1. Class 1 Introduction and Overview
GEOG | Public Space Department of Geography Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies York University Summer 2012
Class 1 Introduction and Overview
Class 1
8 May 2012
GEOG 4900 | Public Space Copyright © Amy Lavender Harris

2. A Short History of Public Space
Greek polis (5th century B.C.): the acropolis and the agora.
Rome (3rd century B.C. and onward): the forum.
Religion, governance, commerce, aesthetics; citizenship.
Medieval Europe: domination of the (Catholic) Church.
Renaissance: piazzas: centralized spaces of governance and commerce.
The ‘commons;’ market-places.
Landscaped parks (some public; others reserved for elites and royalty)
Coffee houses; salons (17ths-18th century) – phenomena Habermas associates with the rise of the ‘public sphere.’
Class 1
Tues 8 May 2012
GEOG 4900 | Public Space
Copyright © Amy Lavender Harris

3. Contemporary Public Spaces
Civic display
Art and aesthetics
Gathering for celebration or protest
Commerce
Surveillance and regulation
Parks as spaces of recreation, leisure—or moral and social control?
Privatization, regulation and the decline of public space?
What kind of public space is a shopping mall? A ‘public’ square regulated by security guards and electronic surveillance (e.g., Yonge-Dundas Square)?
Class 1
Tues 8 May 2012
GEOG 4900 | Public Space
Copyright © Amy Lavender Harris

4. Contemporary Public Space Issues
Is public space in decline?
The challenges – and opportunities -- of neglected (unmaintained), lost / liminal spaces (under expressways): safety and fear of crime, but also spaces for guerilla gardening, informal art, wildlife, play
Corporatized spaces; privatization
Regulation and surveillance (e.g., CCTV)
Invaded spaces (e.g., dominated by cars)
Exclusionary spaces (race, class, gender, ability, age, etc.)
Reclaiming space: accessibility, walkability, sustainability, civic participation, freedom from surveillance, a break from the bombardment of advertising
Virtual spaces and the digital public sphere
Class 1
Tues 8 May 2012
GEOG 4900 | Public Space
Copyright © Amy Lavender Harris

5. Critical Perspectives on Public Space
Wallin (1988) on ‘dystempic’ space: defined by impersonal, abstract relationships – a “community of strangers” inhabiting shopping malls and social media spaces
Lefeebvre (1991) on the distinction between ‘representational’ (i.e., lived) space and ‘representations of space’ (regulated, planned, controlled, ordered).
Sibley (1995) on ‘open’ and ‘closed’ spaces
Don Mitchell on regulation, dissent and the ‘rights to the city’
Class 1
Tues 8 May 2012
GEOG 4900 | Public Space
Copyright © Amy Lavender Harris

6. Vito Acconci’s Meditations on Public Space
The shifting quality of time (from chronos to kairos to space-time compression); the advent of the wrist-watch as a harbinger of the loss of public space. [public telephones as a parallel example?]
Public space as a diversion from the hidden spaces where power is transacted.
Public spaces are public only because the public has demanded and fought for them to be public. [corollary: as if affected by entropy, public spaces have a tendency to revert to private spaces.]
Public spaces take shape around a desire, myth or delusion
Diffuse or undifferentiated spaces – spaces where individuals loiter, have lunch, gawk at one another – remain somehow formless until something impels their inhabitants to collective action.
Small clusters seek smaller, more intimate spaces: bars, cafes, nightclubs. By doing so, they engage in ‘place-’ (as opposed to space)-making and thus negate public space.
Class 1
Tues 8 May 2012
GEOG 4900 | Public Space
Copyright © Amy Lavender Harris

7. Copyright © Amy Lavender Harris
Acconci continued …
“Public space, in an electronic age, is space on the run.”
The loss of physical intimacy, replaced by virtual interactions
Virus: information or disease?
In the electronic age, the ‘public’ is a “composite of privates.”
Concrete space turned into abstract space (the experience of an airplane flight; globalization and cheap imports bring South Korea (e.g.) to the United States.
The (arguably) rehabilitative (or at least transgressive) purpose of public art and pop music. [see points 17 and 19)
Class 1
Tues 8 May 2012
GEOG 4900 | Public Space
Copyright © Amy Lavender Harris