From Common Ground? Readings and Reflections on Public Space, edited by Anthony Orum and Zachary Neal. Routledge, 2009. Relocating Public Space Zachary Neal In the preceding readings and essays, we have tried to capture the essence of public space, as it is viewed in three different ways. Public space sometimes appears as a facilitator for civic order by providing a location for public life to play out, especially through interactions with both friends and strangers that foster the formation of social bonds. Other times, public space appears as a site for power and resistance, where conflict can occur between different groups that each assert their right to use the space. In still other cases, public space appears as a stage for art, theater, and performance that allows individuals and groups to express themselves in formal and informal ways. Of course, any particular public space might play several of these roles at once. For example, when a political protest takes place on a public plaza, the space is clearly functioning as a site of resistance. But, at the same time the protestors may be expressing themselves through song, through painted banners, or simply through their dress, thus using the space as a stage. Moreover, as the protestors interact with one another, they not only assert their beliefs, but also may form new friendships or run into old acquaintances, using the space as a social facilitator. While these various ways of thinking about how public space works are useful, it is also important to take a step back from the models and ask: What is happening to public space? However public space might work, and whatever it might be used for, how is public space changing? Are public spaces taking different forms than before, or do they appear in different locations than in the past? And most critically, is there more public space, or are we losing our public spaces and at the same time our public lives?

FOR DISCUSSION How do you think public space is changing (a) in the way it is used, (b) in where it is located, and (c) in how much of it there is?

The Loss of Public Space Much of the writing on public space and public life features a narrative of loss. Scholars lament the fact that there are fewer parks and fewer people in the parks that remain. This loss has been connected to the rise of such things as the

automobile, the suburb, and the internet, but more generally to the emergence of an increasingly individualistic and inwardly focused society. As Robert Putnam famously noted, although more and more people are bowling, they are increasingly bowling alone.

The connection between the loss of public space and a loss of public life and sociability is clear. Public spaces provide sites for the many types of person-to-person interaction that constitutes public life: civic, antagonistic, artistic. But, as such spaces disappear or become less open, so to do the opportunities to engage in these activities. Some of the readings in this book have discussed the loss of particular public spaces through exclusion: Peoples Park in California (Mitchell), Bryant Park in New York (Zukin), and the Central district in Hong Kong (Law). But, a number of broad trends in the loss of public space have been observed. In some cases, spaces that formerly were, or under other circumstances would have been, public are being privatized and appropriated for the exclusive use of only certain individuals. In other cases, spaces are being constructed that only create the illusion of public-ness and openness. Finally, with a retreat from public life, once vibrant public spaces are being abandoned, while new ones are distributed unevenly across the landscape, creating inequalities of accessibility. One of the most common forms of privatization of space can be observed in the emergence of gated communities. Gated communities often look like any other residential community, but they are surrounded by barriers that prevent access to the communitys streets, sidewalks, parks and other amenities by non-residents. In politically unstable areas gated communities provide security to residents, but in most cases they primarily provide exclusivity and status. Although gated communities feature many of the same physical spaces as non-gated communities, their role as public spaces are often not the same. Chance encounters with strangers on the sidewalk, especially those that over time establish a sense of community and belonging, cannot occur because strangers are not permitted to use the sidewalks. Political protests are unlikely to take place in the communitys parks because no one but the communitys own residents would see them. And, the use of these spaces for artistic expression can be severely limited by the rules and regulations of the Home Owners Association. While gated communities, and the loss of public space they represent, was initially a consequence of the affluence found in economically advanced Western nations, the residential form has rapidly spread worldwide. Gated communities are clear examples of non-public spaces, but still other problems and other notions of loss arise because they create the illusion of being public spaces. Residents can live private lives acting as if they are participating in public life, but the public life and public space in gated communities is inauthentic. Similar issues of the inauthenticity of public space arise outside of gated communities as well, but often are so well masked that they goes unnoticed. The ancient Greek

Agora, the open air marketplace of ideas and goods, is a classic example of a public space. But, it has been recreated in Las Vegas as the Forum Shops, a shopping mall decorated with faux-classical architecture and complete with an arched ceiling painted and lighted to resemble the sky. Shoppers are embedded in an illusory public space; it looks like someone could at any moment deliver a speech on the evils of capitalism or begin drawing on the pavement in colored chalk. But, in reality the well-staffed private security guards would quickly swoop in and escort the individual away. On a superficial level, strolling through the Forum Shops may look and feel like public life, but in fact it is merely individualized consumerism packaged to look like public life. The trouble with such inauthentic public spaces is that they divert attention from more genuine public spaces, and from the more interactive public life they make possible. Thus, while some public space is lost to privatization, other public space is lost to neglect when it is abandoned in favor of public-looking private space. With all this loss, one might be surprised that there are any public spaces left at all. Certainly new public spaces are being created all the time, but this paradoxically points to yet a third chapter in the loss of public space narrative. These new public spaces are not evenly spread across cities and neighborhoods, but tend to be concentrated in certain areas, especially those with the most money and power. When a low income neighborhoods park is abandoned by residents or is slowly taken over by drug dealers or the homeless, the result is usually closure and demolition, not restoration and revitalization. However, unused public property in a high-rent district is often a prime target for the creation of a pocket park, or if large enough a public fountain, plaza, or museum. This uneven distribution of new public spaces creates situations where public space may be open, but not accessible. And, perhaps, not even open if those living near the space attempt to preserve it for their exclusive use. Thus, even the creation of public space can lead to its loss.

FOR DISCUSSION Have you lost any public spaces that were important to you (e.g. the park you played in as a child)? How did you and others confront that loss?

The Recovery of Public Space A narrative of loss, drawing on these and other mechanisms, can be found in so much of the scholarship on public space that it frequently goes unquestioned. Is it really true that public space is being lost? Perhaps not. Certainly some specific public spaces have been lost to forces like privatization, but much of public space is just being relocated as attitudes, technologies, and practices change. This section

looks ahead, seeking to recover public space from the pervasive narrative of its alleged loss. As the way public life is lived changes, we need to look for public space in different ways and in different places. Conceptions of the public are constantly being redefined, and thus notions of where and what counts as public space is changing. The edges of public space are also being redrawn as ideas about the nature of space shift from the physical to the virtual and electronic. And even traditional public spaces are being redesigned by forward thinking socially and environmentally conscious new architects. Redefining the Public Public space was defined at the beginning of this book as all areas that are open and accessible to all members of the public in a society in principle, though not necessarily in practice. Most discussions of the loss of public space revolve around claims that its openness and accessibility are in decline. However, this is particularly difficult to establish because the very idea of the public the people for whom public space is supposed to be open and accessible is continuously being redefined, and more importantly being expanded. As conceptions of the public are redefined and expanded, public space is gained not lost; it actually becomes more open, or at least open to a wider range of individuals. Recall, although the classical Greek agora was technically open and accessible, its openness was restricted to that narrow sliver of the population recognized as the public (i.e. male citizens). But, as marginalized others including women, slaves, and non-citizens have gained acceptance as legitimate members of the public over the centuries, public spaces have become increasingly open to them as well. How does this process of redefinition of both the public and public space work? One possibility is James Holstons notion of insurgent citizenship, or the attempt to assert ones right to be recognized as a member of the public. In some cases, the group seeking recognition has always been present and marginalized (e.g. the homeless), while in others, new arrivals into the city seek an opportunity to participate in public life (e.g. immigrants). The common thread, however, is that when these groups demand a place in the larger public, this insurgence disrupts established understandings of the social order and of how space should be allocated and used. Holston suggests that the sites of insurgent citizenship immigrant enclaves, homeless encampments in parks, etc. provide opportunities to re-ask the question: Who should have access to where? In answering this question, which inevitably is a tug-of-war struggle between the hegemonic and insurgent citizens, conceptions of both the public and public space get redefined. Margaret Crawford has described Los Angeles street vendors as an instance of insurgent citizenship that is forcing a redefinition of both the public and public space. Street vending is illegal, and thus an impermissible use of public space.

Additionally, most street vendors are undocumented immigrants, and thus not members of the politically sanctioned public. However, despite their doubly illegal status, immigrant street vendors are becoming a political as well as an economic presence in the city (p. 7) visible on many corners and incorporating themselves into the fabric of the community and into public life. This continued presence and activity has started to practically, though not yet legally, redefine where public space is, what it can be used for, and by whom. Public space can be expanded and gained, therefore, as the public is redefined, and especially as formerly excluded groups are incorporated into wider conceptions of who the public is. But, is it always necessary for formerly excluded groups to be incorporated into a single conception of the public? Scholars like Iris Young and Kurt Iveson have proposed a multi-public model public space that says no. Their approach suggests that there should be multiple, simultaneous conceptions of the public, rather than just a single, homogenous conception. On this view, the vibrancy of public space results from recognizing for example that undocumented workers constitute a separate public that is distinct, that brings its own unique values to public life, and that should have a right to public space without needing to conform to a single definition of the public. Thus, for the multi-public model, the future of public space depends on accommodating not simply all members of the public, but all members of all publics. In doing so, public space is enriched and expanded not simply through a redefinition of the public, but through the celebration of difference and diversity in several definitions of the public.

FOR DISCUSSION Do you think public space is really opening up with a wider range of people? Is it possible that public space is becoming less open in terms of how it can be used, but more open in terms of who can use it? Is this trade-off worth it?

Redrawing the Border One way to recover public space from the narrative of loss and to find new and emerging public spaces is to redefine precisely what is meant by the public. A second way to identify new kinds of public space is to redraw the borders of space itself. This entire book has been focused on public space, but in that short phrase, what does the word space really mean? The definition of public space offered in the first chapter starts off: Public space includes all areas, but what are areas? Where is the edge of this thing were trying to understand? In all the preceding readings, space was simply assumed to be a physical construct, and thus public space

was an actual location on the earth that one could travel to and stand in. But, technological advances have made an exclusively physical conception of space and public space obsolete. There are, of course, still physical public spaces, but now there are also virtual public spaces. In its early years, the Internet was thought of as a new type of media, the next step in the progression from book to radio to television. However, examining how the Internet is used and the sorts of activities it if used for quickly made it clear that the Internet is less like a new type of media, and more like a location. Indeed, despite some obvious differences, in a number of ways websites are very similar to actual physical places. Individuals interact with one another by visiting a website. Particular sites can either be public, like a blog, or private, like a companys inventory database. And, to get from one site to another, one frequently passes through other intermediate sites that are related via a series of hypertext links, and just like walking through a new city occasionally stumbles onto an unexpected new site, acting as a sort of virtual flneur.

Adopting this metaphor of the Internet as a type of place, scholars like Jean Camp and Y. T. Chien have noted that the Internet has come to be used as a public space in a range of different ways. Traditional types of public space like libraries, schools, and marketplaces can be found online and are used in much the same way as their physical counterparts. But even the new types of public space that have emerged online frequently work like the public spaces described in the three sections of this book. Chat rooms, message boards, and other sites that allow users to engage in conversations facilitate the formation of social bonds, both on- and offline, and thus provide a framework for civil order similar to streets, parks, and coffee shops. Sites maintained by governments, political parties, and interest groups provide an opportunity for power to be exercised electronically by distributing their message to the virtual world. Moreover, activities like website vandalism, or Denial-of-Service (DoS) attacks that render a website inaccessible, mean that nearly any part of the Internet can be a space of resistance.

Perhaps the most visible function of the Internet as a public space, however, is as a stage for art, theater, and performance. Websites like YouTube allow users to post video clips of themselves, quite literally providing a public stage for expression. Individuals personal pages on social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace provide opportunities to directly document the facets of ones identity, including physical appearance, musical preferences, and even what one is doing at the moment. The Internet has also served as a platform for entire virtual worlds (e.g. Second Life), in which users construct avatars of themselves that interact with other users avatars in a domain purposefully meant to resemble an actual physical world.

Compared to other public spaces like the plaza or park or street, the Internet is in its infancy. And although it shares many feature of, and often works like, other

kinds of public spaces, there are also some key differences. As a result, questions remain about the role of the Internet as a public space. First, the Internet is more public than even the most open of traditional public spaces, and even private areas of the internet are not completely private. Therefore, viewing the Internet as a public space is challenged by the lack of private space and of privacy; can public space exist if private space does not? Second, although the Internet may be open, it may not be fully accessible. The accessibility of traditional public spaces depended on mobility, but the accessibility of virtual public spaces depends on equipment, and therefore the requirements for the Internet to be a truly public space may present unique challenges. Finally, some have questioned whether the Internet can really function as a public space at all, and more specifically, whether the interactions that occur on the Internet serve to foster connectedness and community or isolation and loneliness.

FOR DISCUSSION Do you think a virtual public space can work just as well as physical public space as (a) a facilitator of civil order, (b) a site of power and resistance, and (c) a stage for art, theater, and performance? What are the pros and cons of combining physical and virtual public spaces, like providing Wireless Internet (WiFi) in a public park?

Redesigning the Space A final way to recover public space from the narrative of loss is to consider the quality of the spaces that remain. Certainly some formerly public spaces are being privatized or demolished, but many of the remaining public spaces are being redesigned and revitalized. And as todays architects and planners redesign public spaces, or even when they design new ones, there is a much greater focus on creating spaces that can fulfill the purposes of public space. In 2004 the Van Alen Institute in New York showcased a number of new designs for public spaces aimed at making them work better. The plaza had always been a grand public space, but in recent decades they came to look more like empty cement boxes. But, the plaza is being reborn. In Genoa the Ponte Parodi places the traditional plaza in the middle of the citys harbor, surrounded by water and water-related activities. At the same time, in London the plaza has moved indoors at a new City Hall that features spiraling ramps (not staircases, for truly accessible public space) that lead to Londons Living Room, a 7000 square foot gallery with panoramic views of the river. Moreover, this redesigning of public space is not

restricted to wealthy cities and mega-projects. In Rio de Janeiro work has begin to construct pathways for pedestrians and emergency vehicles that will connect the favelas or shantytowns to the rest of the city, and to city services. With the introduction of even basic services like garbage collection and police patrol, these streets not only provide access, but also have come to function as social spaces where residents can interact with one another and build pride in their community. Danish architect Jan Gehl has been at the forefront of this movement toward public spaces that are more public. He found that while cities generally have excellent data on things like traffic patterns and parking, they pay very little attention to the quality of life in the city, especially from the pedestrians point of view. Thus, in a comprehensive study of the public spaces in Adelaide, Australia, he documented how the existing areas worked (or didnt), and what was needed to make them work better. Central among his findings was that the key to establishing lively and safe public spaces is pedestrian traffic and pedestrian activities. Public spaces are of limited value in what he called the invaded city that is overrun by vehicular traffic and in the abandoned city that has freeways and parking lots but no pedestrians. Thus, in seeking to make the city more pedestrian friendly, even minor details of minor public spaces were significant. For example, Gehl suggested that bus shelters and trash cans be placed on the same side of the sidewalk to create an uninterrupted walking path and view of the landscape. Many of these innovations in public space design have been collected for the benefit of communities by non-profit organizations that serve as resources for the improvement of public space. The Project for Public Space (PPS), one of the larger such organizations, was founded in 1975 by Fred Kent, who had worked as a research assistant to William Whyte during the street life project that culminated in the reading in this book. The PPS performs a range of functions, including serving as a virtual public space itself by hosting an online discussion forum. Beyond this, they assist communities with the redevelopment of their own public spaces, and serve as an excellent source of additional information for those interested in public space.

FOR DISCUSSION How would you redesign the public spaces you use to make them more useful, open, or vibrant? When existing public spaces get redesigned, who should get to participate in the design process?

Conclusion

Much has been written about how we are losing our public spaces. But, is this really the case? As conceptions of the public are redefined and expanded, public spaces are increasingly open to a wider range of people. As technological advances make new ways of communicating possible, the borders of what counts as public spaces are being redrawn; now public space can be created out of thin air, and by nearly anyone. And as greater attention is focused on public space generally, new and existing public spaces are being redesigned to be more public and more useful. So, perhaps public space is not vanishing at all, but actually growing. In any case, what is clear is that public space is being relocated. We must start to look for and think about public space in new ways, because it is starting to appear in places it once did not: on water, over railroads, under highways, and inside electrons. References and Further Reading Banerjee, Tridib. 2001. The Future of Public Space: Beyond Invented Streets and Reinvented Places. Journal of the American Planning Association 67: 9 24. Blakely, Edward, and Mary Gail Snyder. 1997. Fortress America: Gated Communities in the United States. Washington, DC: Brookings Institute Press. Camp, Jean, and Y. T. Chien. 2000. The Internet as Public Space: Concepts, Issues, and Implications in Public Policy. Computers and Society September: 13 19. Carr, Stephen, Mark Francis, Leanne G. Rivlin, and Andrew M. Stone. 1992. Public Space. New York: Cambridge University Press. Crawford, Margaret. 1995. Contesting the Public Realm: Struggles over Public Space in Los Angeles. Journal of Architectural Education 49: 4 9. Gastil, Raymond W., and Zo Ryan (eds.). 2004. Open: New Designs for Public Spaces. New York: Van Allen Institute. Gehl Architects APS. 2002. Public Spaces and Public Life: City of Adelaide 2002. (Available at http://www.adelaidecitycouncil.com/adccwr/publications /reports_plans/public_spaces_public_life.pdf) Hampton, Keith, and Barry Wellman. 2003. Neighboring in Netville: How the Internet Supports Community and Social Capital in a Wired Suburb. City and Community 2:277 311.

Holston, James. 1995. Spaces of Insurgent Citizenship. Planning Theory 13: 35 51. Iveson, Kurt. 1998. Putting the Public Back into Public Space. Urban Policy and Research 16:21 33. Project for Public Spaces. http://www.pps.org. Putnam, Robert. 2000. Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community. New York: Simon and Schuster. Riemans, Patrice, and Geert Lovink. 2002. Local Networks: Digital City Amsterdam. Pp. 327 46 in Global Networks, Linked Cities, edited by Saskia Sassen. New York: Routledge. Webster, Chris, Georg Glasze, and Klaus Frantz (guest editors). 2002. Theme Issue: The Global Spread of Gated Communities, Environment and Planning B 29:3. Young, Iris Marion. 1990. Justice and the Politics of Difference. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.