Contested Space

http://www.citylab.com/design/2014/06/who-really-owns-public-spaces/373612

New York City Times Square
muncievoice.com

Hello Everyone:

Now that we've all had a chance to get over our post-FIFA World Cup let down, it's time to get back into more serious things.  Today we consider "who really owns public space?"  This is the title of Anthony Flint's latest post for City Lab and is a reference to a recently opened exhibited at the AIA New York Center for Architecture in Greenwich Village and continues until September 6.  The exhibit is called "Open to the Public: Civic Space Now" Curated by Thomas Mellins, the exhibit ponders "What makes public space compelling and enjoyable?  What, in fact, makes it public? Government funding?  Municipal policing?" (http://www.cfa.aia.ny.org)

Central Park
New York City, New York
themarkhotel.com

 The "occupations" of public spaces, including POPS (privately owned public spaces have focused global attention on the importance and indispensability of publicly accessible places as forum for political protest.  The increased ubiquitousness of digital communications, the desire for more face-to-face contact and a desire for community, however transitory, compels us to seek out public space for shared experiences.  However, public spaces, while slow in creation, are easily compromised.  Susceptible to market forces, public spaces often lose their unique character to excessive commercialization, branding, and programming. The exhibits presents thirteen different public spaces in New York and one space each in Los Angeles, Houston, and Chicago as examples of design strategies, access, financing, and management.  They are mostly dedicated to congregation, circulation, or contemplation.  Regardless of their use or impact, each of the spaces presented in this exhibit is meant to serve the public no matter how challenging this task can be. (Ibid)

Occupation Wall Street Day 40
commons.wikimedia.org

The very idea of public, once reserved for design professionals, has become the topic du jour in the last.  The catalyst for pushing the subject into the public discourse was the 2011 Occupy Wall Street encampment in Zucotti Park, a privately owned public space.
Globally, the protest movement in Cairo's Tahrir Square, the same year, highlighted the connection between place and public discourse, with the mobilizing power of social media thrown into the mix.  More recently, guerrilla urbanism-the practice of taking over parking garages or entire streets for parklets, pop-up art displays or chair bombing-has also altered the definition and understanding of public space and the role it plays in contemporary society.

Franklin D. Roosevelt Four Freedoms Park
Roosevelt Island, New York
architecturaldigest.com

On February 6, 2014, Michael Kimmelman, the architecture critic for the New York Times, presented a talk on "The Politics of Public Space."  In a statement released prior to the public lecture Mr. Kimmelman states,

...The fabric of the city is both the stage for social action and the object of civic debate.  Increasingly, people are coming to understand that equality, opportunity, mobility, prosperity, and health are reflected in the way we shape and build our cities, that freedom is defined and contested in public space... 
(http://www.radcliffe.harvard.edu/event/2014-michael-kimmelman-lecture)

The new focus on the design and character of public is very welcome but it also raises some difficult questions couched in issues such as free speech, rules and regulations, access and equity.  For example, Anthony Flint asks, "Is the pedestrian zone of Times Square mostly for tourists?  Who are the best new public spaces actually designed for?"  Simply put, a park is no longer just a park, rather, it has metamorphosed into a stage for the performance of public life.  The AIA New York exhibition tries to make some sense of the theme by arranging public space into three categories: congregation, circulation, and contemplation.  The concept of a public space as a place for contemplation is best understood at the Franklin D. Roosevelt Four Freedoms park at the tip of Roosevelt Island.

Vintage New York
commons.wikimedia.org

For anyone traveling the sidewalks of New York, it becomes apparent how much of the city's life is played out in public.  The way space gets used may appear random or, perhaps, intentional such as the High Line or the steps of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.  The latter was probably not originally intended to accommodate the hundreds of visitors linger every day.  However, it is that lingering that has become a character defining element of the Met.

Anthony Flint observes that the one shortcoming the show has is its lack of recognition of guerilla urbanism. Cities such as San Francisco, Dallas, and Portland, Maine have become ground zero for tactical urbanism action.  Mr. Flint speculates, "It might have also been

Poynton
Chesire, England
icag.org.uk

interesting to delve into the latest cutting-edge thinking on share space espoused by such thought leaders as urban designer and movement Ben Hamilton-Baillie who re-imagined former New York City transportation commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan's model for Times Square without traffic lights or warning signs.  In a  recent plenary speech given by Mr. Hamilton-Baillie before the Congress for the New Urbanism, he argued, "...current street design practices unsuccessfully try to blend the concepts of highways and public spaces...'Don't treat drivers as idiots because then you'll get idiots.'  Instead of relying on an endless set of

Seven Dials Intersection
London,  England
standard.co.uk

instructions, he suggests that humans instinctively understand how to move through public space."  In implementing the Dutch concept of woonerf, which blends automobile, bicycle, and pedestrian movement, it turns the street into a new type of public forum based on eye contact and basic courtesy.  The result is a ballet, worthy of Jane Jacobs, such as the ones danced daily in the Seven Dials Intersection in London and Poynton in Chesire, England.

The exhibit not only looks back but looks forward as well including the recently rehabilitated McCarren Pool, a public works project by noted New City planner Robert Moses.  The sometimes tortured history of place making is all around us.  One example is the high-density towers of the mid-twentieth century urban renewal are directly across the street from the pool, the gardens and street-level shops of Washington Square Southeast are still quite active.  The park fountain works and people use the space.

Nearly fifty years ago, Jane Jacobs fought a pitched battle against Robert Moses's proposal to run Fifth Avenue through the greensward.  At the time, no one was actively talking about free speech or democracy or whether homeless people should be allowed to loiter in public spaces.  Back then, it was more about mothers and strollers.  It was contested space, as public space was and remains.

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