From 9 – 12 April 2015 PAX and NAHNOO will organize a new version of the Activist Academy, a place where activists from different countries exchange, interact and work together for more effective and concrete action. The topic of this academy is going to be PUBLIC SPACE. Why is this an important topic to work on?
Coen Veerman (intern at the Activist Hive) has reviewed different sources of information regarding public space. For the whole article, see below.
important points: “many scholars argue that cities without vibrant, dynamic, interactive public spaces do not breed collective action, as they do not allow people to meet, exchange, disagree, debate, and make claims.”
"public space is seen as an important place of freedom of expression."
"Through elaborate techniques, ruling authorities, planning agencies and media outlets, criminalize the groups they identify as threats to the political, social, urban and moral orders of the affluent, and legitimize the urgency to secure, fortify, control and restrict public spaces to their own use."
"For activists the relation between democracy, social change and public sphere are obvious. Their question are usually much more practical: How to keep remaining public spaces, how to make new ones, how to engage people in the struggle for public spaces and how to use public space as a site for social change? Some of these questions are brought up for debate and will function as starting points to build our work on during the Activist Academy."
What do Tehran, Tahrir, Wall Street, Puerta Del Sol, Gezi Park, Euromaidan and Hong Kong have in common? They are all public spaces used as a place for activism and a battle field for social struggles. According to Mona Harb “Public space seems to be back in vogue these days, especially in relation to social protests taking place in city squares and along major streets, occupying and claiming spaces, often violently.”[1]
However, what is a public space and why did public space become such a central topic for protest? Moreover, why are public places important for activist and social movements?
“A public space is a social space that is generally open and accessible to people. Roads, public squares, parks and beaches are typically considered public space. To a limited extent, government buildings which are open to the public, such as public libraries are public spaces, although they tend to have restricted areas and greater limits upon use.” Public space is not to be confused with a gathering space, though it can function as one. Moreover, a public space should not be confused with Habermas’ idea of public sphere. Public sphere is an abstract term for all places where private individuals and authorities meet and where critical debates are formed.[2] Though, a public space is often the physical place where public sphere takes place.
Clearly, a place does not have to be public in order to be used as a place for activism, as this could be done at other kinds of gathering places as well. However, the absence of public space would make social interaction extremely difficult. According to Harb “many scholars argue that cities without vibrant, dynamic, interactive public spaces do not breed collective action, as they do not allow people to meet, exchange, disagree, debate, and make claims.”[3] According to geographer Don Mitchell public space and democracy are inherently linked. “Public spaces are absolutely essential to the functioning of democratic politics.”[4] More than a fixed entity public spaces must be seen as a sight for social struggles in which the question is: who to allow in? It is a battle between two competing ideologies “about what constitutes to space – order and control or free and perhaps dangerous interaction – and who constitutes the public.”[5] Others, like Gill Valentine “have focused on performativity and visibility in public spaces, which brings a theatrical component or ‘space of appearance’ that is central to the functioning of a democratic space.”[6] Clearly, without the existence of a sort of public gathering space, it would be hard to meet, talk, discuss or protest with one another.
Not only scholars see the existence of public space as being important enough to make a democracy to function well. Some states see the importance of public spaces as well. For instance, in the constitution USA there are restrictions on state action in public spaces formulated in the right of free speech. Also in Canada public space is seen as an important place of freedom of expression. “If Members of the public had no right whatsoever to distribute leaflets or engage in other expressive activity on government-owned property…then there would be little if any opportunity to exercise their rights of freedom of expression.” —Supreme Court of Canada, defending right to poster on public utility poles and hand out leaflets in public government-owned buildings.[7]
However, even though there are some state initiatives to safeguard public spaces, the control of public space will always be a struggle about hegemony. Who is in control? “Mustafa Dikeç (2002) reminds us how ruling authorities develop narratives, strategies and mechanisms to naturalize their domination over the city and its public spaces, and their exclusion of ordinary dwellers, especially poor and marginalized groups. Through elaborate techniques, ruling authorities, planning agencies and media outlets, criminalize the groups they identify as threats to the political, social, urban and moral orders of the affluent, and legitimize the urgency to secure, fortify, control and restrict public spaces to their own use. Streets and squares become sealed off, under strict and permanent surveillance, and controlled with regard to behavior.” [8] According to Mitchell this results in predictable ordered behavior without much chance for surprise, unruliness and disorder; a depoliticized public space.[9]
This tendency has become stronger the last decades according to many scholars. Some authors are even talking about the end of public, as governments and private parties increasingly found ways to control public space.[10] Consequently people refrain from public spaces, also because forums of expression can be reached from home. Which of both reasons is more important is still under debate. Nevertheless, both tendencies result in minimalized possibilities for democratic action.[11]
Yet, for some authors talking about the end of public space is too pessimistic, as for a great part people still decide what to use as a public place. Instead of the loss of public space it might be better talk about people redefining public space, citizenship and democracy. Public space has always been exclusive to a certain extent. “No single physical space can represent a completely inclusive ‘space of democracy’.”[12] According to Fraser this has lead to counterpublics; self-made public spaces responding to local specific concerns. These spaces are in constantly moving and changing .[13] The point is that public space is essentially a power struggle between different groups. Some inclusive, other exclusive.
Activists and movements:
As long as people live in cities they have found ways to resist technics of domination, peacefully but also violently. However, resistance to the privatization of public space has not taken place on such a global scale as it does now. Also, the protests are on similar topic such as social, economic political, and sometimes religious inequality. “From self-organized communities in Barcelona, Occupy movements in New York, urban protests in Rio de Janeiro, reclaiming housing rights in Amsterdam, to uprisings across the Middle East, an increasing variety of organized collective action are using public space to claim their rights to the city and to the process of spatial production..”[14] Obviously, modern technology such as mobile phones and social media have been essential in organizing these increased protests.
For activists the relation between democracy, social change and public sphere are obvious. Their question are usually much more practical: How to keep remaining public spaces, how to make new ones, how to engage people in the struggle for public spaces and how to use public space as a site for social change? Some of these questions are brought up for debate and will function as starting points to build our work on during the Activist Academy.
Bibliography:
Video: Konstantin Kastrissianakis: Rethinking Public Space in Beirut since the Ta’if Agreement. Saturday, 14 December 2013, Panel III: Open Air Spaces of Gathering, 14.00-16.15 @ Mansion http://vimeo.com/84589118
College: Polly Pallister-Wilkins: assistant professor at the University of Amsterdam specialized in space, conflict and gender.http://webcolleges.uva.nl/Mediasite/Play/d27dd073659a4f43b2cbccc732fc55cb1d?catalog=ab20aa95-d8a6-41d5-bf6e-529bd79baf1d
Literature:
Non academic:
Public Space and Gezi protests: https://www.opendemocracy.net/nilufer-gole/gezi-occupation-for-democracy-of-public-spaces (2013), http://globalvoicesonline.org/2014/11/19/western-commentators-still-getting-the-gezi-park-protests-wrong/, http://globalvoicesonline.org/2014/12/14/gezis-echo-and-the-battle-for-public-spaces-in-turkey/
Public Space Iraq: Public space getting more religious: http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2014/12/iraq-karbala-babil-religion-youth-social-life.html
Herzog, Chrisella, Occupying Public Spaces and Democratized Dialogue: Protests in the 21st Century (2014) http://www.diplomaticourier.com/news/topics/politics/2405-occupying-public-spaces-and-democratized-dialogue-protests-in-the-21st-century
Academic:
Amin, Ash. “The Good City,” Urban Studies 43-5/6 (2006) 1009-1023.
Arteme, AJ, The Istanbul Protests And The Future Of Public Space (2013)
http://architizer.com/blog/the-istanbul-protests-and-the-future-of-public-space/
Bayat, Asef. Street Politics: Poor People’s Movement in Iran (1997) Columbia University Press.
Caldeira, Teresa. City of Walls. Crime, Segregation and Citizenship in Sao Paulo (2000) University of California Press.
Carmona, Matthew. “Stakeholder Views on Value and Urban Design,” Journal of Urban Design 7-2 (2002) 145-169.
Crawford, Margaret. “Contesting the Public Realm: Struggles over Public Space in Los Angeles”. Journal of Architectural Education 49, nr. 1 (1 september 1995): 4–9.
Deeb, Lara and Mona Harb, Leisurely Islam. Negotiating Geography and Morality in Shi’ite South Beirut(2013) Princeton University Press.
Dikeç, Mustafa. “Police, politics and the right of the city” GeoJournal 58 (2002), 91-98.
Cynthia Ghorra-Gobin (ed.) Réinventer le Sens de la Ville: Les Espaces Publics à l’Heure Globale (2001) Paris: L’Harmattan.
Fraser, Nancy. “Rethinking the Public Sphere: A Contribution to the Critique of Actually Existing Democracy”. In Habermas and the Public Sphere, door Craig J. Calhoun. MIT Press, 1992. https://books.google.nl/books?id=5F8qjMkoxZ0C&pg=PA109&lpg=PA109&dq=%22Rethinking+the+Public+Sphere:+A+Contribution+to+the+Critique+of+Actually+Existing+Democracy,%22&source=bl&ots=mtzhJXVVk9&sig=uUiCxjSKbeGpa0JYblnkZC9NTgo&hl=nl&sa=X&ei=ElKtVOHXJYWqPLK3gMgK&ved=0CDUQ6AEwAg#v=onepage&q=%22Rethinking%20the%20Public%20Sphere%3A%20A%20Contribution%20to%20the%20Critique%20of%20Actually%20Existing%20Democracy%2C%22&f=false.
Habermas, Jürgen. The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry Into a Category of Bourgeois Society. MIT Press, 1991.
Harb, Mona. “Public Spaces and Spatial Practices: Claims from Beirut”, 25 oktober 2013. http://www.jadaliyya.com/pages/index/14710/public-spaces-and-spatial-practices_claims-from-be.
Goss, Jon. “Disquiet on the Waterfront: Reflections on Nostalgia and Utopia in the Urban Archetypes of Festival Marketplaces” Urban Geography 17-3 (1996) 221-247.
Ibrahim, Youth Activism and Public Space in Egypt (2011), http://www.aucegypt.edu/research/gerhart/Documents/Youth%20Activism%20and%20Public%20Space%20in%20Egypt.pdf
Iveson, Kurt. Publics and the City (2007) Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.
Kaviraj, Sudipta. “Filth and the Public Sphere: Concepts and Practices about Space in Calcutta” Public Culture10-1(1997) 83-113.
Keith, Michael. and Steven Pile (eds.), Geographies of Resistance (1997) London: Routledge.
Lefebvre, Henri. The Production of Space (1992) Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.
Low, Setha. and Neil Smith (eds.), The Politics of Public Space (2006) London: Routledge.
Low, Setha. On the Plaza: The Politics of Public Space and Culture
Mitchell, Don. “The End of Public Space?People’s Park, Definitions of the Public, and Democracy”. Annals of the Association of American Geographers 85, nr. 1 (1995): 108–33.
Mitchell, Don. The Right to the City. Social Justice and the Fight for Public Space (2003) Guilford Press. http://books.google.nl/books?hl=nl&lr=&id=Lp3184WKBYAC&oi=fnd&pg=PA1&dq=Activism+and+Public+Space&ots=3sHNWOKDVR&sig=XCv2JJg6Xg90f5p4WsHwlu2QqHU#v=onepage&q=Activism%20and%20Public%20Space&f=false
Sadiqi, Fatima, Moha Ennaji, ‘The Feminization of Public Space: Women’s Activism, the Family Law, and Social Change in Morocco’ in Journal of Middle East Women’s Studies Volume 2, Number 2, Spring 2006 pp. 86-114 http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/jmw/summary/v002/2.2sadiqi.html
Philips, Patricie C. “Temporality and Public Art”, Vol. 48, No. 4, Critical Issues in Public Art (Winter, 1989), pp. 331-335.
Sennett, Richard. The Uses of Disorder (1997) New Haven: Yale University Press.
Sorkin, Michael and Mike Davis, ” Variations on a Theme Park: The New American City and the End of Public Space” (New York: Hill and Wang, 1992).
Staeheli, Lynn. and Don Mitchell, The People’s Property? Power, Politics and the Public (2008) London: Routledge
Taraki, Lisa. “ Urban Modernity on the Periphery: A New Middle Class Reinvents the Palestinian City” Social Text 26-2 (2008) 61-81.
Valentine, Gill ‘Children should be seen and not heard: the production and transgression of adults’ public space’ in Urban Geography 17 (1996), 205-220.
Vasagar, Jeevan. ‘Privately owned public space: where are they and who owns them?’. London: The Guardian. Retrieved (2012).
[1] Mona Harb, “Public Spaces and Spatial Practices: Claims from Beirut”, 25 oktober 2013, http://www.jadaliyya.com/pages/index/14710/public-spaces-and-spatial-practices_claims-from-be.
[2] Jürgen Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry Into a Category of Bourgeois Society (MIT Press, 1991), XI–XIII.
[3] Harb, “Public Spaces and Spatial Practices”.
[4] Don Mitchell, “The End of Public Space?People’s Park, Definitions of the Public, and Democracy”, Annals of the Association of American Geographers 85, nr. 1 (1995): 115.
[5] Ibid.
[6] Harb, “Public Spaces and Spatial Practices”.
[7] Allan Hutchinson en Klaus Petersen, red., Interpreting Censorship in Canada, 74th Revised edition edition (Toronto ; Buffalo: University of Toronto Press, Scholarly Publishing Division, 1999).
[8] Harb, “Public Spaces and Spatial Practices”.
[9] Mitchell, “The End of Public Space?”, 119–121.
[10] Ibid., 119–127.
[11] Ibid., 124–127.
[12] Margaret Crawford, “Contesting the Public Realm: Struggles over Public Space in Los Angeles”, Journal of Architectural Education 49, nr. 1 (1 september 1995): 5.
[13] Nancy Fraser, “Rethinking the Public Sphere: A Contribution to the Critique of Actually Existing Democracy”, in Habermas and the Public Sphere, door Craig J. Calhoun (MIT Press, 1992), 67–70, https://books.google.nl/books?id=5F8qjMkoxZ0C&pg=PA109&lpg=PA109&dq=%22Rethinking+the+Public+Sphere:+A+Contribution+to+the+Critique+of+Actually+Existing+Democracy,%22&source=bl&ots=mtzhJXVVk9&sig=uUiCxjSKbeGpa0JYblnkZC9NTgo&hl=nl&sa=X&ei=ElKtVOHXJYWqPLK3gMgK&ved=0CDUQ6AEwAg#v=onepage&q=%22Rethinking%20the%20Public%20Sphere%3A%20A%20Contribution%20to%20the%20Critique%20of%20Actually%20Existing%20Democracy%2C%22&f=false.
[14] Harb, “Public Spaces and Spatial Practices”.