Essay / PUBLIC SPACE
What is the nature of a public space? Is it something bestowed objectively, or is it created subjectively? Is it an existing city space created by streets, squares, parks and public buildings; or is it a space for the constantly updated proceedings of free individuals? Does public space exist for us directly and unproblematically, given that the streets, squares, etc., are already there, or is it something that we bring about by our coordinated activities, by the expending of effort on the foundation of shared interests?
We will look at the assumptions of the two points of view. We will try to find out what they have in common; that is, try to find a method which would connect them. One view thinks that the public space is objectively given, understands it as something readymade. Something prepared for us by past and present generations of town planners, architects, builders and municipal officers.
Instrumental
It is the space in the city where we move about. This view arises from the assumption that public space is a system of places with a precisely defined urban functionality. However we may appropriate it, the issue of the public space remains for us an issue of urban operations, that is, an issue delegated to urban studies and managed by them. Such a view directs us to the local office of area planning and maybe the land registry. It is there that, according to the definition of individual areas, we ascertain that this space or that is public, and what, according to the classification, is permissible and what is not in the given area. This view relates to the public space in the same way as a map of the areas relates to the areas themselves. We call it instrumental.
In this case the quality of the public space is connected with the quality of the urbanistic solutions, the quality of the public architecture, the quality of the municipal communications, and with the measure of care expended on municipal green areas and the interior design of public buildings.
However, movement through the city is generally motivated by something – by observing other people, meeting some of them, and so on. That takes us to the idea of the purpose of the public space – if it is to be a mutual communication between people, and a communication of people with their surroundings, which can mean anything from cleaning up a park on the periphery to mass demonstrations in the centre of the city. Thus the formulated purpose will for us mean an expansion of the concept of the public space, a concept we originally gained by a particular classification of the municipal space that actually exists. Communication, that is, does not take place on exclusively in the streets.
Accessibility
The internet and the popularity of social networks indicates the need to expand the original classification of the public space by an (optical) cable, a computer and public www domains. Another reason for expanding the concept of public space is the issue of how to understand the use of expressions of the type “public discussion”, “public opinion” and so on. Public discussion is an instrument for negotiating miscellaneous social questions and issues by a method in which no voice or opinion is ruled out in advance. What public space has in common is that it is accessible to everyone. Does that mean that a public discussion can take place only in a public space such as we have delineated above? Clearly not. Public discussion cannot be limited only to that which takes place in streets, squares, and so on. And moreover, if – on the basis of an instrumental look at the public space – we also consider an approach according to which public space is a system of places with exactly defined functionalities, then the assumption that discussion and the exchange of ideas have to have their own place in the list of permissible functions of squares looks strange.
The reasons for expanding the concept of public space become relevant for us when we expand our reflections on it by considering the purpose for which we created it. Our question will not then be “What is a public space?” but “What is the public space for?” and “What is the public space like?”
We do not look upon it more as architects/town planners. Urbanism defines the public space (by the organisation of buildings) and architecture portrays it (by the construction of buildings); it is not however able to create it. Why? Because the public space is our common space. We create it at the moment we take part in something which goes beyond us, which we do not control ourselves. Consequently, voluntary obligations between individuals, shared interests which fulfil our mutual relationships, are a presupposition of the expanded view of the public space. Our personal motivations on the basis of which we appear in public are important for us as direct participants and creators of the public space; the formal side – that is, where it actually happens – is not decisive and in the end not even interesting. The quality of the public space understood in this way is connected with the nature of the motivation to engage in it, and with the measure of responsibility regarding the obligations which derive from this. So it no longer concerns only our movement in the city. It concerns our position vis-à-vis the interests of other people and our ability to convince other people of our own interests. A joint approach in their realisation is the mark of the public space.
Plato
When Plato proposed to take children away from their mothers in the ideal state and entrust their upbringing to the hands of society, he made it clear that the interests of the whole are superior to the interests of the individual. Good social organisation also had to include the instruments by which individuals could be brought up outside the family. So too the presumption of stability, and it was indeed stability and the means to achieve it that were the main sources of Plato’s reflections on the state. The concept of freedom stood in the background as something which manifests itself in the course of certain activities which become real only if they are seen, if they are appraised, and chiefly if they are remembered. Some sort of “public freedom” thus came into consideration – something created by people for other people, a tangible reality of the common world, free space as the result of a common effort rather than some sort of individually innate ability or gift. In classical times the presence of other people was an inevitable condition of the life of a free person. The origin and existence of the Greek agora is an expression of this concept of freedom.
Plato’s theoretical model of the ordering of society did not catch on. But the agora did. As a space for the struggle for political power it augured, contrary to the philosopher’s wish, more unpredictability than stability. If we ask about the nature of the public space, we can learn from the failure of Plato’s proposal for a Constitution. The public space is originally neutral and that is why it is able to absorb all the possible personal initiatives and interests with which we enter it. The idea that the public space requires an exact system of rules created on the basis of higher or eternal or some other kind of values is always sure to lead in due course to its restriction and refutation. Plato (and a host of others after him) took an authoritative attitude vis-à-vis the public space, just as an architect/town planner takes towards the real space in which the city has to originate. He designed it, determined it and defined it.
Source: Koolhaas, Rem: What ever happened to urbanism? S,M,L,XL.
Participants
“Now we are left with a world without urbanism, only architecture, ever more architecture,” Rem Koolhaas wrote in 1994 in his essay “What ever happened to urbanism?” So as urbanism fails in building cities, the social engineer fails in the same way when he intervenes in the public space. He fails because originally neutral nature will never please him sufficiently for him to be reconciled with it. What does that neutrality count on? On the absence of an external authority, which would decide what people could or can do and what not. All that is needed for a public space to originate is for people themselves to show – spontaneously or intentionally – that they can decide on some common approach. The public space is an open space. However, the absence of an external authority and controls on the entry to a public space do have certain consequences.
First, responsibility for it is borne exclusively by the participants in the public space. The standpoint of an individual is only one of the places. There is no privileged point of view existing to give the whole of the public space some sort of meaning. The public space is like an orchestra with an arbitrary number of players playing according to arbitrary rules on arbitrary instruments. Without a conductor.
Secondly, our knowledge of the content of the public space is limited to that in which we ourselves may want to be actively involved. It applies to the public space that we do not understand that which we do not know how to (co)-create.
Thirdly, the nature of the aim the participants demonstrate is decisive in the matter of whether – by its being held – the public space will or will not expand, whether it will cultivate what already exists or destroy it.
To conclude, my question is: how can the public space originate by means of the realisation of personal interests? In my answer I summarise the clues I left strewn in the text. The public space originates and exists thanks to the determination of individuals to put their energies into projects held in common with other people, in spite of the risk of failure. They engage themselves in something over which they themselves cannot have complete control. And even if they do not reach their aim, the results they achieve in the public space create sediment. This means that someone else can reach the given aim in the future, or someone else can use the basis to initiate their own aim. I think this is the real reason why people do it. They know that the public space is a common, open and precious space.