public spaces

Walking around one of our neighbourhood's newest parks, I thought to myself: this is something France gets right. Public spaces. It's clear that some thinking had gone into the design of this park, how it could reinforce a sense of community, and this is reflected in the way it is used. 

A large stretch of grass is frequently occupied by families and groups of mothers and friends, who come from all over to picnic, to spend time together, to share laughter and to give children some space to play. No differences are made between who comes from where. On a sunny day, you're guaranteed to bump into many other families that you know. That's the main characteristic of public spaces, I suppose: they are open to everyone, without exception, and they permit a kind of organic, effortless union of people. A natural place of meeting. 

In this park, the grassed area is dotted with water fountains, which not only serve to beautify the space, but also provide much welcome relief to the (admittedly rare) summer's heat for children. It is hugged by flower beds on each side, behind which, on one side, there is play equipment for children, and on the other ping pong tables. One of my favourite sections is the vegetable garden. Since many residents live in tall apartment blocks, with no space for gardening, there are many plots available for growing local produce. So not only does this space invite the community to meet and reinforce bonds of friendship, it also encourages small scale, local farming.

There are other uses, too. On the side opposite is what you could call an educational area - labeled plant species to be admired and discovered by curious passers-by, but more significantly, little gardening plots dedicated to local primary schools classes. The plots are decorated with hand-drawn labels which identify the class that has created and is maintaining each unique, ornamental arrangement of colourful flowers (photos to come!). Overlooking the flower garden is an indoor area that features a long table and low chairs, to facilitate the learning of these children. Even in small ways, this place embodies values about local participation in the upkeep of the park. But, more importantly, it puts nature back on the curriculum, and brings it back to the home front, not to some far away place in the country that they'll only visit as tourists on vacation. Introducing children to the notion of gardening and tending the soil, helping them understand the efforts that are needed to make things grow, reconnects them to an earth that is increasingly hidden from their eyes. Values not to be taken lightly in these times of environmental neglect and climate change concerns. 

And people do come from all over, even from the neighbouring suburb, to use this space for all these different purposes. Our council plans to create more like these, with numerous park projects in the pipes, and many at various stages of development. Yet, from what I can gather, this is going against trends in the West towards public spaces, which are increasingly facing privatisation in the name of efficiency and development. A recent article in the Guardian describes how many public spaces in Britain's cities have fallen into private hands. This privatisation has been praised by many as a way of channeling private funding into the development of neighbourhoods, where once neglected spaces are transformed into beautiful - or at least more useable - places. Sometimes this might be parks and recreational areas, though usually with restricted access; oftentimes these might be commercial spaces, such as shopping malls or restaurant strips.When, as in many cases, public sidewalks and streets become the only truly 'public' spaces left, perhaps we should stop and ask, at what cost? And, in whose vision of 'development'?Far from the community friendly park described above, a major criticism towards the privatisation of public spaces is that the uses of these spaces become reduced to the pursuit of narrow commercial - and by default consumerist - interests. The article quotes 'Occupy' activist Naomi Colvin, who argues, "It's a vision of society in which you work and you shop. At times when you are not working or shopping, you may go to restaurants. You may possibly go to some officially sanctioned kind of entertainment activity which is sponsored by X but there's no scope for people do so something of their own." As the article notes, "these spaces are being designed on a corporate model that favours ornament - and high footfall for retailers - while community spirit and sustainability are not a priority." So what the "community" does together in these spaces becomes very limited. What Colvin describes - going shopping, going to restaurants - are a very narrow set of activities that fuel a consumption based economy, values towards which the private sector is more partial, but which are not necessarily conducive to a fruitful community life. Interactions are reduced to consumerist pursuits, and choices are narrowed to what we can buy (or afford). In his book, 'The Right to the City,' French sociologist Henri Lefebvre describes how, over time, such planning changes the very nature of our social fabric:






















   

    



     

Some will put into practice and will conretise a directed consumer society. They will build not only commercial centres, but also centres of privileged consumption: the renewed city. They will by making 'legible' an ideology of happiness through consumption, joy by planning adapted to its new mission. This planning programmes a daily life generating satisfactions ... A programmed and computerised consumption will become the hard rule and norm for the whole society.

The article also highlights a reduced capacity for meeting in these places. Many members of the community are excluded from them, whether this is due to a lack of affordability or because private proprietors erect physical barriers. So, yes, the spaces might be more beautiful. But then, the most beautiful parts of the society are excluded from general public use.

Another article by cultural critic Henry Giroux frames the privatisation of public spaces as a threat to democratic values. Giroux describes the influence of a "neoliberal philosophy that reduces all relationships to the exchange of goods and money," where human agency is "replaced by market-based choices in which private satisfactions replace social responsibilities."

For Giroux then, the absence of public spaces signifies more than a lack of places to meet for recreation and to build community bonds, but represents rather an encroachment on public spheres for genuine exchange and discussion. 

 There is a growing sense in the popular imagination that citizen involvement, social planning and civic engagement are becoming irrelevant in a society in which the public sphere is aggressively dismantled and important social issues are trivialised into mainstream media. Those traditional, if not imagined, public spheres in which people could exchange ideas, debate, and shape the conditions that structured their everyday lives increasingly appear to have little relevance.

While Giroux's article goes on to take quite a political dimension, I find that his comments on public engagement and individual agency are worth reflecting on, particularly regarding the notion of who can best define how our neighbourhoods should be used.

The privatisation of space effectively excludes the public from having a say in its design and removes any thread of accountability towards them. The private sector has no obligation to take residents' views into account when deciding how to use the space it has purchased, and most of the time, it's in their best interests not to do so. This is not to say the private sector is completely indifferent to these questions, but rather that its primary incentive isn't to promote the public good.

These spaces, then, now beyond the reach of governments, become disconnected from issues of equity, social justice and civic responsibility. As French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu notes in the article, by surrendering control and ownership of these spaces, by outsourcing public goods, "government is discounted as a guardian of the public interest." Governments are effectively relinquishing their public duties.

This brings us then to a much bigger question - not just about how we uses spaces, nor whose interests this reflects, but on the role of government in providing the spaces (whether physical or otherwise) that reinforce the fabric of a vibrant community life, and that leave room for the exercise of individual participation. We see in the contrasting examples from France and the UK that the government has the power both to support community advancement, and to inhibit it.

We need thus to rethink the nature of the public, how new forms of social citizenship might be expressed through different institutions and spheres. Longing for a more human, participatory society requires agency, engagement and supportive institutions.

It seems to me then that true places of meeting - accessible to all, and reflective of the activities that bring out human beings' higher potential - require the involvement of engaged institutions, just as they require a vibrant community life and individuals who wish to contribute to this. And they require a renewed sense of the 'public', of people as people, not as private citizens, not as consumers, but as human beings who want to be able to express the multitude of things that make us human within the vicinity of their homes. And who want to know that they can do so as members of a public with equal stake in these spaces.