Creeps and Weirdos in Public Space

Question 1

Marshall Berman quotes

Answer 1

“In public space the personal is political”

“Individuation and community should not be mutually exclusive”

Question 2

Public Space and democracy

Answer 2

Unless you have public spaces you cannot have a democracy:

a space where people can express their discontent with the state

Implicit in our democratic rights is the right to public space

Question 3

How is space produced?

Answer 3

Generally speaking, the owners of space construct spaces to serve their own interests.

To present a particular image of self/something you represent

Things that are perceived as morally compromising are zoned into certain areas to prevent “moral intrusions” into people’s existences.

Gentrification: the reconstruction of space to serve people’s personal and financial interests. To serve the interests of their identity projection.
Individual, personal identities

Question 4

How is space regulated?

Answer 4

Vice zoning laws : nightclubs, bars, strip-clubs

Things that are perceived as morally compromising are zoned into certain areas to prevent “moral intrusions” into people’s existences.

Question 5

Broken window theory

Answer 5

Idea that little tiny crimes or indications of disorder lead to larger crimes and forms of disorder.

Question 6

Societal ideas of space and order

Answer 6

Orderliness, predictability and profit go together.

Disordered space = disorder in society

More capital investment - more order

More order- a sense of safety

Orderliness protects the capital and cultural investment in places

Question 7

According to Marshall Berman, we are divided into two people:

Answer 7

1. Communal being

2. Egotistical individual

Question 8

Communal Being

Answer 8

Public persona. The part of you that presents itself to the world

Question 9

Egotistical Individual

Answer 9

Private persona.

The part of you that presents itself when we are in private

Question 10

According to Marshall Berman, if you can recognize both these parts of yourself and when public and private personas are the same …

Answer 10

You can achieve human emancipation. You find individuation.

Question 11

Individuation

Answer 11

The process of finding out who you are and expressing it as such.

According to Berman:
Goal is to be fully who we are in our private self. The goal is the person you see yourself as in private can be out in public. Having the community celebrate who you are as you are.

We need spaces in which our real selves can emerge

Question 12

Single Minded Space

Answer 12

Space that is set aside for private purposes. You have the right to have this space work to better your agenda, your interests. This is the right of private space.

Question 13

Open minded space

Answer 13

A space where there is no single vision of what that space is. Designed for a variety of uses, including
unforeseen and unforeseeable uses, and used
by citizens who do different things and are
prepared to tolerate, even take an interest in,
things they don’t do.

Question 14

Marshall Berman’s view on our public spaces today.

Answer 14

The ideal is that public spaces should be open minded spaces but he thinks we’re losing that.

Our public spaces should not be aligned to private interests.

Question 15

Plaza Mayor (spain)

Answer 15

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Question 16

Auto Da Fe

Answer 16

(1600), in plaza mayor. A ceremony in which people were ritually tortured and killed in public space to condemn heretics and apostates.

A single minded public space because it served the interests of the king and the queen.

Question 17

What is happening to public spaces today?

Answer 17

• contemporary public space is being designed to cater to commerce, private entities
• movement more controlled, tidy, predictable, more PROFITABLE
• sanitized, controlled, exclusionary to “undesirables”
• public space is no longer measured by the degree to which it serves the public, but more often now, seen as an economic service

Question 18

Money and impact on space production

Answer 18

• capital has been freed from the constraints of place
• comparative advantage
• a lot of money floating around that world and people are looking to invest your money into places
• people are wanting to invest their money into safe places,

Question 19

City looks and profit

Answer 19

What a city looks like is seen as being key to attracting people and money

Question 20

Footloose capital:

Answer 20

willing to travel, not fixed in place

Question 21

Homelessness and space

Answer 21

The homeless do not fit with the appealing image of public space so they are marooned on the remains of pubic space

By definition they do not have access to private space, but they are only allowed in public space unless they are invited in by private space

Disdained by society for upsetting the order of things

Homelessness is the condition of not having private space

Question 22

Dilemma with homelessness

Answer 22

We are willing to tolerate the existence of the homeless but we do not tolerate their existence in public space.

Question 23

Cultural products (such as public spaces) are hegemonic in that they…

Answer 23

promote or serve the interests of those who produce them

they present the worldview of these cultural producers as common sense, ideal and normal

in so doing, they actively disseminate and reproduce the ‘norms’ and prejudices or cultural producers as natural and universal

they represent existing social political and economic arrangements as being natural and inevitable”

They neutralise, or provide no room for, dissenting voices and world views.

Question 24

Public spaces fulfil the…

Answer 24

relatively narrow demands of hegemonic social groups.