Domesticating a redesigned public square: an ethnography of Enghave Plads, Copenhagen

Abstract

ABSTRACT This paper argues that it is in the intersection between design affordances and diverse domestication practices that squares come to life. Contributing to discussions about social infrastructure and the domestication of public spaces, I explore, ethnographically, the domestication of the newly redesigned Enghave Plads in Copenhagen. I also contribute to this literature with a novel, thick ethnography of how infrastructure enables social life and yet first becomes social when enacted through domestication practices that both supports, and breaks with, the design will. While this is not an entirely new argument, how this process takes place has not been discussed enough. This article argues for the need to unpack ethnographically how user practices and mundane objects domesticate social infrastructures and make them properly social. While the literature on social infrastructure acknowledges the role of users, this paper suggests paying closer attention to how social infrastructures become social through transformative, contingent domestication practices.