1. 1
Differential Space:
A Research Culmination
Michael Leary-Owhin
learym@lsbu.ac.uk
lsbu.academia.edu/Michael.Leary-Owhin
Book Launch Event:
The City, Space and Urbanism
5 May 2016, 5.30 – 8pm
Keyworth Centre SE1 0AA
A Research Journey
• International comparative research
• Henri Lefebvre's spatial triad (The Production Space)
• Archival, interview and observation research
• Counter-projects led by civil society groups
• Public space as crucible of democracy
• Focus on differential (urban public) space
- one of Lefebvre's rights to the city
Completing a long, intellectually demanding book
journey can be lonely but one is rarely alone. Along the
road family, friends and colleagues provide succour,
support and welcome diversions too. Without their
backing the task may still have been completed but at
greater personal cost.
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Heartfelt Thanks
Laura Greaves, Laura Vickers, Emily Watt, Abi Saffrey, Emmeline Leary, Melanie
Lloyd, Jude, Jade, Lloyd, Paulyn Lloyd, Meg Oritsegbemi Owhin, Rachel
Oluwaseyifunmi Owhin, Lene and Frederikke Christensen Kamm, Glenn
Blaylock, Bolagi Lawrence, Elaine Blaylock, John Blaylock, Sireita Mullings-
Lawrence, Carla Diego-Franceskides, Rachel Dunkley-Jones, Nick Denes, Liz
Williams, Michael Keith, Brian Alleyne, Les Back, Ben Gidley, Sheila Robinson,
Bridget Ward, Sophie Watson, Fran Tonkiss, Neil Adams, John Adriaanse, Adrian
Budd, Neville Kendall, Sonia Leeyou, Manuela Madeddu, Diane Paice, Phil Pinch,
Tracey Reynolds, Shaminder Takhar, Duncan Tyler, Alan Winter, David
Blackburn, Robin Bray, Simon Currey, Katherine Davis, Crispin Edwards, Alison
Gill, Heather Gordon, David Govier, Jan Hargreaves, Susan Hayes, Jack Herlihy,
Jane Hodkinson, Simon Howles, Tony Lees, Rob Lewis, Martha Mayo, Paula
Moorhouse, Paul Robertshaw, Helen Roome, Megan Schlase, Geoff Senior, Ian
Smart, Mark Arsenault, John Atkin, Peter Aucella, Pat Bartoli, Howard Bernstein,
Jim Cook, Ricky Gervais, John Glester, Jonathon Hall, Michael Heseltine, Kate
Hudson, Harold Kalman, Lewis Karabatsos, Kevin Mann, Paul Marion, Warren
Marshall, Robert Maund, Gary McClarnan, Lynda McLeod, Charles Parrott, David
Rhodes, Ray Spaxman, Michael Southworth, Graham Stringer, Mike Webb,
‘Donna and Joe’, Paul Marion, Robert Maund, David Rhodes, Margaret
Lillian Leary, Emmanuel Aghamadedeye Owhin
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Chapter One
Cities and Public Space
First Words
Cities are the height of human achievement. Cities are
fraught with ambivalence. We adore city life; it
stimulates, entertains and excites.
Conversely, urban experiences are scary, disorientating
and may be physically and mentally deleterious.
Cities are crucibles of democracy, yet remain
cauldrons of inequality and injustice.
Foreword Words
Henri Lefebvre has become increasingly influential in the years since
he passed away in 1991. Picked up in landmark books of Marxist (or
Marxian) geographers such as David Harvey and Ed Soja, the work’s
insights have had a bracing impact on the study of the city and the
discipline of geography in particular, witnessed in contemporary
scholarship of a planetary urbanism or the diagnostic studies of the
neoliberal metropolitan turn of recent decades…
At times prolix, inevitably evolving over many decades, Lefebvre’s own writing
contains both puzzling contradictions and powerful insights. So in a sense it is
perhaps more important to think of scholarship that is inspired by the work of
Lefebvre, rather than work that is straightforwardly faithful to the detail of any
particular paradigm…
It is perhaps in this sense that this work by Michael Leary-Owhin,
Exploring the Production of Urban Space, makes a significant contribution
to scholarship that draws on the inspiration as much as the writings of
Lefebvrian urbanism, to generate scholarship that advances our thinking
about the post-industrial and the comparative analysis of city change.
(Michael Keith)
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Lefebvre’s ‘Traditional’ Spatial Triad
abstract space
differential space
public space
• spatial practice has three major elements:
1) the physical, material city and its routine maintenance;
2) major urban redevelopment in the context of existing neo-capitalist
and state power structures; and
3) routines of daily life that conform with official representations of
space. It is space directly perceptible through the senses – perceived
space.
• representations of space: rational, intellectualised, official
conceptions of urban areas for analytical, administrative and property
development purposes. They are produced by technocrats: architects,
engineers, urbanists and planners but also artists with a scientific bent.
They are the dominant representations and may be in the form of the
written word, for example in city-wide zoning plans and strategy
documents, or quasi-scientific visual representations of various kinds
such as maps, masterplans and design guides – conceived space.
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spaces of representation have two major elements:
1) urban everyday space as directly lived by inhabitants and
users in ways informed not so much by representations
of space as by associated cultural memories, images and
symbols imbued with cultural meaning; and
2) emotional, artistic interpretations of city space by poets,
writers and painters and other artists. These kinds of space
overlay physical space and value places in ways that run
counter to the dominant representations of space –
imaginative and lived space.
• abstract space: the urban spaces of state regulated neo-capital
characterised by restricted access, restricted performance,
commodified exchange value and the tendency to homogenisation.
• differential space: privileges inclusiveness and use value
rather than the exchange value of abstract space. It is often transitory
space which can arise from the inherent vulnerabilities of abstract
space.
• counter-projects: initiatives in the urban environment
promoted by civil society interest groups that run counter to official
representations of space and are often resisted by city authorities,
especially at the time of instigation.
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Differential Space
Thus, despite – or rather because of – its negativity, abstract space carries
within itself the seeds of a new kind of space. I shall call that new space
‘differential space’, because inasmuch as abstract space tends towards
homogeneity … a new space cannot be born (produced) unless it
accentuates difference. (Lefebvre 1991 [1974]: 52)
… space created and dominated by its users from the basis of its given
conditions. It remains largely unspecified as to its functional and economic
rationality, thus allowing for a wide spectrum of use which is capable of
integrating a high degree of diversity, and stays open for change … a
kind of ‘urbanity’ is produced in which the ‘lived’ and the contradictions
that constitute urban life are nurtured, their deliberate juxtaposition
allowing for a more complex vision of development than is evident in their
immediate urban surroundings or in the unidimensional planning proposals
to which these areas are subject. (Groth and Corijn 2005 emphasis added)
Gastown, Vancouver
Three post -industrial cities
Differential space: differing types
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Public Space at Maple Tree Square,
Gastown, Vancouver
(Thanks to John Whitworth)
Vancouver Free Jazz Festival
Differential Space Created
(Thanks to Steve Blaylock) (Thanks to Jianwei Yang)
(Thanks to Ted McGrath)
Gastown Meets Downtown Eastside
on Water Street:
Marginalised people create
differential space
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Lowell Free Folk Festival
at Boarding House Park
and all over Downtown
The Parade of Nations
Multicultural production
of inclusive differential space
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(Thanks to Lesley Campbell)
D.percussion Free Music Festival:
a kind of differential space
(Thanks to Jacqui Burke)
CND Political Rally makes
Differential Space
Castlefield, Manchester
(Thanks to Paul Jones)
The Vanilla Girls’ Photo-shoot:
Lesbian sexuality creates differential space
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(Thanks to Donna of Manchester No Borders)
Politicised Appropriation of Space:
Production of differential space
A Cycle of Differential Space Triad
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Chapter Nine
Conclusions
Towards the end of Lefebvre (1991), the implication is that like
Marxist post-capitalism, differential space becomes inevitable and
universal. However, the research findings here demonstrate that
differential space can co-exist in dialectical tension with abstract
space rather than negating it entirely. Politically appropriated
differential space has appeared, disappeared and reappeared in the
2000s in the case study cities and probably in many other cities,
which suggests it is not so much teleological as irrepressible. Where
urban space is abandoned by capitalist interests and state enterprises,
differential space can potentially be produced. Through the lens of the
spatial triad, differential space is constituted by and constituent of
social relations. Differential space confirms the unquenchable thirst
of the human spirit for an urbanism of tolerant, diverse public space –
the ultimate city synecdoche – not quite utopia but cause for
sanguinity.
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Chapter Nine
Conclusions
public spaces of hope
In this era when it is easy to lapse into neoliberal provoked
fatalistic pessimism, it is important to stress that the production
of space, inspired by a public spirited civic ethos can still create
city spaces of intrinsic use value – public spaces of hope.
Lefebvre posits a utopian post neo-capitalist, urban-centred
world order on the horizon: it may emerge eventually. In so
doing he highlights the importance of urban space and
its production.
Chapter Nine
Conclusions
Last Words
In this book the research intimates that cities remain as they were in
the 19th century, crucibles of societal convulsions and gentler every
day, transformative spatial rhythms. Both transformations produce
democratic differential space through collective politicised action.
It is differential space that erupts through the vulnerabilities of
abstract space. It is differential space that becomes the desired
outcome of the production of urban public space in the 21st century.
So the next opportunity you have to join the throng and participate
in the politicised appropriation of city streets – seize your right to
the city and revel in the production of differential space.
