Rites of Way: The Politics and Poetics of Public Space

Abstract

While one should not necessarily judge this multipronged exploration and defense of public space by its cover, the featured photograph of artist Lisa Klapstock in a protective suit and rubber boots sitting on a discarded armchair on the garbage-strewn edge of a parking lot does much to set the stage for the contents within. The image raises questions about how human figures relate to marginal, often semi-abandoned spaces, whose ownership, to say nothing of use, is at best ambiguous. While Klapstock's work is based on Toronto, and the essays that follow likewise focus on Canadian landscapes, there is much crossover with the United States, where welcoming, generative public space is similarly often either deficient or beleaguered. Mark Kingwell's lead essay begins by claiming that public space is variously “the age's master signifier,” a “site of suspicion, stimulation, and transaction,” and “the basis of public discourse itself,” and yet also points out the seeming oddity that most of us are reluctant to admit that we don't really know what public space is (3). He goes on to question whether public space is 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 our identities as individuals and as societies are related to and change upon contact with public space. These are fundamental, provocative concerns, in many respects addressed by the essays that follow.