GEOG 4900 3.0 | Public Space Department of Geography Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies York University Summer 2012 Class 1 Introduction and

GEOG 4900 3.0 | Public SpaceDepartment of GeographyFaculty of Liberal Arts & Professional StudiesYork UniversitySummer 2012

Class 1Introduction and Overview

Class 1 8 May 2012 1GEOG 4900 | Public Space

Copyright © Amy Lavender Harris

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A Short History of Public Space• Greek polis (5th century B.C.): the acropolis and the agora.• Rome (3rd century B.C. and onward): the forum.• Religion, governance, commerce, aesthetics; citizenship.• Medieval Europe: domination of the (Catholic) Church. • Renaissance: piazzas: centralized spaces of governance and commerce.

• The ‘commons;’ market-places. • Landscaped parks (some public; others reserved for elites and royalty)• Coffee houses; salons (17ths-18th century) – phenomena Habermas

associates with the rise of the ‘public sphere.’

Class 1Tues 8 May 2012

GEOG 4900 | Public Space Copyright © Amy Lavender Harris

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Contemporary Public Spaces• Civic display• Art and aesthetics• Gathering for celebration or protest• Commerce• Surveillance and regulation• Parks as spaces of recreation, leisure—or moral and social control?• Privatization, regulation and the decline of public space?

• What kind of public space is a shopping mall? A ‘public’ square regulated by security guards and electronic surveillance (e.g., Yonge-Dundas Square)?



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Contemporary Public Space Issues• Is public space in decline? • The challenges – and opportunities -- of neglected (unmaintained), lost /

liminal spaces (under expressways): safety and fear of crime, but also spaces for guerilla gardening, informal art, wildlife, play

• Corporatized spaces; privatization• Regulation and surveillance (e.g., CCTV) • Invaded spaces (e.g., dominated by cars)• Exclusionary spaces (race, class, gender, ability, age, etc.)

• Reclaiming space: accessibility, walkability, sustainability, civic participation, freedom from surveillance, a break from the bombardment of advertising

• Virtual spaces and the digital public sphere



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Critical Perspectives on Public Space• Wallin (1988) on ‘dystempic’ space: defined by impersonal, abstract

relationships – a “community of strangers” inhabiting shopping malls and social media spaces

• Lefeebvre (1991) on the distinction between ‘representational’ (i.e., lived) space and ‘representations of space’ (regulated, planned, controlled, ordered).

• Sibley (1995) on ‘open’ and ‘closed’ spaces• Don Mitchell on regulation, dissent and the ‘rights to the city’



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Vito Acconci’s Meditations on Public Space• The shifting quality of time (from chronos to kairos to space-time

compression); the advent of the wrist-watch as a harbinger of the loss of public space. [public telephones as a parallel example?]

• Public space as a diversion from the hidden spaces where power is transacted.

• Public spaces are public only because the public has demanded and fought for them to be public. [corollary: as if affected by entropy, public spaces have a tendency to revert to private spaces.]

• Public spaces take shape around a desire, myth or delusion• Diffuse or undifferentiated spaces – spaces where individuals loiter, have

lunch, gawk at one another – remain somehow formless until something impels their inhabitants to collective action.

• Small clusters seek smaller, more intimate spaces: bars, cafes, nightclubs. By doing so, they engage in ‘place-’ (as opposed to space)-making and thus negate public space.



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Acconci continued …• “Public space, in an electronic age, is space on the run.”• The loss of physical intimacy, replaced by virtual interactions• Virus: information or disease?• In the electronic age, the ‘public’ is a “composite of privates.”• Concrete space turned into abstract space (the experience of an airplane

flight; globalization and cheap imports bring South Korea (e.g.) to the United States.

• The (arguably) rehabilitative (or at least transgressive) purpose of public art and pop music. [see points 17 and 19)



Documents

GEOG 4900 3.0 | Public Space Department of Geography Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies York University Summer 2012 Class 1 Introduction and