Sharing space or meaning? A geosemiotic perspective on shared space design

Abstract

If urban design aims to influence sociality in public urban space, a nuanced understanding of the dialectic relationship of the social and the spatial matters. Especially in street design, this relationship is frequently presented in a simplified and unidirectional way, with the spatial producing the social. Design experiments often lack to fully recognize the role of users in influencing socio-spatiality in public urban spaces. This paper meets this lack and applies a geosemiotic approach to explore socio-spatiality on a central urban square in Oslo, Norway, designed in line with a street design idea called shared space. The paper frames the idea as an experiment aiming to alter the dynamic interrelationship of different semiotic systems, highlighting users’ agency in influencing socio-spatiality. The findings contrast most accounts in the literature tending to portray shared spaces as stable and calm traffic schemes. The paper reveals that such streetscapes may support a dynamic and constantly changing, mobile, socio-spatiality, based on permanently changing compositions of users and their distinct ways of interpreting and using the ambiguous environment.