Creeps and Weirdos in Public Space Flashcards
Marshall Berman quotes
“In public space the personal is political”
“Individuation and community should not be mutually exclusive”
Public Space and democracy
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
How is space produced?
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
How is space regulated?
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.
Broken window theory
Idea that little tiny crimes or indications of disorder lead to larger crimes and forms of disorder.
Societal ideas of space and order
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
According to Marshall Berman, we are divided into two people:
- Communal being
2. Egotistical individual
Communal Being
Public persona. The part of you that presents itself to the world
Egotistical Individual
Private persona.
The part of you that presents itself when we are in private
According to Marshall Berman, if you can recognize both these parts of yourself and when public and private personas are the same …
You can achieve human emancipation. You find individuation.
Individuation
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
Single Minded Space
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.
Open minded space
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.
Marshall Berman’s view on our public spaces today.
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.
Plaza Mayor (spain)
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Auto Da Fe
(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.
What is happening to public spaces today?
- 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
Money and impact on space production
- 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,
City looks and profit
What a city looks like is seen as being key to attracting people and money
Footloose capital:
willing to travel, not fixed in place
Homelessness and space
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
Dilemma with homelessness
We are willing to tolerate the existence of the homeless but we do not tolerate their existence in public space.
Cultural products (such as public spaces) are hegemonic in that they…
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.
Public spaces fulfil the…
relatively narrow demands of hegemonic social groups.
