A Prefigurative Politics of Play in Public Places: Children Claim Their Democratic Right to the City Through Play

2018 ◽  
Vol 22 (3) ◽  
pp. 294-307 ◽  
Author(s):  
Penelope Carroll ◽  
Octavia Calder-Dawe ◽  
Karen Witten ◽  
Lanuola Asiasiga

Children have as much “right” to the city as adult citizens, yet they lose out in the urban spatial justice stakes. Built environments prioritizing motor vehicles, a default urban planning position that sees children as belonging in child-designated areas, and safety discourses, combine to restrict children’s presence and opportunities for play, rendering them out of place in public space. In this context, children’s everyday appropriations of public spaces for their “playful imaginings” can be seen as a reclamation of their democratic right to the city: a prefigurative politics of play enacted by citizen kids. In this article, we draw on data collected with 265 children in Auckland, Aotearoa/New Zealand, to consider how children’s playful practices challenge adult hegemony of the public domain and prefigure the possibilities of a more equal, child-friendly, and playful city.

Author(s):  
Parama Roy

This chapter presents a case study from Copenhagen on a community-based, but state-initiated urban gardening effort to examine what such efforts mean for the minorities’ (the homeless and the ethnic minorities’) right to the city (Purcell, 2002; 2013) especially within the context of a traditionally welfare-driven, but increasingly neoliberalized urban context. David Harvey has described the right to the city as “not merely a right of access to what already exists, but a right to change it after our heart’s desire” (Harvey, 2003). As such, in this chapter the concept of “right to the city” is operationalized as a measure or proxy for social and spatial justice to explore how the state-initiated community gardening effort in the Sundholm District shapes/secures/denies the homeless and the ethnic minorities’ ability to, a) use and just be in the physical space of the garden (a public space) and b) to translate this into access to the political space of urban governance (and governance of the garden space) where they can voice their needs/concerns.


2015 ◽  
pp. 11-25
Author(s):  
Martha Norkunas

Narrating the Racialization of Space in Austin, Texas and Nashville, TennesseePeople of color in the United States have been obligated to move through public space in particular ways, dictated by law and social custom. Narrators create cognitive maps of movement in the city shaped by racial codes of behavior. The maps change over time as law and social custom changes. The fluidity of the maps is also influenced by status, gender, class, and skin tone. This paper examines a rich body of oral narratives co-created with African Americans from 2004 to 2014 focusing on how men and women narrate their concepts of racialized space. It moves from narratives about the larger landscape — the city — to smaller, more personal public places — the sidewalk and the store — to intimate sites of contact in the public sphere. Many of the narratives describe complex flows of controlled movement dictated by racial boundaries in the context of capitalism. The narratives form an urban ethnography of the power relations inscribed on the landscape by racializing movement in space. Narracje o urasowieniu przestrzeni w Austin (Teksas) i Nashville (Tennessee)Nie-Biali w Stanach Zjednoczonych byli zmuszeni do poruszania się w przestrzeni publicznej w szczególny sposób, określony przez prawo i zwyczaj społeczny. W swoich narracjach badani tworzą mapy kognitywne ruchu w mieście, kształtowane przez rasowe kody zachowania. Mapy te zmieniały się w czasie pod wpływem zmian prawnych i zwyczajowych. Na płynność tych map wpływały także status, płeć, klasa i odcień koloru skóry. W artykule przeanalizowano bogaty zbiór relacji ustnych tak zwanych Afroamerykanów, zbieranych w latach 2004-2014; uwaga skupia się na tym, jak mężczyźni i kobiety opowiadają o swoim widzeniu przestrzeni urasowionej. Omówiono narracje o szerszej przestrzeni miasta, jak i węższej, skoncentrowanej na bardziej osobistych miejscach publicznych, takich jak sklep. Wiele narracji opisuje złożone wiązki kontrolowanych ruchów, dyktowane przez granice rasowe w kontekście kapitalizmu. Narracje te tworzą etnografię miejskości o relacjach władzy wpisanych w krajobraz, opartych na urasowieniu ruchu w przestrzeni.


Author(s):  
Rahma Puspita Sari ◽  
Kusumastuti Kusumastuti ◽  
Rufia Andisetyana Putri

<pre><em>The Child Friendly City (CFC) is a concept for a city that can guarantee children to get their rights in urban area. The Child Friendly City (CFC) is expected for children to get their rights including </em><em>health, protection, care, education, </em><em>no discrimination, aware of their environment and culture, participate in designing the city, and have the freedom to play. Surakarta is one of the cities in Indonesia which have applied the concept of Child Friendly City (CFC) since 2008. To support implementation of Child Friendly City (CFC) concept, the city must provide a public space for children to be able to transfer their creativity and also have recreational purpose, which is ‘taman cerdas’. The right choice of location, facility, environment, and security need to be considered, because each children go through different phase. The purpose of this study are </em><em>(1) Knowing the suitability of taman cerdas component as the public space of neighborhood service scale to the concept of </em><em>Child Friendly Cities (CFC) </em><em>and (2) Analyze the suitability level of taman cerdas as the public space of neighborhood service scale to the concept of </em><em>Child Friendly Cities (CFC</em><em>). The method used in this research is quantitative research with deductive approach, this research used </em><em>scoring analysis. Survey conducted for this study were primary surveys, consist of observation and interviews, and secondary survey in the form of data. From these results, the advantage of knowing the level of conformity of ‘taman cerdas’ as the public spaces of neighborhood service to the concept of Child Friendly Cities (CFC) has four variables such as strategic location, facilities for playing and learning according to the needs of children, comfortable and healthy environment, as well as comfort and security. Then those variables are used for the assessment tools to eight ‘taman cerdas’ in Surakarta. Based on the results of the study, it can be concluded that there are four ‘taman cerdas’ is match with the variables above, which is ‘taman cerdas’ </em><em>Mojosongo, Joyotakan, Pajang, and Jebres. Meanwhile there are also four </em><em>‘</em><em>taman cerdas</em><em>’</em><em> that not match with the variables of thes research those are </em><em>‘</em><em>taman cerdas</em><em>’</em><em> Sumber, Gandekan, Kadipiro, and Pucangsawit. The conclusion is the city needs to increase the </em><em>the component for taman cerdas  as public space service scale of neighborhood for Child Friendly Cities (CFC) at Surakarta.</em></pre>


2021 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 85-96
Author(s):  
Óscar Salguero Montaño ◽  
Hutan Hejazi

In plural and secular societies today, religious communities understand access to public space as a right to the city. Thisright legitimises their status as social actors and, through various notions linked to modernity and transparency, entitlesthem to have a public life and be recognised by others. By examining the case of Bangladeshi Muslims in Lavapiés, oneof Madrid’s multicultural district undergoing intense gentrification and touristification processes, this article analyses theconditions through which this community accesses public space and achieves legitimisation and recognition through different practices and discourses displayed in a variety of events and festivities.


Africa ◽  
2009 ◽  
Vol 79 (3) ◽  
pp. 347-368 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kristien Geenen

This article deals with issues of territoriality, public space, the microphysics of power and street gang life in the current urban context of Kinshasa, capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo. In this city, a growing number of street children invade the public places. They team up in gangs and scour the streets in search of a location to settle (for a while). Along with their appropriation of public space, these gangs encounter several actors such as the city authorities, shop owners, tenants or rival street gangs. Before any settlement, deals have to be closed since every inch of the city is negotiable. All participants get involved in these negotiations, for no one is considered marginal, certainly not the street youth who are inextricably bound up with Congolese society. This contribution considers this dynamic field of negotiations through a focus on space and analyses it from a Foucauldian angle. It explores how gang members develop particular ways to control their territories and exercise power in them. Additionally, it examines how street youths manage to construct a home in the streets and make sense of their urban environment in the process.


2017 ◽  
Vol 10 ◽  
Author(s):  
Annamaria Colombo ◽  
Caroline Reynaud ◽  
Giada de Coulon

Based on a study that we carried out in Geneva between 2013 and 2015, this paper suggests that the anti-begging law adopted by the Geneva High Council in 2007 can be understood a way of managing urban cohabitation with marginalized populations. In response to this “poverty management”, we argue that the continued occupation of the public space by the people wh o practice begging can be understood as them implementing their own “right to the city” anyway, in the subversive sense meant by Lefebvre.


Author(s):  
Samuel Llano

As is described in this conclusion, more than the media and culture, Madrid’s public space constituted the primary arena where reactions and attitudes toward social conflict and inequalities were negotiated. Social conflict in the public space found expression through musical performance, as well as through the rise of noise that came with the expansion and modernization of the city. Through their impact on public health and morality, noise and unwelcomed musical practices contributed to the refinement of Madrid’s city code and the modernization of society. The interference of vested political interests, however, made the refining of legislation in these areas particularly difficult. Analysis of three musical practices, namely, flamenco, organilleros, and workhouse bands, has shown how difficult it was to adopt consistent policies and approaches to tackling the forms of social conflict that were associated with musical performance.


Author(s):  
Samuel Llano

This chapter presents an account of the San Bernardino band as the public facade of that workhouse. The image of children who had been picked up from the streets, disciplined, and taught to play an instrument as they marched across the city in uniform helped broadcast the message that the municipal institutions of social aid were contributing to the regeneration of society. This image contrasted with the regime of discipline and punishment inside the workhouse and thus helped to legitimize the workhouse’s public image. The privatization of social aid from the 1850s meant that the San Bernardino band engaged with a growing range of institutions and social groups and carried out an equally broad range of social services. It was thus able to serve as the extension through which Madrid’s authorities could gain greater intimacy with certain population sectors, particularly with the working classes.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (8) ◽  
pp. 4577
Author(s):  
Carmela Cucuzzella ◽  
Morteza Hazbei ◽  
Sherif Goubran

This paper explores how design in the public realm can integrate city data to help disseminate the information embedded within it and provide urban opportunities for knowledge exchange. The hypothesis is that such art and design practices in public spaces, as places of knowledge exchange, may enable more sustainable communities and cities through the visualization of data. To achieve this, we developed a methodology to compare various design approaches for integrating three main elements in public-space design projects: city data, specific issues of sustainability, and varying methods for activating the data. To test this methodology, we applied it to a pedogeological project where students were required to render city data visible. We analyze the proposals presented by the young designers to understand their approaches to design, data, and education. We study how they “educate” and “dialogue” with the community about sustainable issues. Specifically, the research attempts to answer the following questions: (1) How can we use data in the design of public spaces as a means for sustainability knowledge exchange in the city? (2) How can community-based design contribute to innovative data collection and dissemination for advancing sustainability in the city? (3) What are the overlaps between the projects’ intended impacts and the 17 United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)? Our findings suggest that there is a need for such creative practices, as they make information available to the community, using unconventional methods. Furthermore, more research is needed to better understand the short- and long-term outcomes of these works in the public realm.


2020 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 135-149
Author(s):  
Jan Siegemund

AbstractLibel played an important and extraordinary role in early modern conflict culture. The article discusses their functions and the way they were assessed in court. The case study illustrates argumentative spaces and different levels of normative references in libel trials in 16th century electoral Saxony. In 1569, Andreas Langener – in consequence of a long stagnating private conflict – posted several libels against the nobleman Tham Pflugk in different public places in the city of Dresden. Consequently, he was arrested and charged with ‘libelling’. Depending on the reference to conflicting social and legal norms, he had therefore been either threatened with corporal punishment including his execution, or rewarded with laudations. In this case, the act of libelling could be seen as slander, but also as a service to the community, which Langener had informed about potentially harmful transgression of norms. While the common good was the highest maxim, different and sometimes conflicting legally protected interests had to be discussed. The situational decision depended on whether the articulated charges where true and relevant for the public, on the invective language, and especially on the quality and size of the public sphere reached by the libel.


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