soundscape which combines the noises generated by numerous human activi-
ties, animals, forms of transport and performed and recorded music, to produce a changing
symphony of diverse pitches, volumes and tones.
By looking at the experience of, and negotiation with, modes of activity, movement, reg-
ulation and sensual experience, it seems that the body passing through the Indian street is
continually imposed upon and challenged by diverse activities, sensations and sights which
render a state at variance to the restrained and distanced distraction of the Western street.
Here, the imaginative, improvisational predilections of the pedestrian are stimulated into
unexpected flights of fancy, and the passage through the street is rhizomic rather than linear.

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Index
#15M Movement 174
abandonment 276, 280, 429
accountability 38, 201, 213, 267, 280, 416
African American 1–2, 29, 54, 83, 100, 106, 132;
communities 29, 99
African villages 198
Afrikaan Markt 212–13, 250–63
Afrikaanderwijk 212, 250–63
agonism 308
agonistic 276–77, 308–09, 312–16
Air Quality Egg 207
alienation 91, 227, 417
American cities 148, 150
Amsterdam 98–99
Antanas Mockus 138–39, 141–42
anti-city programs 3
apartheid 131, 276–77, 300
Arab Spring 16, 158, 175
architectural: design 114, 190, 198, 245, 275–76;
discipline 42, 45, 114, 217, 249, 281, 445;
history 198; markers 114, 175
Arendt, Hannah 199, 281, 308
Argentina 159, 199–201, 427
Army Corps of Engineers 293
Arnold, Matthew 148, 407
ARO (Architecture Research Office) 320,
356–57
Art-in-Architecture Program 291
Art in Public Space Program 275
Athenian democracy 27, 96, 157, 166, 227, 308
Augustusplatz 195
Automated Traffic Surveillance and Control
(ATSAC) 248
automobile traffic 376
autonomy 37, 67, 123, 150, 157, 313
avoidance 44, 386, 454
Ax:son Johnson Foundation 421
Bahrain, Pearl Square 158, 182–186
balkanization 98
Baltimore 106, 128–29, 131–33; City Planning
Commission 131; Department of Parks and
Recreation 131, 133; Division of Recreation
for Colored People 129; National Recreation
Association for Baltimore’s Board of Public
Recreation 130; public park system 106–7,
129, 131; South Baltimore Improvement
Association 129; Urban League Report
129–30
Barcelona 158, 166, 182, 184, 365, 369; Acampada
Sol 158, 175–76; Catalonia Square 174; Plaça
de Catalunya 158, 182, 184–85; Puerta de Sol
174–77
Baudelaire, Charles 386
bazaar 249, 452–55
beautification 157, 275
Beijing 446–47; Tiananmen Square 448
benefits, environmental 132–33
Berkeley Free Speech Movement 149
Berlin 1, 17, 99, 165–66, 174; Brandenburg
Gate 1
Berman, Marshall 81
Biennial of Public Space 415
black feminist writers 82–83
Black Lives Matter 2–3
Black Lives Matter Plaza NW 2
blockhomes 244–45
bodies, quasi-public 340
Bogotá 107–8, 138–43, 319, 416, 420
Bowser, Muriel E. 2
Boys Brigade 301
Brazil 59, 107, 157, 415, 426–27
Broken Windows Theory 394
brownfields 132
Buenos Aires 159, 195, 200, 426; Avenida de
Mayo 200; contemporary 428; May Pyramid
159, 200–201; Plaza de Mayo 159, 177, 195,
199–201; Plaza San Martin 200
Business Improvement District (BID) 7, 113, 121,
212, 226, 228–31, 393
Campidoglio 291
capitalism 27, 36, 157, 168, 266, 277, 312–14,
439, 452
Capitol Hill neighborhood 2
Caracas 16, 426, 430
Castro 59
central squares 2, 124, 158–59, 166, 190–94, 202,
275–76, 348–49, 368–69
Centre of Contemporary Culture of Barcelona
(CCCB) 363, 369
464 Index
Charter of Public Space (UN-Habitat) 415
Chavez, Hugo 426
Chicago 91
China 100, 417, 444–45, 447
Chinese cities 444–48
circulation space 212, 238–39, 358, 395
Cirugeda, Santiago 159, 206
cities: Chinese 417, 444–48; European 98;
Imperial Chinese 447; Latin American 140,
165, 416, 426–27, 430–31, 438; mega 175; safe
66; smart 175, 208; Spanish 158; Western 417,
444–45
citizenry: exclusion from 27, 212, 308, 328; urban
64, 114–16, 138–40, 142–43, 149, 204–7, 217,
275–76, 282–83, 410–11, 415–16
citizenship 28, 30, 42, 107, 138–40, 143, 149, 217,
227–28, 275–76, 427–30
city planning 10, 346
Citywalk 26
civic housekeeping 374
civic legitimization 164
civic realm 363
civic space 265, 368
civic squares 42, 84, 190, 341
civic structures 200
civil society 16, 36–38, 51, 151, 164, 313, 365,
411, 421–22
civil society organizations 422
class oppression 66
climate change 60, 320, 349, 357–58, 422–23
Closed-Circuit TV (CCTV) systems 393
cluster 6, 106, 115, 415; of activity 96, 386; ethnic
98–99; low-density 246
co-creation 7, 106, 211, 250–63, 415
coffee houses 81
Cohabitation Strategies (COHSTRA) 126
Colombia 59, 140, 143, 415
commodification 270; of public space 7, 44, 107,
113, 141, 157, 213, 266, 268, 347; of urban
space 61, 108, 431
commons 50, 169, 320, 346, 348, 350–51,
364, 422
community 83–84, 170, 229, 301–2, 364, 384,
430, 452; of color 167, 218; of consumers 247;
engaged 59, 219–20, 270, 276, 300–301, 423;
exclusion 84, 245, 302; immigrant 98, 213, 219;
online 174, 177; ownership 219, 300–301, 417;
sense of 16, 405, 420; shaping 60, 74, 207, 340,
349; use value 213
community park 301
concert halls 81
Conference on Human Settlements (Habitat
II) 421
consumers/consumerism 26–27, 50, 113–14, 116,
319, 429
consumption 21, 44–45, 72, 98, 217, 246, 266,
275, 378
contestation 28, 30, 61, 67, 165–66, 170, 194, 285,
320, 334
cosmopolitanism 53, 98, 376
Costa Rica 124, 426
Crimp, Douglas 290, 292–94
critical social theory 53, 116
Cuba 426, 429
cultural animation 395
cultural events 220
cultural segmentation 248
dasymetric mapping approaches 132
defensible space 3
Democracia Real Ya 158, 174
democracy 16–17, 26–30, 39, 45, 157, 170,
280–81, 284–85, 308–9, 376, 429–30;
contemporary capitalist 39; diminishing 16;
as an institution 26; public space 3, 17, 27, 30,
157, 284–85, 364, 415; sites of contestation 26,
169, 275
design 6, 38, 114, 198, 320, 335, 368, 394;
alternatives 3, 190, 208, 216, 348, 350,
363; artistic 293, 309; co-produced 38,
106, 219–20, 300, 349, 396, 407; cultural
reproduction 211, 290, 294, 350, 437;
discipline 6, 29, 106, 198, 346, 351, 363,
365; environmental 211; feminist approaches
60; functional 238, 395, 408, 445–46; non-
functional 239, 294, 396; processes 182,
184, 217, 219, 290, 293, 300, 342, 394, 420,
423, 436, 438; public realm 7, 61, 106, 157,
211, 217, 276, 334, 342, 410, 416; quality of
363–64, 422; safety-oriented 406; scholarship
72, 275–76; social meanings 363; solutions 60,
74; standards 236–37, 239; street 376; universal
access 59–60, 73–74, 404, 406
Design for the Living World 300
de Solà-Morales, Manuel 363, 370
destination districts 332
destination space 212, 226, 238–39, 248, 332–33
Deutsche, Rosalyn 290
development: private commercial 429; tourist 429
development districts and home owners
associations 429
distributional analysis 132
distributive justice 106, 120–21, 125, 132–33
diversity 59, 67, 96, 105, 113, 320, 325, 333–34,
348, 384–85, 393; of activities 452, 454;
cultural 61, 430; economic 417; political 61;
social 96, 100–101, 186, 333, 386; spatial 314,
453; super-diversity 98–99
DIY design 194
DIY urbanism 160
Dominican Republic 426
ecological infrastructure 321, 358
ecological systems 320
economic development 10, 415, 420, 440
economic equality 2
economic opportunities 321
economic policies 201
economic shifts 30
Ecuador 275, 426
 Index  465
electronic commons 44 Guangzhou 445
enclosure, sense of 407 guerrilla gardening 160, 206
Engels, Friedrich 346 guerrilla urbanism 160, 207
England 201, 340; Brighton 340; Hove 340 Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) 184
Enrique Peñalosa 107, 138, 141–42
Environmental Health Clinic 160 Habermas, Jurgen 16, 26, 28, 35, 37–38, 53–54,
environmental inequity 133 150, 314
environmental justice 54, 106, 128, 132–33 Habitat II 421–22
equality 2, 27, 36, 43, 72, 114, 121, 281, 436–37, Habitat III 416, 421–22
440–41, 448; equity 74, 105, 132–33, 138, 158, habitus 61, 97–100
169, 365, 404, 411; gender 420, 422–23 hackathon workshops 205, 207
European Archive for Urban Public Space hacking public space 160, 204–7
369–70 Hackitectura 159
European Prize for Urban Public Space 363 Harvey, David 105, 107, 131, 150–51
European-style plaza 184, 291 Havana 429
everyday spaces 30 health hazards 132
Evidence Locker 160 Heart of Corona Initiative 219
exclusion 100, 116, 270, 284, 314, 364, 376, 379, Heatherwick, Thomas 217
394; economic 121, 202, 246; patterns 114, heat island effect 321
374; policy-based 105, 116, 125, 283, 308, 454; heterogeneity 113, 149, 165, 393
from private-public space 212, 227; social 227, hiatus space 212, 238–39
300; spatial 28, 38, 97, 246, 276, 283; tactics high-security residential units 246
6–7, 212, 294; of women 64, 74, 198 Hoagland, Edward 91
homeless 100, 107, 116, 123, 142–43, 148, 150,
face-to-face interactions 219, 249, 376 226–30, 276, 281, 285, 306–9, 332–33
farmers market 207, 319 Homeless Vehicle Project 276, 307, 309
female volunteer groups 27 Home Owners Loan Corporation (HOLC) 128,
feminist perspectives 60, 72 133
feminist public art 73 Hong Kong 16, 157, 166–67, 275, 427, 445,
feminist scholarship 60, 65, 72, 74 447–48
Foucault, Michel 53, 308–9, 313 housing development 346
Frameworks of rights 150 Hughes, Langston 100
Fraser, Nancy 27–28, 122, 276, 284 Humala, Ollanta 426
frontier defence 444–45 human scale 217, 319, 407
Future of Places Initiative (UN-Habitat) 421 Hyde Park 148

garage sale 30 identities: age 21, 64–65, 67, 72–73, 91, 96, 202,
García, Alexandra 220 340, 437, 441, 448; economic 30, 64–65, 82,
gendered identities 60, 65, 72, 80–84, 455 100, 120, 129, 202, 319, 408, 423, 427; ethnic
gendering public space 60, 80 29, 54, 61, 65–66, 74, 97–100, 131, 164, 428,
gender-specific analysis 60 441; gender 36, 64–67, 72, 82–83, 97, 422, 428,
Germany 206, 300, 439; Essen 206 441; political 16, 50, 52–53, 83–84, 164, 166,
global migrants 61, 98 169, 227, 276–77, 281–82, 285, 313–15, 378,
Global Programme on Public Space 428, 430; racial 29–30, 43, 46, 60, 64–67, 72–74,
(UN-Habitat) 415, 421 80, 82–83, 97, 99–100, 128, 131–33, 427–28;
Global Public Space Toolkit (UN Habitat) religious 29, 65, 72; sexual 52, 65–67, 72–73, 428
415–16 Imam Ali Shrine 1
governance 7, 121, 157, 164–66, 211–12, 216–17, immigrant 2, 10, 28–29, 60–61, 96, 219–20, 232,
227–29, 231, 237, 239, 245, 264–65, 269, 422, 248, 275–76, 308; merchants 98–99, 232
428–29 inclusion 6–7, 10, 36, 38, 59–61, 100, 105, 114,
Governing Council of The United 116, 280, 395; social 10, 61, 276, 306, 415,
Nations Human Settlements Programme 422–23; spatial 64; of stakeholders 422; of
(UN-Habitat) 421 women 67
government resources 228 indigenous peoples 426–27
grass-roots groups 160 industrial cities 346
Greek agora 26 industrial restructuring 30
Greek democracy 308 inequity 83–84, 120, 133, 186
green space 228, 341, 359, 422–23 infill development 340
green streets 320, 358–59 influence (of/by public space) 7, 66–67, 114–15,
groups: marginalized 60, 165; privileged 80, 114 124–25, 198, 202, 385, 387, 405, 438–40, 447
466 Index
infrastructure 120, 139, 194, 206, 320, 340, Los Angeles 17, 26–30, 100, 128, 244, 246, 248;
348–50, 356–57, 422; ecological 357; California Plaza 245; Latino residents 1, 29;
maintenance 264; mobility 7, 264, 319, 348; of Pershing Square 26, 28; Poets’ Walk 245;
inclusion 221, 277, 460; social 59, 82, 107, 249; residents 28, 245
storm water 358; wireless internet 388
interactional justice 106, 122–23 Madanipour, Ali 416–17
internet 7, 51–52, 175, 204, 333–34, 364, 385, Madrid 16
388, 430; use in urban public spaces 384–85 main street 332, 388; decay 332; renaissance 332
internet users 385–88 Manfredi, Elkus 217
intersectionality 6, 61, 64–67 marginal space 17, 212, 238–40
interventions 213, 265, 316, 369, 420; ecological markets 50–51, 164, 198, 213, 226, 266, 269, 377,
358; guerilla 205–6, 315; incremental 376; 384, 437–39, 445
reforming 333–34; by women 198 Martyr’s Square 191
investment 228, 265; ecological 358; foreign Marx, Karl 149–50
139–40; in global cities 100; neoliberal Mattern, Shannon 217
138; private 61, 213, 228, 422, 440; public Medellin 107
3, 133, 139–40, 216, 349, 415, 428; in public Mexico City 191, 428, 430; Zócalo Square 191,
space 213, 423; return on 269, 370, 416, 428, 430
437–38 middle-class 27, 29, 60, 72, 84–85, 131–33,
Istanbul 16, 166, 191, 194, 422; Eminönü Ferry 211–12, 227, 388, 439
Docks 1; Gezi Park 194; Taksim Square 191 middle-class flight 131, 133
migrant workers 448
Jaar, Alfredo 315 migration 30, 97–100, 334, 448
Jacobs, Jane 81, 97, 227–29, 332, 374, 404–6 mobile phone 364, 386
Jeremijenko, Natalie 206 monitored urban spaces 133
Jianghu 446–48 monuments 183–84, 191, 285, 307–8
Just City 7, 105, 120, 336 Mothers of Plaza de Mayo 159, 195, 198–201
Just Desserts shooting 80, 84–85 Mouffe, Chantal 164, 277, 308
just distribution of resources 7, 105–7, 133, 150 Mubarak, Hosni 182
justice 72, 125, 143, 158, 166, 169, 230, 428, multiculturalism 423
447–48 multi-purpose places 340
juxtapositions 30, 248, 417, 455 multi-stakeholder initiatives 421

Kant, Immanuel 53, 308 Natalie Jeremijenko 160, 206

Khawarzad, Aurash 219 National Day of Civic Hacking 207
Knizak, Milan 205 natural rights 50
neighborhood 409; African-American 100, 130;
labor unions 199, 201, 333 associations 128, 160; attraction 212, 238–39;
Laclau, Ernesto 276 blackness 82; conflict 292; impoverished 2,
landscape 7, 52, 60, 114, 120, 141–42, 244, 246, 227; ownership 97, 99, 213, 300; parks 227,
319–20, 348–50, 359–60 231; placemaking 300; public spaces 80, 120,
landscape architecture 10 213, 239, 408; safety 74, 82, 213, 244–45, 247;
landscape design 217, 341 shopping 96–97, 327; social interaction 332,
landscapes of power 164 350, 384, 388; wealthy 143; white-flight 131;
Latin America 107, 319, 416, 426–28 women’s role in 198
Lefebvre, Henri 17, 28, 107, 149–50 neighborhood, immigrant 2, 98, 213, 250–63
Lefort, Claude 276, 284–85 neoliberal/neoliberalism 50–51, 54, 138–39,
living spaces 350 141–43, 157, 164–68, 170, 229, 416–17,
local authorities 59, 265, 342, 423, 437, 426–28, 437
439–40 neo-Marxist approaches 166
local culture 228, 301, 387 The Netherlands 74, 213, 275, 439;
local development corporations 226 Afrikaanderwijk 213, 250–63
locational disadvantage 120–21 new publics 3
locations of intervention 333 New Urban Agenda 10, 416, 421–23
London 26, 98–99, 227, 340, 364, 376–79, New York City 53, 60, 91, 97–99, 123–24, 131,
456; Exhibition Road 376–77; High Street 207, 211–12, 216, 226–27, 236–37, 358; 1961
Kensington 377; Maida Hill Market 377; Zoning Resolution 236–37, 239; Association
Oxford Circus 376; Seven Dials 376; streets of Community Employment Programs for the
377; Trafalgar Square 376 Homeless (ACE) 219; Battery Breakwater 359;

Battery Park 359; Bedford-Stuyvesant 99; Bella
Abzug Park 216; Bronx 2; Bryant Park 226,
230; Canal Street 231; Central Park 148; City
Hall Park 185; Columbus Circle 123; Corona
Plaza 211, 216, 218–20; CSO (Combined
Sewer Overflow) 358; Department of Design
and Construction (DDC) 218; Department
of Transportation (DOT) 218–20; Economic
Development Corporation (EDC) 218–19;
Federal Plaza 44, 276, 280, 290–94; Foley
Square 185; Fourteenth Street-Union Square
BID 229; Fulton Street 99; Grand Central
Station 1; High Line 216–17; Horticultural
Society of New York’s Neighborhood Plaza
Program 219; Hudson Yards 211, 216–20;
Jacob Javits Plaza 276, 290, 292–94; Liberty
Plaza Park 184; Lower Manhattan 185, 228,
230, 280, 320, 357–60; Madison Square
Park 226, 230; Manhattan 2, 91, 232, 357,
359–60; MTA 2; OneNYC Plan Plaza Equity
Program 219; Planning Department 159,
184, 404; Privately Owned Public Space
(POPS) 236; P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center
357; Public Design Commission 220; Public
Plaza Program 218–19; public space 216, 228;
Queens 2, 218–19, 230; Queens Economic
Development Corporation 218–19; Queens
Museum 218–20; Related Companies/Oxford
Properties Group 8 216; residents 91, 216,
218, 229–31, 360; Times Square 44, 185, 227;
Tompkins Square Park 229; Union Square 53,
212, 226–31, 319; Union Square Partnership
212, 226; The Vessel 217; Wall Street 184–85;
Zuccotti Park 157–59, 182–86
New York University’s Center for Urban Science
and Progress 216
Nicaragua 426
Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) 422
non-profit organizations 160, 212
objects of constant surveillance 217
Occupy Wall Street (OWS) 16, 123–24, 158–59,
184–86
Olympic Park, Atlanta 148
openness 81–82, 116, 280, 291, 301, 335, 404,
408, 445–46
open source urbanism 206–7
opportunity costs 43–44
Panama 426
Paris 16, 26, 99, 183, 191, 227
Paris, Bastille Square 191
PARK(ing) Days 160
park conservancies 226
park equity 132
parks and recreation 133
parrhesia 308–9
participation 37, 60, 123, 125, 149, 280–81, 384,
405, 423, 440; as act of citizenship 16, 27,
Index  467
138, 280, 308; in design 300; by marginalized
populations 36, 73, 80, 198; online 7, 385,
387–88; political action 175; political demands
415; through protest 158, 165, 175
pedestrianism 230, 238, 247, 319, 324, 326, 333,
335, 340, 376, 454–56
pedestrian speech acts 324–25
Peru 426
planners, women 60, 64, 74
planning: discipline 3, 6, 10, 36, 52, 59–60, 131,
236, 332, 363, 378; movements 74; solutions 60
playgrounds 1, 130–31, 216, 218, 228
plaza 2–3, 114, 116, 182, 217–19, 236, 247, 249,
394, 404, 430
Plaza de Armas 200
Plaza del Ayuntamiento 177
pocket parks 341
political action 16, 60, 85, 158, 175, 312, 416,
427; in public space 182, 191, 194
political demands 30, 415
political demonstrations 158, 182–86, 293
political dynamics 85
political uprisings 16
pop-up urbanism 160
port cities 445
Port Moresby 66
post-industrialism 346
post-public spaces 246
power relations 52, 60
Prague 205–6; Ampelmännchen 206
private developers 116, 121, 159, 204–5, 207, 212,
218–19, 236–37, 239, 247, 437, 439–40
Privately Owned Public Space (POPS) 15,
20, 52, 105, 112–16, 121, 159, 212, 236–39,
246, 448
private-property ownership 3, 50, 113, 227,
229–30, 236, 266, 269, 333, 437, 440
private-public interests 115, 217
private security 114, 116, 121, 244, 246–47, 393
private space 17, 44, 51–52, 81, 112, 114–16,
205, 227
privatization 7, 42, 60, 113, 228, 429, 431, 437;
of public resources 42, 114, 157, 228, 426,
428; of public space 114, 246, 429; of space
393–94; through BIDs 229, 231; of urban space
133, 428–29
procedural justice 106, 122, 124–25
Project for Public Spaces (PPS) 421
property rights 227, 267–68
protests 157–60, 165, 167–68, 174–77, 190–92,
194–95, 199, 201, 205, 207, 291, 294, 426–28,
430; political 182–83, 185, 231, 427
PSA method 132
public amenities 59, 98, 129, 132, 226, 231,
238–39, 341, 375
public art 7, 73, 275–77, 280–83, 285, 290, 292,
306–7, 395
public demonstrations 429, 453
public domain 15, 105, 233, 399, 401, 458
468 Index
public health 1, 106, 132–33, 444; advocates 333
public interest 43, 46, 81, 213, 216, 267–70,
280, 439
public life 3, 6, 22, 26–27, 29, 113, 123, 164–65,
290, 374–75, 377–79
publicness 43–44, 46, 51–52, 139, 211, 213, 320,
333–35, 363–64, 392, 394, 396, 398
public open space 59, 67, 183, 190, 194, 212, 218,
246, 341–42, 407, 436
public parks 27, 29, 43, 45, 106–7, 114–15, 129,
131–33, 143, 159, 194, 206, 227, 283–85, 321
public places, commercial 26
Public Private Partnerships (PPP) 211
public realm 6–7, 15–16, 20–22, 81, 83–84,
149–50, 169, 199, 320, 340, 342, 365, 384–88,
394–95, 411
public rights 246, 267
‘publics’ 15–17, 20, 26–27, 29–30, 37–39, 51–52,
115, 268, 280, 282–83, 293, 320, 340, 368, 375,
377–78
public sector 10, 53, 213, 230, 266, 268–69, 320,
340, 437
public sector institutions 267
public service ethos 213, 267
public services 107, 120, 266, 268–70, 423
public space 6–7, 15–17, 26–30, 50–54, 80–85,
120–25, 138–43, 164–70, 211–13, 236–39,
264–70, 280–85, 290–94, 363–65, 368–71,
374–79, 384–88, 404–17, 420–23, 436–41;
accessibility 6, 45, 60, 106, 115–16, 121, 133,
159, 194, 282; agenda 421; animation 364,
392, 394–95; appropriation 2; BID-managed
229; care and repair 123; carelessness 446–48;
Chinese cities 417, 445–46, 448; civility 16,
98, 108, 113, 138, 217, 226, 228, 364, 392–94;
conflict studies 84; control 44–45, 47, 148,
226–28, 230–32, 246–47, 294, 315–16, 335–36,
392–94, 404–6, 437–38, 440, 447–48, 454–55;
coordinated 44, 158, 174–75, 427–28, 440;
cultural values in 106, 122; designers 6, 10,
60, 217–18, 290, 294, 306, 363, 369, 377,
440; development models 218; dissent 186;
distasteful behavior 227; distributive justice
120; ecology 320–21; exclusion from 3;
freedom of speech 112, 229, 276; governance
212; hostile encounters 60; infrastructure 7,
423; intensive care 446–48; interventions
300; investments 423; Latin American cities
429–30; locus of trauma 276, 300, 306, 308–9;
maintenance 120; management 211–13, 264–70,
393, 416, 421, 438; neglect 440; networked
340, 423; occupation 2, 28, 83, 121–22, 151,
158, 175, 182, 185–86, 194, 316; Occupy Wall
Street 186; ownership 106–7, 115–16, 267, 300,
333–34, 364, 392, 453; physical configuration
364, 392, 394–95; policies 265, 267, 421;
privatized 106, 227; procedural justice 124;
programming 220; prototypes and protest
cultures 190; publicness 364; recognition 121;
regulations 336; scholars 3, 6, 10, 80–82, 332,
335, 363, 404; segregation 114; shared street
designs 376; tensions 164
Public Space Index(PSI) 365, 405–9, 411
public sphere 6–7, 15–16, 26–29, 34–39, 51–54,
59–60, 80–81, 150–51, 276, 282–84, 290–92,
384, 387–88
public use 193, 231, 238–39, 292
Quito 416, 421
Rabin Square 195
racialized identities 80, 83
racializing public space 60, 80
racism 2, 60, 65, 82–83
real estate 3, 61, 358
Recetas Urbanas 159
recreation spaces 129, 133
regulations 42–43, 51–52, 59–60, 112, 114,
120–22, 185–86, 264–65, 294, 320, 335, 452,
454, 456
reshaping cities 30
resistance movements 16, 166–67
restorative justice 106
Riano, Quilian 219
rights: of citizens 107–8, 113, 115, 143, 148,
150–51, 236, 238, 281, 283, 285, 306; to space
236, 238, 247, 268, 285, 306, 333, 415
Right to The City 7, 105, 107–8, 133, 138–43,
149–52, 157, 285, 415
Right to Public Space 7, 59, 103, 107, 138–39,
142, 157, 415, 417
rituals 44, 191, 454
San Antonio 198
Schwartz, Martha 276, 290, 292–94
segregation 82, 105, 114, 128, 131–32, 348, 368, 386
sensory complexity 407
September 11 terrorist attack 3, 228
Serra, Richard 276, 280, 290–91
Shanghai 445, 447
shopping, local 96, 99
shopping district 230
shopping malls 26, 28, 61, 96–97, 112–14, 116,
121, 194, 202, 217, 246–47
sidewalks 27, 29, 43, 90, 96, 114, 231, 238–39,
248, 320, 332–36
Singapore 447
sites of resistance 169
small-scale events 124, 191
Smart Citizen 207
social agreements 159, 199, 302, 308, 320, 336
social cohesion 98
social contract 275
social engagement 150, 364
social forms 45, 124
social identities 30, 81–85
social inequalities 1, 38–39, 66–67, 120–21, 123,
227, 230, 420, 427, 429, 439

social interaction 44, 96, 106, 149, 319–20, 332,
348, 364, 374, 396, 439
social infrastructures 59, 82, 107, 249
social justice 2, 6, 60–61, 64–65, 67, 100, 106–8,
120–25, 149–51, 429
social media 158, 174–77, 182, 364
social network 277, 384–85, 387
social relations 52–53, 108, 150, 277, 312, 314
social reterritorialization 30
social welfare 200, 444
socioeconomic data 106, 132
South Africa 275–76, 300
Soweto 276, 300–02
Soweto Street Festival 301–02
space: of encounter 350; mediating 437;
networked open 341; public-use 350; remaking
455; unifying 217
Spain 158–60, 174–77, 182, 184, 200; Seville
159–60, 206; Seville General Urban Zoning
Plan Ordinance 206
spatial choreographies 159, 191, 194
spatial continuity 349–50
spatial elements 325, 327
spatial injustice 106, 120
spatial justice 120–21
spatial networks 350, 452
spatial order 325
squares 1, 168, 191, 199, 213, 217, 364
stakeholders 64, 67, 219, 264, 421–22, 436
Star Model 396
statues 185, 231, 282, 285
St. Louis 16
stormwater 133, 320, 357
streetcorner 3, 114
street life 376
Western 452
street markets 1, 364, 377
streets 98–101, 114–15, 190–92, 194, 227–31,
244–49, 301–2, 319–21, 332–35, 340, 358–60,
376–78, 394–95, 404–6, 415–17, 422–23,
426–30, 444–45, 447–48, 452–56; art 177,
206, 211, 227; commercial 26, 61, 96, 200,
226; community activism on 219; conflict 61,
175; democratizing force 166; demonstrations
174; design 376; entertainment 340; Indian
417, 452–56; maintenance 226; migrant 98;
mobility networks 28, 191, 321, 356, 358;
ownership 100; pedestrian 141, 206; projects
157; as public amenities 159; as public space
51; shopping 26, 61, 96–99, 101, 226; as site of
protest 2, 50, 157–59, 164, 168, 174, 183–84,
186, 191–92, 194; social diversity 98–99; social
life 97; streetscapes 206; vendor 30, 59, 98, 107,
123, 142–43, 219, 227, 248, 332–35; violence
73, 90–91; Western 452, 455–56
streets and sidewalks 333
streetscapes 376
suburbanization 133, 429
suburbs 113, 132, 332, 388
Index  469
sustainability, environmental 422–23
Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) 3, 10, 365,
406, 411, 416, 421
System Azure Security Ornamentation 160
systems of oppression 64, 66, 80, 277, 281–82;
resistance against 60, 150, 168, 170
Tactical Urbanism 159–60
Tactical Urbanist’s Guide 160
Tahrir Square 1, 123, 157–58, 182, 184–86
Taipei 16, 167
taverns 81
technologies, disciplinary 217, 275
terrorist attack 3, 148, 231
Tianjin 445
Tijuana Projection 309
Tilted Arc 276, 280, 290–94
Tokyo 1, 165, 321; Shibuya Crossing 1, 321
Toronto 74, 99
Toronto Public Space Committee 44, 46
tourism 26, 107, 140–41, 332, 430
the tragedy of the commons 17, 42, 44
transformations, political 30, 157, 277
transparency 167, 440
transportation development 335, 346, 349, 356
Trevi Fountain 217
typological permutations 246
Ubuntu Park 276–77, 300–302
undemocratic governance 429
underclass 131
unequal power relations 67
UN-Habitat 10, 415–16, 421, 427
United Kingdom 121, 267–68, 437, 439; Tredegar
Park 194
United Nations 51, 333, 415–16, 421
United Nations’ Human Rights Council 2
United States 1–2, 10, 16, 72–73, 112–13, 182,
186, 201, 207, 231, 268–69, 426, 429–30;
Constitution 105, 112; First Amendment
Rights 50, 112, 294, 335; Supreme Court
decisions 112, 185, 228
urban commons 167, 420, 423
urban culture 3
urban design 10, 60, 73–74, 143, 198, 247, 342,
349–51, 387, 436–37, 445; practices 7, 416
urban designers 74, 332, 363, 374, 404
urban design practice 350, 416
urban downtowns 332
urban experiences 30, 321, 340, 358
urban explorer 212
urban farmers 207
urban form 159, 332, 349, 369, 455
urban gardens 74, 207, 216, 341, 348–49,
446, 454
urban governance 121, 157, 165, 211–12, 228,
422, 428, 444
urban infrastructure 206, 320–21, 346,
356–58, 360
470 Index
urban integration 320, 340 wireless internet, availability 207, 217, 387
urbanism 10 wireless internet, use 364, 384–87
urbanists 6, 26, 52, 107, 326, 332, 374 Wodiczko, Krzysztof 276, 282, 307–8
urban justice 6, 105–6, 108 women 16, 54, 67: alternative spaces 59;
urban knowledge 346 counterpublics 28, 60, 82–83, 124, 200–201;
urban landscapes 340 exclusion 16, 27, 54, 60, 64, 66, 81, 198, 227,
urban life 72, 108, 150, 227–28, 332, 335, 347, 308, 440; inclusion 64; liberal approaches
349, 374, 376, 379 in cities 64; marginalized 319, 404, 422;
urbanoid 217 middle-class 27, 60, 72; motherhood 200;
urban policies 105, 143, 422 opposition 67; organizational leadership 74,
urban poor 455 198; participation 36, 227; as passive agents
urban public realm 388 198; rights 64, 199, 228; safety 73, 82, 141,
urban regeneration 440 455; safety in urban environments 59–61,
urban renaissance 332, 378, 431 73, 91; transformational leadership 60, 74,
urban residents 160, 332, 335 198–99; use and experience of public spaces
urban revival 227 64, 66, 73, 81–82, 198; violence against 34,
urban-space continuity 320, 348 64, 74, 90–91
urban structures 7, 349 women’s movement 72
urban transformation 320, 348–49, 379 workers 1, 27–28, 36, 50, 453
urban unpredictability 246, 396 working-class 7, 16, 98–99, 105, 107, 198, 200,
utopia 3 213, 218, 416
World Bank 415, 426–27
Vancouver 421 World Health Organization (WHO) 59
vandalism 43, 227 World Social Forum (WSF) 428
V de Vivienda 175 World Trade Center (WTC) 184–85, 228,
Venezuela 426, 430 230–32, 294
Veteran Vehicle 309 World Trade Organization (WTO) 427
Vienna 99, 166–67 World Trade Organization protests 2

Washington DC, The Pentagon 231, 294 Young, Iris Marion 81

Western: contemporary design 72; cultural
context 446, 452; liberal democracies 164, 169;
political tradition 123; society (contemporary)
45; urban conception 417; world 148, 431
Whyte, William H. 229, 293, 332, 374–75,
395–96, 404
youth 174; subcultures 439
zones: centralized 26; of danger 114; privileged
113; redundant 249
zoning 159, 206, 268; floor area 237;
incentives 237