Notion Of Public Space Research Articles

Rational Recreation: Regulating the historic gardens of Old Delhi 1912-1940s

Public gardens, in colonial imagination, were conceived as an ordered, moral and sanitised space for pursuing leisure. This study explores the imperial ideologies and notions of respectability, shared by the Indian upper classes, in delineating the contours of rational recreation. The paper argues that the regulation of leisure in public gardens was a soft face of civilising impulse and a subtle form of disciplinary strategy employed by the colonial state to inculcate codes of public conduct and discipline amongst the population of Delhi. This paper also examines the lived realities and the challenges that people posed to ideas of rational recreation. The notions of morality in public space were flouted by the presence and activities of those who were regarded as ‘Budmashes’; the sanitised space was fouled by the sewage, waste, and ‘smell’ of poor visitors; and the notion of public space as a regulated arena was questioned by the many ways in which the colonised occupied the public gardens.

Spaces of exposure: Re-thinking ‘publicness’ through public transport

Developing thoughts on exposure in cultural geography, literary studies, and mobilities research, this article aims to provide a more comprehensive account towards the publicness of public space. What would happen if we assessed publicness not by degrees of openness and inclusion, but through the nexus of vulnerability and complicity that is fundamental to the notion of exposure? To grasp such an intrinsic dualism, our perspective goes towards public transport, where experiences of exposure are intensified by its specific conditions of encapsulation and movement. We illustrate this perspective drawing from the autobiographical chronicles of the Chilean writer Pedro Lemebel, in order to then propose a ‘learning from’ the case of public transport for a rethinking of publicness. Specifically, we argue that exposure provides new insights on agency, power and vulnerability as part of a more processual notion of public space.

Language policy in public space: a historical perspective on Asmara’s linguistic landscape

ABSTRACT This article presents a linguistic landscape analysis of pictures taken in Eritrea’s capital Asmara between 2001 and 2018, stemming from the respective periods of Italian, British, Ethiopian and Eritrean rule. The analysis illustrates how these semiotic signs, fossilized as well as contemporary, bear witness of the ways in which language and state ideologies of the country’s respective rulers were symbolically implemented and enshrined in visible language. Next to Italian, Amharic, Tigrinya and Arabic, attention is given to English, the international language that was introduced during the British Protectorate period and managed to maintain and strengthen its position in Asmara in recent years in relation to the inhabitants’ connection to the internet as a means to virtually escape from the city. Central in the analysis is the notion of public space as a multilayered socially constructed phenomenon showing the imprints of societal happenings. Such traces of history in Asmara contribute to changing concrete places into spaces and as such help memorizing and handing over the narratives connected to them as reflections of historical and contemporary language policies that over the years have co-constructed and given meaning to Asmara’s public space.

Sociabilidad, manifestaciones culturales y conflicto

Este trabajo se desarrolla a partir de la idea de sociabilidad, desde la cual, se establece una conexión conceptual con los estudios urbanos, por medio de las nociones de espacio público, barrio y comunidad. A partir de la relación de estos tres conceptos, se exponen lasmanifestaciones culturales de la sociabilidad, las cuales están conectadas con el espacio construido. En este marco, se pretende entender la relación que tiene el espacio construido —desde su dimensión física y simbólica— con la organización local-vecinal frente al surgimiento, cada vez más frecuente, de los conflictos derivados de la reconfiguración delespacio urbano.

Liberation or emancipation? Counter-hegemony, performance and public space in Lebanon

This article is about the ways in which counter-hegemony is expressed in performance art dealing with notions of public space and the publics. The article examines two works of art from Lebanon: Rabih Mroué and Lina Saneh’s Photo-Romance (2009), produced and performed before the initial heady days of the Arab uprisings of 2011 unravelled, and the Dictaphone Group’s This Sea is Mine (2012), produced immediately after the onset of the uprisings. Each of the pieces interrogates public space and citizenship in Beirut in very different ways to express dissent and perform resistance. The former does so through a conceptual interrogation of public space in Beirut within an institutional set-up, and the insistence on the inability to ever represent the country’s contentious sectarian politics. The latter works through an embodied experience focusing on interaction with the public physically located outside of an art institutional set-up and literally along the city’s shoreline. By drawing on theories of aesthetics and their relationship to radical democracy in public space, the article highlights the different iterations of counter-hegemony that circulate in the work of these contemporary Arab artists to argue that, like the momentous Arab uprisings of 2011–12, resistant works of art may only be understood within a longer history of strife and popular protest in the region that have produced differing forms of dissent at various points in time.

Street child spaces: belonging, conflict and resistance in the city of Durban through the eyes of street youth

ABSTRACTThis article is concerned with the everyday ‘spatial tactics’ deployed by children in a street situation in order to deal with notions of public space that define them as ‘out of place’, marginal and deviant. Using photovoice, we reconstruct former street children’s definitions of and feelings about their spaces in the city, bringing into view a complex set of social problems, attitudes and strategies that moves beyond the traditional binary notion of street children as either deviants or victims. This work points to the importance of finding ways to ensure the voices of marginalized and disadvantaged children are heard and presents the narratives that are important to our understanding of their worlds. Analyzing their spatiality in contexts of conflict, belonging and resistance, we found that children and youth in a street situation are mainly concerned with empowering themselves and resisting dominant labels and police repression.

Corpografías divergentes: las ciudades deseadas y las prohibidas en las experiencias travestis (Brasil)

Mediante pesquisas etnográficas realizadas en dos regiones de Brasil —São Paulo y Paraíba—, este artículo reflexiona sobre las maneras en que travestis y mujeres transexuales se hacen presentes en distintos espacios urbanos y cómo construyen formas de resistencia ante las adversidades de los modelosde la ciudad moderna y las múltiples formas de violencias de las que son víctimas. Su presencia en calles, avenidas, aceras y plazas de los medios urbanos no solo desafía reglas heteronormativas, sino ideas de espacio público, prácticas sexuales, corporeidades y géneros. A partir de experiencias urbanas diversas, hay un proyecto de transformación corporal y de movilidad social común que se inscribe en una imbricación intensiva entre cuerpo trans y ciudad, produciendo procesos de desterritorialización y reterritorialización.

Enshrining Space: Shrines, Public Space and Hinduization among the Kulung of Nepal

What can the notion of “shrine,” especially “wayside shrine,” tell us about a society? A wayside shrine could be defined as an edifice including a material representation of powers, which is built in a public space and open to all. Such a definition leads us to focus on three main notions associated with it. First of all, that of material representation and its complex association with the presence of powers. Secondly, the notion of public space and how it emerges in relation with the state. And, finally, that of ritual unit and the question of what a ritual unit implies, besides the participation of its members in ritual activity. Describing the emergence of these types of shrines among the Kulung Rai, a so-called tribal society of the Nepalese Himalayas, will lead us to discuss some major changes that have occurred in this society over the last hundred and fifty years and that can be regarded as a Hinduization process coming “from below.”

Street-food, class, and memories of masculinity: an exploratory essay in three acts

Streets and sidewalks are often read as mere targets of urban development schemes, rarely acknowledged for their importance to various forms of everyday life. Western notions of public space as designed green places of relief from urbanity, or as the imagined public plazas and agoras of civic discussions, are inadequate theoretical frames that cannot account for the sidewalk, the paan-shop, or the tea-stall, as sites of commensality, conviviality, and potential violence. Drawing on personal experience and a range of secondary literature an alternative way of thinking about the streets and re-imagining the national cultural space is proposed —less officious, less bureaucratic, less national—than has been allowed so far in considerations of good taste.

Ciudad como espacio habitado y fuente de socialización

Objetivos: comprender el papel del espacio público en la construcción físico-vivencial de la ciudad y en laexperiencia social del ser humano.
 Metodología: se aplicó revisión documental interdisciplinar que siguió las etapas de investigación, sistematización y exposición. Para recopilar información sobre la noción del espacio público, se acudió a fuentes primarias como libros, artículos, tesis y trabajos de investigación que incluyeran categorías de estudio como espacio público, ciudad, construcción social, memoria e identidad.
 Resultados: se encontró que el espacio público es componente esencial en la configuración de la ciudad; a través del espacio público el ser humano puede potenciar su experiencia a partir de la relación con sus pares y el entorno.
 Conclusiones: en el espacio público se produce el intercambio colectivo, la socialización y el anonimato; en él la persona genera lazos con sus pares y con el entorno, favoreciendo el arraigo de conceptos como el sentido de pertenencia y lugar. Por lo tanto, su planificación y desarrollo deben realizarse a partir de trabajos interdisciplinares que permitan proyectar la experiencia del ser humano.

The Evaluation of the Equipment and Quality of the Public Space of Poznań

Abstract The article defines the notion of public space and attempts to explain its forms and roles. The article realizes two cognitive goals: the evaluation of the equipment of public spaces in Poznań with the selected elements of landscape architecture and the quality of those spaces. Empirical research was conducted in the form of a survey addressed at 300 respondents. The research activities conducted in the course of work allow for the formulation of the following conclusions: the quality of life in a city depends on the condition of equipment of public space; the elements of landscape architecture make the public space of Poznań more attractive (contribute to its functionality, increase the aesthetics of urban space); the condition of the equipment of public space with landscape architecture is evaluated as good; the users of the public space in Poznań pointed out the problem of advertising pillars, advertisements and signboards, public toilets and the insufficient number of seats.

Япония и Россия в объятиях пространства и времени

A Japanologist with encyclopedic worldview reflects on a monograph ‘Russia-Japan Relations. Parallel History’ summarizing the results of three-year project carried out by an international team headed by Anatoly Torkunov and Makoto Iokibe on parallel history of Russia and Japan. The study showed that Russian-Japanese relations were the product of general historical development trajectory. At the beginning of the modernization process (second half of 19th century), both countries belonged to the group of countries with “catching-up” modernization pattern. In the course of modernization, in both countries, the political landscape of the world has been radically revised. This is evident from totally transformed concept of chronotope. In Japan, the beginning of the revision process dates back to the Meiji period, in Russia, the most noticeable changes occur as the result of the second revolution of 1917: the “pre-revolution” period was declared defective, “post-revolutionary” period was acknowledged to become the “beginning of a new era.” However, in spite of the change of the ruling elite, notions of public space have not undergone radical changes. After searching of the first post-revolutionary years, concern about the “gathering lands” and expansion (both in the form of a direct connection, or in the form of the creation of buffer zones) again became one of the main priorities of the Soviet state. As for Japan, the reforms there were interpreted as a return to the ideal standards of antiquity. The spatial concept has been revised: instead of the previous closed public space appeared the idea of expanding space. As in Japan, and the Soviet leadership put utopian goal, which led to the dominance of force in politics, the primacy of metaphoric (poetic) language description, pragmatic deficit, lowering the competence and efficiency of decisions. Both countries have positioned themselves as the bearers of “light,” which should be translated to the external world using coercive methods. In this regard, the metaphor of the “struggle” belonged to a prominent place in the linguistic picture of the world. A characteristic feature of the political culture of the two countries was the anthropomorphism of the state. In Japan, it took the form of kokutai (“state body”). In the USSR, the state inevitably was displayed by Stalin’s figure. In both countries, the State appealed to human emotions. One of the key emotions was a sort of “being insulted” by the outer world.

Relativism and postmodern public space (Anybody can be the hundredth monkey

The presented study deals with philosophical analysis of modern and postmodern notions of public space. The actual problem of relativism in European culture is a consequence of essentialism, the belief that the world, reality or universe, has some inner essence which cannot be grasped in the language. Text analyzes the two main themes. Firstly, the treatise attempts at an philosophical analysis of the category – public space. It points out the dissension between the traditional and postmodern definition of this conception and the consequences resulting from these different attitudes. As far as the methodology is concerned, the study is based on French postmodern philosopher J. F. Lyotard, presenting the postmodern approach as a greater contribution. In postmodern public area we can meet two basic types of dissentions, while only the first of them can be solved by further grow of specialization and the expertlike know. The second part of the study discusses Richard Rorty's philosophy, influence of Rorty's ideas on solving some traditional philosophical topics, especially the question of relativism. Richard Rorty's untraditional, provocative and inspiring version of neo-pragmatism enables us to view all the theories created so far by human culture as a case with tools. Physics and astronomy can be seen as a way to cope with some aspects of the Universe, philosophy, religion or literature as ways that help us cope with other aspects of the reality. One form of research results in statements, another in images, mathematical equations or stories. The emphasis is put on the analysis of the influence of neo- pragmatism and continental postmodernism on Rorty's writings. The main motto of the article is the statement that if we take care of free and critical public space, the truth will take care of itself.

Construir la ciudad desde los espacios públicos: herramientas de análisis y evaluación de tipologías urbanas para la integración socio-espacial

With the lack of public space as a factor that generates urban quality of life in terms of missed opportunities of the territory, loss of identity and social division, is proposed a methodology for analysis and evaluation of the urban public space based on qualitative data, with a theoretical basis, so it can be used in planning practice. The manuscript is centered on the potential projection of perceived urban space and spatial hierarchies as a result of the social uses along with temporal-spatial changes such as population growth and social disintegration. For this, it is reviewed various notions of public space and elements of correspondence in the city of Santiago, Chile. In order to understand the behavior and function of public space, a methodology for classification of public spaces is made on the dimensions: morpho-typology, functional and socio-psychological from the relationships established between man and his environment. It is concluded that uncovering these discourses becomes fundamental to add a new level to effective urban infrastructure according to their needs and conditions, significantly increasing the socio-spatial impacts.

Contestation and Bracketing: The Relation between Public Space and the Public Sphere

In this paper I seek to clarify the relation between the notions of public space and the public sphere by distinguishing between two dimensions of publicness—contestation and bracketing—in the classical notion of the public sphere as developed by Jürgen Habermas and Hannah Arendt. By clarifying this relation I aim to bring out how public space can be seen as the site of political practices distinct from those usually associated with the public sphere. That in turn will facilitate an understanding of why the idea of public space has been resorted to by activists and scholars to overcome limitations of the public sphere. On the basis of the two dimensions, I propose a distinction between two notions of public space, one centred on contestation and another on bracketing. I argue that both conceptions help articulate political practices that go beyond what is customarily allowed for in the deliberations of the public sphere: On the one hand, practices that visibilize dissent and expose inequalities and, on the other hand, practices that construct alternative arenas where marginal or subordinate people's self-confidence as political actors can be strengthened.

Transmutation and Reinvention of Public Spaces Through Ideals of Urban Planning and Design

Our cities are undergoing a rapid transformation of public spaces due to different factors, such as economic and cultural globalization, demographic transformations, marketing strategies, urban planning and design approaches, medialization reinterpretations, social networks, and others. The urban realm itself is the collection of public spaces and places—buildings, squares, streets, landscapes, and ecosystems, as well as processes, mindscapes, and people that make up and shape any environment. In that respect, urban planning and design is really characterized by two distinct processes that transubstantiate space and place: static and dynamic. This qualitative, reflective article discusses these issues, taking a standpoint from the notion of public space as a common good. This notion is discussed in relation to the factors that transform our cities and is analyzed in relation to the concept of public good. We reflect this discussion vis-à-vis the views of the leading paradigms in urban planning and design, and their intake on and outlook on these complex issues.

A Global Solution to Local Urban Crises?Comparing Discourses on Business Improvement Districts in Cape Town and Hamburg

This paper presents findings from research on the globalization of Business Improvement Districts (BIDs). Across a wide range of urban contexts, Business Improvement Districts are presented as prime strategies for resolving what is framed as an urban crisis and a crisis of urban public space. Building on a discourse analytical approach and on recent debates on mobile policies, I argue for a place sensitive approach that starts from the local and takes local trajectories seriously, but at the same time engages in comparative research. The case studies from Hamburg and Cape Town focus on public discourses in the early years of the implementation of BIDs in the respective contexts. After presenting brief descriptions of these discourses and the rationalization within different urban and national contexts, I highlight the links the discourses on BIDs establish, with notions of international best practices and international showcases; the way BIDs reframe notions of public space; and the way BIDs are constituted as the legitimate voice of the local common good. [Key words: comparative urbanism, discourse analysis, business improvement districts, urban policy mobilities].

Stay Out of Drug Areas: Drugs, Othering and Regulation of Public Space in Seattle, Washington

The drug user is a social scapegoat, often blamed for many social ills. This targeting and abjectification constitutes definitions of ‘the public’ by creating an Other against which the citizen is defined. Using the example of Seattle's Stay Out of Drug Areas ordinance as a case study, this article shows how the creation and enforcement of exclusionary anti-drug zones, produce an idealised notion of public space and its idealised inhabitant, the “citizen”. Modern citizenship pathologises those who are not considered citizens. Drug-using bodies are policed and segregated to reduce disorder in public space. This policing can lead to additional marginalisation of groups that are already marginalised. In this article, it is argued that discourses of abjection, citizenship and public space work together to form socio-spatial norms of appropriate bodies and actions in public space.

THIS ARTICLE HAS BEEN RETRACTED Katherine Philips's Politicised Coterie Writing

Abstract This essay was runner‐up in the 2005 Literature Compass Graduate Essay Prize, Seventeenth Century Section. Private epistolary exchange took place as part of a more encompassing social exchange in the early modern period. For a royalist such as Katherine Philips, coterie exchange was a conscious means of creating and maintaining a sympathetic literary community based on common ideology. Philips's coterie production, spanning her socially isolated time in both Wales and Ireland, represents not only an attempt to further individual literary reputation, but as an enabling space from which to form a community of ideologically minded individuals. Such coterie production can be seen as a dynamic construction of a public space as an alternative site of power. Drawing from the Habermasian model of the literary public sphere and Hannah Arendt's notion of public space, I argue that the politicised coterie overturns the binaries of author/reader, manuscript/print, and public/private, offering strategies for royalist women writers to enter into a public discourse from within a ‘private’ production and circulation. Replacing the historical narratives of the political uprisings of the 1650s with narratives of heroism and friendship, Philips's coterie is not necessarily a retreat from a troubled social and political atmosphere, but a refiguring of the heroic and social traditions of Royalists from within a contemporary position of exile and isolation. Philips's poetry of female friendship is not only a response to the separation and loss of the Civil War, but an active construction of an alternative community based upon politicised friendship. Writing in a period of change and in the face of personal isolation, friendships based on literary exchange constituted an alternative society in which the participants imaginatively shed the differences which separate them in the larger, public world. Examining the coterie verse and epistolary writing of Katherine Philips in the context of an alternative political community reveals the need for renewed critical focus upon collectivities and alliances which shaped early modern women's writing.

The Politics of Neighbors

DESPITE THE MANY WAYS IN WHICH THE LIMITS OF PHYSICAL PROXIMITY CAN NOW BE transcended-through telephones, fax machines, televisions, and computers-we continue to live in environments that require face to face contact with others. This contact ranges from ordering at a drivethrough restaurant to being packed into a subway for the daily commute. For this reason, as Michael Sorkin argues in the introduction to Giving Ground, it is important to recognize the continuing role of physical locations in the politics and representations of the city. While the notion of public space was never meant to refer exclusively to a geographically delimited space that was open to all, it seems indisputable that the broader notion cannot dispense with such spaces (5). Giving Ground and Celebration Chronicles by Andrew Ross emphasize the continuing importance of physical space in struggles over the