Sociology of (contemporary) urban public spaces
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A journey in the notion of publicness prepared for the course "Analysis of Temporary Inhabitants in Public Spaces" 4cfu Prof. Citroni
![Changes and evolution in the relation between the
urban setting and the public realm
Sociology of [contemporary] urban public
spaces
Piacenza, 19/10/2015
Course analysis of temporary inhabitants in urban public
spaces – Prof. citroni – 4CFU
1](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/2-151020130454-lva1-app6891/85/Sociology-of-contemporary-urban-public-spaces-1-320.jpg)
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Sociology of (contemporary) urban public spaces
- 1. Changes and evolution in the relation between the urban setting and the public realm Sociology of [contemporary] urban public spaces Piacenza, 19/10/2015 Course analysis of temporary inhabitants in urban public spaces – Prof. citroni – 4CFU 1
- 2. OUTLINE • 2 main (interrelated) perspectives: a) Public space, civic engagement, citizenship; b) Crisis of public space in contemporary city; c) Persistence of urban public space (new ways to think public space); • On the road: distinction between urban public space and the public sphere (Habermas); Piacenza, 19/10/2015 Course analysis of temporary inhabitants in urban public spaces – Prof. citroni – 4CFU 2
- 3. the rise of a public SPHERE in the city: the Greek polis Piacenza, 19/10/2015 Course analysis of temporary inhabitants in urban public spaces – Prof. citroni – 4CFU 3 • Polis, active participation of free-citizens in the political life of the city-state; • Establishment of a public sphere separated from the private dimension (oikos); • Public dimension: basis for the political life (Arendt 1958), world in common, where is possible to discuss the affairs of the community; • Public sphere (POLIS) = public space (AGORÀ);
- 4. the rise of a public SPHERE in the city: the European civitas Piacenza, 19/10/2015 Course analysis of temporary inhabitants in urban public spaces – Prof. citroni – 4CFU 4 • Symbol of an open society, held together by a shared common pact; • Spatial manifestation in the collective themes of the Urbs; • Ex. The PIAZZA and the 3 powers (Church, Commune, Chamber of commerce);
- 5. what is the legacy of this conceptualisation of the public dimension (POLIS/agorà and CIVITAS/piazza) in contemporary societies? Question time Piacenza, 19/10/2015 Course analysis of temporary inhabitants in urban public spaces – Prof. citroni – 4CFU 5
- 6. Piacenza, 19/10/2015 Course analysis of temporary inhabitants in urban public spaces – Prof. citroni – 4CFU 6 …. Idea that PUBLIC SPACE IS… …the PLACE of POLITICAL LIFE… …the PLACE of CITINZESHIP… PUBLIC SPACE = PUBLIC SPHERE
- 7. Public sphere ≠ Public place Immaterial sphere of communication, in which a public opinion on topics of general interest can be formed through debate and deliberative mechanisms; It is a (democratic) form of communication: decision are made through a public debate among different opinions; All opinions have the same power; Piacenza, 19/10/2015 Course analysis of temporary inhabitants in urban public spaces – Prof. citroni – 4CFU 7 Habermas, Jurgen. [1961] 1989. The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere. An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society. Cambridge: Polity Press.
- 8. Piacenza, 19/10/2015 Course analysis of temporary inhabitants in urban public spaces – Prof. citroni – 4CFU 8 Press, Salons, Coffee houses In the bourgeois society, Public opinion is externalized to counterbalance the voice of the state; It is a way through which social power and political domination are submitted to the democratic precept of publicity;
- 9. Piacenza, 19/10/2015 Course analysis of temporary inhabitants in urban public spaces – Prof. citroni – 4CFU 9 Blog, forum, mailing list, social media
- 10. • The only places regarded as real public spaces are those where there is political participation and citizenship activation; • Inclusion of immaterial spaces, which are relevant for the formation of a public opinion; • Focus on the relationship between communication and democracy; An evolution A misunderstanding Piacenza, 19/10/2015 Course analysis of temporary inhabitants in urban public spaces – Prof. citroni – 4CFU 10 Political philosophy; Sciences of communication This interpretation leads to an impasse: where are the public space in contemporary cities? Anywhere!
- 11. What is a city? Urban Sociology; Symbolic interactionism Piacenza, 19/10/2015 Course analysis of temporary inhabitants in urban public spaces – Prof. citroni – 4CFU 11
- 12. Piacenza, 19/10/2015 Course analysis of temporary inhabitants in urban public spaces – Prof. citroni – 4CFU 12
- 13. Piacenza, 19/10/2015 Course analysis of temporary inhabitants in urban public spaces – Prof. citroni – 4CFU 13
- 14. Piacenza, 19/10/2015 Course analysis of temporary inhabitants in urban public spaces – Prof. citroni – 4CFU 14
- 15. • Simmel Metropolis and the mental life; The Stranger • Chicago school: Park, Burgess, McKenzie The City; Park Human Migration and the Marginal Man; Wirth Urbanism as a way of life • Jacobs The Death and Life of the Great American cities • Lefebvre The Urban Revolution; Differential Manifesto; • Lofland A World of Strangers: Order and Action in Urban Public Space; The Public Realm: Exploring the City’s Quintessential Social Territory • Goffmann Behaviour in Public Places: Notes on the Social Organization of Gatherings • Sennett The fall of public man Piacenza, 19/10/2015 Course analysis of temporary inhabitants in urban public spaces – Prof. citroni – 4CFU 15 the public realm of city
- 16. Piacenza, 19/10/2015 Course analysis of temporary inhabitants in urban public spaces – Prof. citroni – 4CFU 16 Coexistence in space and in time of a great (social, cultural, architectural) heterogeneity; Interaction among different elements and production of hybrids (cosmopolite, stranger, marginal man, urban animal); Living in this setting is impossible without civilization, that is the activity that places individuals away from each other and allows them to enjoy each other’s company; Shared norms and rules that establish the ability to build a bond, even in situations of social distance; Recognition of legitimacy for each one to be present in the urban space; Urban revolution, the right to the city (Lefebvre);
- 17. Do you agree with this perspective? What is left away? Question time Piacenza, 19/10/2015 Course analysis of temporary inhabitants in urban public spaces – Prof. citroni – 4CFU 17
- 18. Piacenza, 19/10/2015 Course analysis of temporary inhabitants in urban public spaces – Prof. citroni – 4CFU 18 The issue of power • Valentine (2008): «Romanticization of urban encounter […] potentially naïve assumption that contact with ‘others’ necessarily translates into respect for difference» «Spatial proximity does not equate with meaningful encounters» • Chamboredon, Lemaire (1970), Proximité spatiale et distance sociale; • Brighenti (2010) Public realm as an inter-visibility REGIMES (rules, norms, thresholds, defining the access to the public realm); • Struggle for the definition of the LEGITIMATE public, who can access, use and find representation in the city and its public spaces; • Lefebvre, The right to the city;
- 19. A synthesis with a definition PUBLIC SPACE as a relational arena, where people and social groups form different publics that become inter-visible in the public, according to norms and rules defining and managing the access to the public realm, which are the outcome of the competition (struggle) between different interests, and forms different inter-visibility regimes; Piacenza, 19/10/2015 Course analysis of temporary inhabitants in urban public spaces – Prof. citroni – 4CFU 19
- 20. contemporary city and public space Piacenza, 19/10/2015 Course analysis of temporary inhabitants in urban public spaces – Prof. citroni – 4CFU 20 Suburbanization: intimacy and self-segregation; Mobility: public space as derived of movement; different paths in space and time; Global city and commodification: city-users, deny of the right to the city; The end of public space in the contemporary city?
- 21. MOBILITY Piacenza, 19/10/2015 Course analysis of temporary inhabitants in urban public spaces – Prof. citroni – 4CFU 21
- 22. Suburbanization, gated communities Piacenza, 19/10/2015 Course analysis of temporary inhabitants in urban public spaces – Prof. citroni – 4CFU 22
- 23. Commodification Piacenza, 19/10/2015 Course analysis of temporary inhabitants in urban public spaces – Prof. citroni – 4CFU 23
- 24. IS it possible to find another interpretation? Question time Piacenza, 19/10/2015 Course analysis of temporary inhabitants in urban public spaces – Prof. citroni – 4CFU 24
- 25. Amin a. (2008), COLLECTIVE CULTURE AND URBAN PUBLIC SPACE • PUBLIC SPACE = OPEN, CROWDED, DIVERSE, INCOMPLETE, IMPROVISED AND LIGHTLY REGULATED; • TROWNTOGETHERNESS; • PUBLIC SETTING IS A SITUATED MULTIPLICITY OF CORPS, OBJECTS, IMPULSES, USES, THAT CIRCULATE IN A DEFINED SPACE-TIME; • THIS SETTING HAS NOT A DIRECT EFFECT (e.g. citizenship activation, sharing norms, etc.) BUT AN INDIRECT EFFECT • In the public setting we experience a situated surplus… Piacenza, 19/10/2015 Course analysis of temporary inhabitants in urban public spaces – Prof. citroni – 4CFU 25
- 26. Luca Daconto Dipartimento di Sociologia e Ricerca Sociale - Università di Milano Bicocca Gabriele Manella Dipartimento di Sociologia e Diritto dell’Economia - Università di Bologna
- 27. SALA BORSA as a public space the respondents’ point of view 27 openness gratuity meeting place heterogeneity neutrality symbol user-friendly citizenship
- 28. Reading list – some suggestions • Amin A. (2008). Collective culture and urban public space. City 12(1): 5-24; • Brighenti A. (2010). The Public realm of Public Space: On the Public Domain. Dipartimento di Sociologia e Ricerca Sociale dell’Università di Trento Quaderno 49(marzo); http://web.unitn.it/files/quad49.pdf • Carr, S. et al. (1992). Public Space. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. • Flusty S., “The banality of interdiction: surveillance, control and the displacement of diversity”, in International Journal of Urban and Regional research, vol.25, n.3, September 2001, pagg.658-664 • Mitchell D. (1995). The end of public space? People’s Park, definitions of the public and democracy. Annals of the Association of American geographers, 85(1): 108-133; • Sennett R. (2008). The Public Realm http://www.richardsennett.com/site/senn/templates/general2.aspx? pageid=16&cc=gb • Valentine G. (2008). Living with difference: reflections on geographies of encounter. Progress in Human Geography, 32(3): 323-337; • http://www.interculturalurbanism.com/?p=1255 • https://vimeo.com/111488563 • Daconto, Manella (forthcoming), Sala Borsa: plural presences and innovative public spaces Piacenza, 19/10/2015 Course analysis of temporary inhabitants in urban public spaces – Prof. citroni – 4CFU 28
Editor's Notes
- Today, I’m going to talk about urban public space from a sociological perspective, of course! Ok, let’s start!
- In particular, I’m going to present you a path in the notion of the public space: from the origin of the notion in the ancient Greece to its supposed fall in contemporary city. In this route, I’m going to focus mainly on 2 different, but interrelated interpretations of public space: On the one hand, a perspective stressing a strong relationship between urban public space, civic culture and political formation; On the other hand, the view stressing the erosion of urban public spaces due to privatization, commodification, social control, deny of the right to the city…. Finally, my aim is arrive with you to a different interpretation of public space, which is able to acknowledge the persistence of urban public space. And to do so, it will be necessary to change the definition of public space; it’s like the Thomas Theorem: we change our definition of public space, and then we’ll be able to see public spaces in cities and not just their death. And we will see that one important step in order to change our definition is keeping in mind the distinction between urban public space and the public sphere;
- The first link between the public realm and urban space can be found in the Greek Polis. Polis is a form of democratic government, in which all individuals have the same rights. In the Greek polis (from the VIII to the IV century BC), for the first time, a public sphere separated from the private dimension of the home, the oikos, was established. The polis is a model of organization of social life based on the active participation of citizens in the political life of the city, which in that period was like a state. As Arendt, an important philosopher, points out the establishment of a public dimension is the basis for the development of the political life. Indeed, with the public realm was created a world in common, a space where is possible discuss the affairs of the community. So, if it was necessary to choose, for instance, the agricultural policy, to declare a war, and so on and so forth, all citizens went in the agorà for discussing the city issues. And the final decision is the decision made in the agorà. As you can see, the notion of public sphere link to the idea of democracy, of citizenship. Most important: in the Greek polis the public sphere find a spatial manifestation in the Agorà, the piazza, the square…. So, as you can see at the bottom of the slide the public sphere, the polis, is the public space, the agorà. The idea of citizenship finds an incarnation in the agorà.
- The view of the Polis as a case of democratic government, based on the formation of a public sphere has been criticized, because in the Greek city-state not all people were considered as citizens. The slaves, for instance, cannot participate in the assembly, they cannot access to the public sphere. So, some scholars argue we must move to the Medieval age, in particular to the Communes period, to find the establishment of a public sphere between free-citizens. Indeed, the European civitas is the symbol of an open society formed by free-individuals (the slavery was abolished), held together by a shared common pact. And also in the Commune the public sphere has a spatial manifestation, for instance, the Italian piazza. In the pictures you can se how the public sphere manifested itself in the case of Cremona. Like in several Italian cities, you can see the manifestation of this word in common in the central piazza. Indeed, in the piazza all the powers find manifestation: on the left the church, on the right the Commune and between them the Chamber of Commerce (the power of the nascent Bourgeoisie)
- Ok. So, let’s stop a moment. What is the legacy of this conceptualisation of the public realm in contemporary societies?
- In my opinion, the legacy is the idea that urban public space are the place of the political life, the place of citizenship. In other words, in this view, we can define urban public space only the space in which we can observe a political life and forms of democracy. Then, we might have different form of democracy, one most based on the idea of consensus and one on the conflict. But the important thing is the idea that public space reflects in the space the public sphere, this word in common between citizens. BUT….
- Later, with the seminal work on the public sphere of Habermas, the public realm has lost its links with the spatial dimension. Do you know Habermas? He’s one of the most important contemporary philosopher. He was in the Frankfurt School, and he’s still alive and doing lectures… And for example he influenced also urban planning, for instance, if you think to the topic of participation in urban planning…. Habermas considers the public sphere as an immaterial sphere of communication, in which through debate and deliberative mechanisms about topics of general interests a public opinion can be formed. If you remember, the last week we talked about rationality, and this idea of the public sphere is based on the idea of rationality. Indeed, in the public sphere, we arrive with different opinions and then through a rational debate, based on the rational comparison of the different opinion, that is on a debate influenced only by the evaluation of the costs and benefits, we’ll arrive to a decision. This decision is influenced just by this rational and democratic debate. Other values, powers and so on and so forth do not influenced the final chose. Ok, the most important thing you must keep in mind is that Public sphere is not anymore the public place, the piazza, but a form of communication
- Indeed, with the formation of the bourgeois society, the political life, the public opinion were not just formed in the urban public spaces, But for instance, through the press, in the coffee houses, in the salons. Those are the forms assumed by the the public sphere during the bourgeois society So, you have to keep in mind that the public sphere is an immaterial space of communication…
- And thinking to the public sphere as immaterial, is important to acknowledge the the important role played by immaterial spaces of communication, as twitter, facebook, blogs, in the formation of a public opinion in contemporary society. Hence, we need to separate the concept of urban public space from the notion of public sphere I’m not saying that in contemporary urban public space it is impossible the formation of a public opinion. For instance, if you go in Bologna, maybe you can find this guy, who every week starts a public discussion in the Piazza and then all people can intervene and discuss with others. But, the public sphere is not just that, but a form of communication, so we have to keep these concepts separated!
- So, the work of Habermas led to an evolution, that is the inclusion of immaterial spaces, And to a division of research object: from Habermas the debate on the public sphere focuses on the relationship between communication and democracy, justice and it became the object of political philosophy and of sciences of communication; Since, some urban sociologists do not want to loose this important object of study, In urban studies, the work of habermas has had the effect of reinforcing a misunderstanding. A stereotype which define urban place as public only when there are forms of democracy, citizenship activation, a political action. But as we are going to see, these interpretation does not allow to include many urban public spaces of the contemporary city.
- ASK IF THERE ARE SOME QUESTIONS Now, we will do a step back, And we will consider the public realm of cities. Indeed, if urban public space cannot be defined as public sphere, a form of communication and democracy, Cities have a public dimension. This is clear if we consider What is a city And in particular if we consider the contributions coming from modern urban sociology and from symbolic interactionism, a stream of research that Prof. Citroni knows very well. So, Sebastiano you can interrupt me if I’m saying something incorrect.
- What is a city? Henri Lefebvre (a very important author maybe you know him for his book: the right to the city and the production of space) gave different definitions of city, but the most interesting one is the definition of city as black hole. Wikipedia defines a black hole as a geometrically defined region of spacetime exhibiting such strong gravitational effects that nothing can escape from inside it If we think to cities, they are environment attracting many people. In cities we can find all stuff. City is the use of time in a space, in which a great heterogeneity of people, cultures live together. In a sense, city is a chaos, a mix of social, cultural, functional and architectural diversity. City is the place of unpredictability, of the serendipity, at first sight it’s mess. We can find the idea of city as the space of coexistence of difference, also in the works of other modern urban scholars. For instance, Simmel and the Chicago School of Sociology consider city as a space of co-existence of an heterogeneity of people, cultures. And since this heterogeneity share the same space, city is also the environment of the interaction between diversity, the characteristic which guarantees the vitality of the social fabric. Wirth, a member of the Chicago school defined city as a relative large, dense and permanent settlement of heterogeneous individuals. So, city is characterized by 3 elements: the dimension, the density and most important heterogeneity. And this heterogeneity is not just present but accessible: indeed, with the interaction of different elements, in cities hybrids are produced. These authors stress the multiculturalism of city. City is a melting pot. The space of the encounters between diversity. A cosmopolite environment.
- We have seen that city is the space-time of heterogeneity, But how can we live with such heterogeneity, such mess? It’s not easy living in this complex environment… Simmel, for instance, stresses that living in a city has effects on the psychology of individuals. He argues that the metropolitan complexity causes an intensification of the individual nervous activity, as a result of the rapid and uninterrupted succession of exterior and interior impressions. And this intensification involves the development of more superficial and impersonal social relations. In other words, for living in a city we cannot care about all stimuli we receive. After all, living “as a stranger in a world of strangers”, a definition of public space gave by Lin Lofland, would be intolerable without a way to control this situation. Indeed, we do not care about all that happens in public spaces, because otherwise it would be a stressful situation. Usually, the work of Simmel is interpreted in a bad way. Indeed, it is stressed that in city an individual is alone, as demonstrated by the cases in which we can not find help from the others…. But, if this is true, Simmel underlines that in a way the loneliness is the price to pay in order to reach the individual freedom. Indeed, city is also the place of the freedom, where we can do our choice. Where we can emancipate ourselves. The other side of the coin is the impersonal relations, the loneliness. To this respect, also Park says that living in a city is a fascinating but a dangerous experience, that is to live at the same time in different worlds.
- So how can we live in this mess? How can we live in this disorganized environment? I have already pointed out that we need some forms of control of this mess. And as last Monday, prof. Citroni said about the works of Whyte, which is important because he showed the form of organization in phenomena that are usually interpreted as form of disorganization, we need to look at the contribution of microsociology, in particular to the stream of research called symbolic interactionism. For instance, Lofland stress that the public realm is characterised by the inter-visibility between strangers, And this inter-visibility between strangers is ruled by social relations typical of the public realm, that is the form of “categorical recognition”. Goffmann, for instance, talks about the ritual of civil inattention (slide)
- The main authors who contributed to the study of the public realm of city are those you see in the slide. All these scholars stress that the distinctive feature of a city is to put together different elements, which can interact on the basis of a particular form of social relations, A public form of relation…
- As Richard Sennett pointed out in his work on the public man (1977), the formation of a public dimension is impossible without civilization, that is the activity that places individuals away from each other and allows them to enjoy each other’s company. And the formation of a public realm is not possible without shared norms and rules that establish the ability to build a tie, even in situations of social distance. In this sense, the construction of a public dimension implies the recognition of the legitimacy to be part of the city, to be part of this public realm, for each individual, culture, group present in the urban space. This idea links to the works of Lefebvre. Lefebvre, starting from the definition of a city as a differential space, the space of coexistence of diversity, argues that city offers to people an environment where we can emancipate ourselves through the recognition of the right to the city for all elements present in city. The right for everyone to be part of the city and to participate in a social life, based on the respect of the diversity. In other words, the social qualities of the city claims for the construction of an inclusive environment, where everyone can find representation. It is that the idea of urban revolution proposed by Henri Lefebvre. Hence, we could consider this interpretation of the public realm of the city as a perspective stressing the relationship between urban public space, civic culture and citizenship
- This view left away the issue of power. romanticization of urban encounter and to implicitly reproduce a potentially naïve assumption that contact with ‘others’ necessarily translates into re- spect for difference
- So we must consider the barriers that prevent the access to the public realm of city. And contemporary sociologists, elaborating this idea of the public realm have found several barriers that led to the hypothesis of the crisis, the end of public space in contemporary city. Indeed, the changes of contemporary city seem to play a fundamental role In the continual redefinition of the regimes that defines the access to public spaces. In particular, it seems that Cities and public spaces have been affected by radical changes, which throw into crisis all forms of urbanity based on the publicness and the idea of citizenship. In contemporary cities we would witness to the end of public space, or of shared space-time in which all citizens can find representation. City as a public and collective entity fragmented itself in many segregated and self-segregating domains and paths that are the sign of a splintering urbanism, in which it does not emerge a public, shared dimension that could manifest and strengthen itself in public space. In the slide you can see different processes and phenomena that are considered the causes of the crisis of the urban public realm. I’m going to focus to 3 phenomena.
- First, the rise of mobility. Last week we saw some effects of car-dependency. And the car predominance has also effects on public space: indeed, urban public spaces are downgraded to mere traffic zones. Where is it possible to encounter the diversity if we are inside the car? But also if we look at the pedestrian mobility, public space is perceived as a by-product of the movement, as a way to reach a destination, And its status of place for developing citizenship is denied. We cross urban public space to reach our “private” destinations Also virtual mobility plays a role. For instance, the rise of mobile social media (smart-phones, tablets, mp3 players, etc.) contributed in creating “independent bubbles”, personal islands within the public space (Bull 2008; Eriksson et al. 2007). The people in the picture using their smartphone share the same space but they are in bubbles! They are in spatial proximity with the others, but in a situation of social distance. So contemporary city is characterized by very mobile, fragmented and scattered lifestyles. In such urban context, people tend to use public space instrumentally, as a transit to reach their real destinations (Sennett 1977). Despite these populations may temporarily occupy the same physical domains, they build separate and self-segregating paths (Mazzette 2010) and they compete for accessing and controlling urban space (Martinotti 1993).
- Some scholars identify the crisis of the public realm also in the processes of suburbanization. In this perspective, suburban lifestyle implies the loss of the ability to live with strangers. Indeed, suburbanization is criticized because is an homogenous environment, mostly white middle-class inhabitants. Hence, with suburbanization the stranger is transformed in a danger and suburban lifestyle implies escaping from the “universe of strangers” which is the cosmopolitan city. In other words, cities have suffered the consequences of an "intimate tyranny", whose striking spatial expression is represented by Gated Communities (Petrillo 2000, Mantovani, 2005), housing complexes with a self-segregation of residents and the complete privatization of space.
- Third, we see a commodification of space as a consequence of an entrepreneurialism approach to urban development. Cities are seeking to promote their competitiveness enhancing sectors and groups considered as drivers of productivity in the knowledge-culture-service-based economy (Sassen 1994; Scott 2008). Given the centrality of use and consumption as resources that can ensure competitiveness within the new dynamics of economic development, the urban populations most suitable to this new kind of urbanity have a high influence These transformations make many authors to argue that the contemporary city is a simulation, where unpredictability is replaced by a comprehensive planning and control of space in which there is no place for what is not pleasant, consumable, and desired (Amendola 1997 p.120). Otherwise, the consumers, the city-users would escape from the urban public space. Indeed, in order to ensure that urban populations make a positive experience of public spaces, access thresholds should be set to prevent that “disturbing” elements ruin this 'atmosphere' dream '. So, in contemporary city there are many emerging forms of social control through the use of urban planning, urban design (such as anti-homeless benches or sparks), technology and repression devices (such as video surveillance systems), to ensure that the co-presence among strangers, typical of metropolitan life, cannot generate feelings of insecurity, which would have the effect of removing individuals from public spaces This trend results in the exclusion or marginalization of groups to whom is denied the access to urban public spaces. This kind of exclusion is experienced, for instance, by people in condition of extreme urban poverty such as the homeless (Guidicini, Pieretti and Bergamaschi 1995). But if you think homeless do not have a private space, the do not have an home indeed. So the inaccessibility to public space mean that homeless are generally excluded from the city. Ex. Homeless and the deny of the right to the city
- So, we have seen 2 main interpretations of urban public space: On the one hand, a perspective stressing a strong relationship between urban public space, civic culture and political formation; On the other hand, the view stressing the erosion of urban public spaces due to privatization, commodification, social control, deny of the right to the city….
- To answer this question I think that an interesting contribution is the article of Amin For Amin, a public setting is characterised by forms of situated multiplicity (throwntogetherness): situations in which a multiplicity of bodies, objects, uses and stimuli share the same physical space, facilitating the formation of a “pre-cognitive” scheme for civic and political behaviour. But not all public spaces are characterised by this situated multiplicity. According to Amin, the ‘virtues’ of urban surplus could be find in public spaces that are open, crowded, diverse, incomplete, improvised, and disorderly or lightly regulated.
- To give you an example. I did a research in the public library Sala Borsa in Bologna. A beautiful place. Do you know it? If not I suggest you to visit it… Ok, in Sala Borsa we did some field observations And we find out that Sala Borsa attract different social groups, so there is heterogeneity, but most of the observed interactions happened within homogeneous groups (according to age, nationality, family)
- Then we interviewed some Sala Borsa users And we found that Sala Borsa is perceived as a public space that is able to support the persistence of a collective dimension. So also if in public spaces we do not observe social interactions and the activation of citizenship, the experience of diversity has some effects on the perception of these spaces. In this sense, Sala Borsa is what Ash Amin defines a public setting: a social environment characterised by forms of situated multiplicity (throwntogetherness): plural situations in which a multiplicity of bodies, objects, uses and stimuli share the same physical space, so facilitating the formation of a pre-cognitive scheme for civic and political behaviour