THE FUTURE OF PUBLIC SPACE

Bernhard Schneider, Berlin

What is public space about ?

After several years of experience and research in the field, it seems to me that many if not most of the conceptual and practical problems we are facing with public space in cities have their origin in shortcomings of methodological nature, in a lack of understanding, that is, of what we are talking about when dealing with ‘public space’. Generally, discussions about the subject are characterised by confusion due to an indiscriminate concoction of aesthetic, social, political and functional questions.

Some clarifications and productive ways of conceiving planning and architectural problems of public space arise from asking questions regarding our ideas of ‘publicness’ of public space.[1] A still very fruitful conceptual basis for this approach are Hannah Arendt’s distinctions of the public and the private sphere given in her ‘The Human Condition’ (1958)[2].

The results and conclusions of this approach are not merely of theoretical value. They have practical consequences for design and planning strategies as well as for empirical explorations of cities.
 

1.1       Public space is common to all

 Whereas private space ‘always belongs to someone‘, be it a person or a group, a company or an individual administration, public space is common to all. Hannah Arendt uses the image of a table. The table assembles the people around it and separates them. It defines their relationship. Without the table, they lose the common ground of their interaction and communication.

The basic feature of public space is its inclusive character as opposed to the exclusive character of private space. It includes virtually anything and anyone present in the city, as diverse they may be. Public space is the main integration instrument of a city. Inhabitants or users may have nothing else in common; there is always their city’s public space which they share.

‘Common to all’ is not a question of ownership or property but rather of disposal, of access and of suitability. There are not just private or public spaces, but degrees and shades and combinations of publicness and privateness. The degree of privacy of spaces equals to the limitation of access for all except the owner/s or privileged users. The degree of publicness of urban spaces equals to the absence of those limitations.

‘Common to all’ also means open to different uses. Thus public space by definition integrates a multitude of different and competing uses. It is functionally unspecific and general; one could say ‘neutral’ or even indifferent towards actual, specific uses.

This characteristics of public space has practical  legal dimensions: The use of a sidewalk for the coffee tables of an adjacent coffee shop needs special end limited permission, the permit being issued according to a ‘public interest’ in this specific use. Otherwise public surfaces have to kept clear of any specific use.

1.2       The public in cities is anonymous

The urban public consists of individuals and groups which don’t know each other. In villages and small towns everyone knows everyone by the face if not by the name, and the unknown stranger is an exception, whereas in cities the stranger is the constituent prototype of the urban public, and a familiar face is a surprise. ‘The big city is the place of people who do not belong to’ (Akira Asada). They do not belong to a certain place – not even the inhabitants themselves – nor to a social group or to a profession. The anonymous passer-by’s claims to the public space are equal to those of the adjacent local shop-keeper. That is why in planning matters of big cities the competences of a local public are of limited value. It cannot represent the general, anonymous urban public of all inhabitants of the city as a whole and of the innumerable anonymous strangers using it.

1.3       Public space represents the historical permanence of a city

‘A world which is supposed to give space to the public ... has to go beyond the life-span of mortal humans’ (H.Arendt).

Public space is the primary and comprehensive structuring system of a city, prior to all buildings which over the centuries come and go and whose location and relative meaning in the city is being defined by public space. Public space defines inside/s and outside/s, (public) fronts and (private) backsides.

Thus, public space also represents the primary, comprehensive and collective cultural institution of a city. Actual uses made of public space change and vary over time according to cultural and economic evolutions, of social or political upheavals. They come and go and change their appearance, as do most of the average buildings. How much the actual shape and the material surface of public space itself may change over time – on the long run it represents the invariant basic substance of a city with respect to those short-lived changes.

1.4       Uses of public space

Public uses and the functions of public space in general change over time and differ between cultures. Cultural patterns and codes becoming manifest in the use of public space are, in fact, one of the most fascinating experiences in foreign countries and cities: Distances between people on streets, habits of using space, customs and rites (the evening 'corso' in Italian cities), how traffic is being handled individually or collectively, public art, music, sports, religious customs, feasts, leisure, commerce and crafts, business, politics, hygiene, animals, vegetation, eating in public, eroticism and sex; different modes of using public space for younger and for elderly people, for children, for neighbours and foreigners, ....

Traffic and transportation is, of course, and always has been, a constituent function of public space. There are always prevailing and secondary uses, differing from quarter to quarter, of main and side roads, squares and greens.

Uses come and go. In European cities – western in general – many uses have emigrated, in a process of specialisation,  from the public to the private sphere: the arts went to galleries, museums, theatres, sports to sport fields, gyms, car racing courses, information and politics to private tv and radio sets; retail stores are concentrating in indoor malls, funerals to the cemeteries, a.s.o.

New uses emerge: political demonstrations, festivals (the Berlin Love Parade), jogging, new markets, 'public art', new housing in formerly derelict urban spaces, a.s.o.

The emerging New Media are not making public space superfluous. Quite on the contrary. The telephone did not either nor did radio and tv.

Public urban space still remains a primary cultural institution of all civilisations.

2.        Features of public space and criteria of qualification for public use

There is a set of criteria qualifying urban space for public use.

2.1       Accessibility

 Accessibility certainly is the most prominent of all features guaranteeing the public character of urban space. Public urban space can be defined as accessible for anyone at any time. Other criteria listed hereafter as for instance permeability or cohesion are either aspects of the accessibility criteria or can be deduced from it.

2.2       Permeability

Easy access of public space means also the possibility for anyone of crossing the net at will on various ways. Public space allows for free choice of directions and arbitrary selection of different paths for different destinations and on different occasions; it offers optional short-cuts and detours. How you get across a city defines its public space. Its actual permeability makes it also mentally transparent.

2.3      Orientation

Urban space is public, i.e. accessible for all, if anyone can master it autonomously by himself. A spatial system with easy orientation can be used by anyone without the help of local inhabitants or of maps. This type of space is more likely to be or to become ‘common to all’ than inscrutable, labyrinthine spaces which require particular experience and knowledge or help from insiders. Getting lost is the prototypical experience in an exclusionist type of urban space such as the historical North-African souks which by the mere complexity of its spatial pattern easily discourage unwelcome intruders.

2.4       Cohesion

Public space must form a coherent network, a kind of cww – city-wide-web – in order to fulfil other criteria such as accessibility, permeability and orientation. As in the virtual www, the physical addresses of urban space are the content of the web, but they need the web in order to have a well-defined location. Cohesion is a prerequisite of permeability. A system divided in weakly connected sectors is less permeable.

2.5       Articulation

Urban spaces have to be well articulated in all three dimensions in order to be useful for public purposes. Elements of articulation being size and shape, surface materials, architecture (e.g. arcades and other ways of developing front sides towards the public sphere), plants and trees, street furniture, lighting; clear delineation of boundaries. If, however, applied without caring for other criteria of suitability, these elements can also reduce the efficiency of public space for public uses. Articulation is primarily a structural rather than an aesthetic question.

2.6       Safety

 Accessibility is among other things a question of both subjective and objective safety. No-go areas are lost for public uses. If considered as safe, urban spaces are also considered as accessible for everyone. Safety is also linked to permeability, orientation and coherence, since a place well connected to the overall web of public space, i.e. with a variety of ways in and out and therefore clearly situated, is more likely to be a safe place than an isolated one.

3.        Types and typologies of public space

 Case studies or general descriptions of urban space aiming on the improvement of public uses require plausible and elaborate typologies based on criteria of public use like those suggested above.

The whole typological range cannot be outlined here. One type of public space, though, which emerged in modern times is worth mentioning because of its specific features: Railways and motorways. Their typological features help defining those of urban spaces.

3.1       Railways and motorways non- places and places

 Railways and motorways are prototypes of monofunctional public spaces, dedicated exclusively to one function – transport. Exclusionist by definition. Therefore they are not places in themselves, they only lead to places. Marc Augé calls them non-places.[3] City roads are also transportation ways, but they represent a continuum of destinations. Their principle is continuous connection to the adjacent city. The efficiency principle of railways and motorways, on the contrary, is disconnection, except for certain, discontinuous  joints (stations, highway exits). Their outsides along their tracks, dams, ditches, walls are backsides whereas city streets are the public fronts par excellence. One of the prototypical examples in Stockholm showing all the constituent features of non-places is the area between Railway station and city Hall.

Railways and motorways in cities are the paradox of a continuous disconnection.

The typology of indoor shopping malls has some features in common with motorways: Their outsides, more often than not, are non-public backsides for delivery and garbage removal or car parking. They are connected with the city only by their entrance and exit points. Rare examples of a more elaborate type, though, develop public fronts facing the city also along the outside.

Substructures of elevated railways or motorways can be transformed into urban fronts with public uses (shops, bars, ..).

Airport and traffic authorities tend to transform their stations (airports) from non-places into destinations of their own by adding all kinds of additional uses not directly connected to traffic (shopping, entertainment, events, ...) and attracting also non-passengers.

4.         Jeopardies and strategies

 4.1       Public space is subject to complete and exclusive responsibility of public administrations and authorities.

When dealing with the pragmatics of handling public space – be it criticising deficiencies or proposing solutions – one has to be aware of the fact that the acting forces are a multitude of different public or semi-public institutions fully and exclusively responsible for whatever happens: communal or state authorities,  telecom, energy, water, sewers, public transport, police...). Their responsibilities, though, are always limited to their respective sectors of intervention and the normal is not a co-ordinated conceptual strategy of shaping the city’s primary structure but a sequence of ill-co-ordinated interventions with usually poor or deplorable results.

The legal basis of excluxive public responsibility for public space could be politically made benefit of for a pro-active policy of public space. This, however, is not the case.

4.2       Expansion of private claims

 Public space is constantly jeopardized by private forces expanding their spatial claims for individual and particular purposes. There is a whole variety of means to conquer space: light, perfume, music, gangs, walking dangerous dogs, reckless driving (with cars, skates, bikes, ...), ruthless parking, noise, littering and pollution, expanding private commercial activities into the public realm. Occupying space is obviously a very efficient way of acquiring and demonstrating power. That is why public space as the space common to all has to be constantly protected against tendencies of individuals and groups to make it their own space. Especially in suburban areas where there is less variety of powers balancing each other than in densely used city centres this tendency towards privatisation of public space needs control.

Overriding predominance of certain uses (mainly traffic) on the expenses of others (communication, commerce, retail, leisure, entertainment, ...);

§         Neglect, lack of maintenance,

§         Loss of uses (emigration of retail, crafts, to closed malls and to the internet; of housing to fenced communities, ...). Uses emigrated from mixed public space: art to galleries and museums, sports to gyms and sports fields, leisure to amusement parks and fenced playgrounds, politics to indoor agencies, information to radio and tv in private homes, ...

§         Loss of protection by the general public and/or local landlords or tenants.

§         Security and other demands of public institutions, political and administrative authorities, curbing accessibility

§         Freeways and railways dissecting the web

§         Ill-co-ordinated measures of public agencies

The often alleged 'privatisation' of public space is more often than not an inaccurate notion for different phenomena. If, for instance, retail stores retire from open city streets into more attractive closed shopping malls, or dwelling moves to gated communities, this is not a process of privatisation but one of deprivation of public space, a privatisation of public use, that is. Important uses of public space move to the private realm. The question is why. What makes streets attractive enough to keep their commercial and housing uses. Both phenomena are rather symptoms of a problem than the problem itself.

Besides this kind of 'privatisation' by a move of functions from public to private spaces there is the variety of private occupation of public space, i.e. privatisation in a second and more strict sense as mentioned in the examples above.

There is a third and kind of privatisation of public space when public land is - very seldom - being sold to private owners or, without changing ownership, handed over to private management. This may or may not at all affect the public use of those spaces.

4.3       Strategies to keep spaces public and to recuperate public space:

§         Concerning planning and building:

Strengthening constituent structural  features of public space:

Accessibility

Permeability (shortening distances between intersections, tightening the web, abolishing barriers; insisting on building fronts towards the street)

Fostering multifunctionality (e.g. combining formerly separate walkways and driveways and squares and greens), providing space for otherwise emigrating uses.

Coherence and articulated, systemic character,

Orientation.

Equipment and furniture; aesthetic qualification.

Providing open public spaces without actual, specified functional demand.

Understanding maintenance as investment.

Setting economic priorities for projects: identifying strategic spots with the highest effect of the least expenditure.

De-functionalisation of planning (mainly Traffic Planning an Civil Engineering). New (and very old), more comprehensive planning and design methodologies.

§         Concerning security:

Fostering the awareness of inhabitants an passers-by

Fostering local and general social cohesion

Police
 

§         Concerning political, legal and administrative measures:

Curbing tendencies of expansion of exclusive individual and group claims

Fostering new uses of public space, temporary or permanent (e.g. cultural, sports and other events, gatherings, markets, retail).

Issuing limited permits.

Amending functionalist regulations and bylaws (e.g. of street planning.).

Co-ordination of public agencies involved

Privileging public transport

Monitoring and acknowledging restitution claims of the public against private and public institutions.
 

§         Concerning civil initiatives:

Bringing people to the streets (shopping, eating, meeting, ....)

Walking in cities.

Using public transport.

Caring for the public front of private property and the immediate environment.

Spending for maintenance.

Architecturally: Differentiating outer public front sides to the open space and inner private back sides. Caring for architectural excellence.
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Bernhard Schneider
Wuerttembergische Strasse 31
D-10707 Berlin
T. +4930 88 68 08 09
F. +4930 881 14 27
e-mail: schneider.b@berlin.de

[1] Various contributions of the author to the Stadtforum Berlin (1991-1995) and, more systematically, with a Project Group Public Space in: Stadtentwicklungsplan Öffentlicher Raum, commissioned by the Senator of Urban Development and Environmental Protection, Berlin (1995). For a condensed abstract of the concept see also Bernhard Schneider: Die Stadt als System öffentlicher Räume in Wentz, Martin, Magistrat der Stadt Frankfurt am Main (ed.): Die kompakte Stadt. Die Zukunft des Städtischen Bd.11 Campus Verlag Frankfurt / New York 2000.

[2] 1977,1978 by Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc. German edition: Arendt, Hannah, Vita Activa oder Vom tätigen Leben, Piper Verlag, München 1967 (1981,1989).

[3] Augé, Marc, Non-Lieux. Introduction à une anthropologie de la surmodernité, Paris, Éditions du Seuil, 1992. German edition Orte und Nicht-Orte,Frankfurt/M, S.Fischer, 1994.