scholarly journals Public space: an exhibition of photography and video

Author(s):  
Martin Franchi

Public Space is a photographic and video project examining the relationship between the public sphere and private corporations. The project explores various sites throughout Toronto and New York that are on private property but have been built with the intention of allowing the general public to have unrestricted access to these areas. These spaces are referred to as Privately Owned Public Space or “POPS”. The goal of the project is to question and document, through photographic and video practice, these spaces within the urban environment and to challenge others to consider whether these spaces are effective in achieving their intended use and if they are truly accessible to the general public. Loss of the public space is an ongoing issue that faces cities and developers often receive concessions to bylaw zoning requirements in exchange for incorporating POPS. This thesis project is a personal exploration of how these spaces are changing the urban environments of North American cities in the twenty first century.

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martin Franchi

Public Space is a photographic and video project examining the relationship between the public sphere and private corporations. The project explores various sites throughout Toronto and New York that are on private property but have been built with the intention of allowing the general public to have unrestricted access to these areas. These spaces are referred to as Privately Owned Public Space or “POPS”. The goal of the project is to question and document, through photographic and video practice, these spaces within the urban environment and to challenge others to consider whether these spaces are effective in achieving their intended use and if they are truly accessible to the general public. Loss of the public space is an ongoing issue that faces cities and developers often receive concessions to bylaw zoning requirements in exchange for incorporating POPS. This thesis project is a personal exploration of how these spaces are changing the urban environments of North American cities in the twenty first century.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Anna Constable

<p>This thesis aims to investigate, through design, spatial agency within the realm of New York City’s Privately Owned Public Spaces. The notion of agency in architecture is directly linked to social and political power. Starting in 1961, New York’s city planners introduced an incentive zoning scheme (POPS) which encouraged private builders to include public spaces in their developments. Many are in active public use, but others are hard to find, under surveillance, or essentially inaccessible. Within the existing POPS sites, tension is current between the ideals of public space - completely open, accessible - and the limitations imposed by those who create and control it. Designed to be singular, contained, and mono-functional, POPS do not yet allow for newer ideas of public space as multi-functional, not contained/bounded but extending and overlapping outward.  As public-private partnerships become the model for catalyzing urban (re)development in the late 20th century, bonus space is an increasingly common land use type in major cities across the world. The quality and nature of bonus spaces created in exchange for floor area bonuses varies greatly. In many cases, tensions in privately owned space produce a severely constricted definition of the public and public life. Incentive zoning programmes continue to serve as a model for numerous urban zoning regulations, so changing ideas of public space and its design need to be tested in such spaces.  These urban plazas offer a test case through which to examine agency, exploring how social space is also political space, charged with the dynamics of power/ empowerment, interaction/ isolation, control/ freedom. This thesis looks at one such site, the connecting plaza sites along Sixth Avenue between West 47th St and West 51st St. This is an extreme example of concentrated POPS sites in New York City. Here one’s perception and occupation of space is profoundly affected by the underlying design of that space which reflects its private ownership. Privately Owned Public Space can be designed that is capable of/ challenging the notion of the public in public space, and modifying the structure of the city and its social life.</p>


MELUS ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 45 (1) ◽  
pp. 185-200
Author(s):  
Timothy S Lyle

Abstract Janet Mock—writer, activist, television host, director—has become a leading voice for transgender women of color in the twenty-first century. In 2014, Mock published Redefining Realness with Atria Books. Shortly thereafter, Mock became a New York Times best-selling writer and garnered the critical praise of folks such as bell hooks, Melissa Harris-Perry, Oprah Winfrey, and more. Hooks described Mock’s work as a guide to transformation, Harris-Perry situated her work in the deep tradition of life writing in African American literature, and Winfrey called her a “fearless new voice” who “changed my way of thinking.” In 2017, Mock published her second memoir, Surpassing Certainty, marking a rare moment in which a transgender woman-of-color writer released a second book with a major publisher. During our conversation at Babbalucci, a restaurant in her beloved Harlem neighborhood, Mock reflected on her first book in light of the writing of her sophomore release. She also shared insight about writing love and dating storylines for transgender women of color, an amplified focus in Surpassing Certainty, and she discussed the dynamics of disclosure in narrative and life. Further, she ruminated about what constitutes home for her and how to write about space and place. Such remarks importantly center her Hawaiian roots and her multi-ethnic identity. Finally, Mock offered her most recent thoughts on being a trans woman of color in the public sphere in a turbulent national climate—particularly for folks on the margins of the already-marginalized.


Author(s):  
Petrana Stoykova

The importance of the Bulgarian woman in the public space from the Renaissance to nowadays is presented in the article. The woman was restricted to participate actively in the Christian world and school life during the Renaissance. She received equal rights to men in the public sphere only after 1944. The socialistic development in Bulgaria during the period from 1944 to 1989 had a great significance to the enlightenment of the whole Bulgarian nation, which also provided an unrestricted access of the women to the educational system. The development of the Bulgarian education has been marked by reverse process after the democratic changes. The „total crisis“ of the Bulgarian society leads to a significant shortage in the educational system. In comparison to the previous socialist period, lower indicators in overall population literacy can been observed. Gender inequalities in education are being fairly reduced. Bulgarian wоmеn have gradually conquered school environment and are being engaged in educational causes more often compared to men. However, in the contemporary Bulgarian society, the right to education continues to be a challenge in respect of various social groups.


2016 ◽  
Vol 3 ◽  
pp. 133-142
Author(s):  
Angélica Sierra Franco ◽  
Oscar Guevara Guevara

Resumen: La contaminación visual en los centros urbanos debe ser considerada en nuestros tiempos como un factor determinante en el deterioro de la calidad de vida y la ruptura del paisaje urbano, en tanto provoca una desvalorización de la propiedad pública y privada, como resultado de la dinámica desordenada de la competitividad en las dimensiones institucionales, cívicas, políticas y comerciales. Por tanto, debe ser regulada, prevenida y controlada. Este planteamiento surge de la necesidad de promover la conservación, protección y sostenibilidad del paisaje urbano, conformado por los elementos que constituyen el espacio público del centro de Sincelejo, y su valoración histórico-patrimonial, como factor fundamental para preservar y mantener el equilibrio visual de los mismos. El trabajo tiene como finalidad garantizar el derecho constitucional de gozar de un ambiente sano y ecológicamente equilibrado. Y que, a su vez, se convierta en un eje articulador de las propuestas turísticas que tiene la región, en cuanto a la promoción de los bienes inmuebles culturales e históricos que se emplazan en esta zona. ___Palabras clave: Contaminación visual, centros históricos, entornos urbanos, ambiente, percepción ciudadana, actores. ___Abstract: The visual pollution in urban centers must be considered in our times as a determining factor in the deterioration of the quality of life and the rupture of the urban landscape, while causing a devaluation of public and private property, because of the disordered dynamics of competitiveness in the institutional, civic, political and commercial dimensions. Therefore, it must be regulated, prevented and controlled. This approach arises from the need to promote the conservation, protection and sustainability of the urban landscape, made up of the elements that constitute the public space of the center of Sincelejo, and its historical and patrimonial valuation, as a fundamental factor to preserve and maintain the visual balance of the same. The purpose of the work is to guarantee the constitutional right to enjoy a healthy and ecologically balanced environment. Moreover, that, in turn, become an articulating axis ofthe tourist proposals that the region has, in terms of the promotion of cultural and historicalreal estate that are located in this area. ___Keywords: Visual pollution, historical centers, urban environments, environment, citizenperception, actors. ___Recibido: 15 de agosto de 2016. Aceptado: 22 de octubre de 2016.


2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 141-159
Author(s):  
Jessie Martin

"Access to space is fundamentally related to social status and power...changing the allocation of space is inherently related to changing society" (Weisman, 1992)   In contemporary London, a pattern has emerged whereby private corporations create and take ownership of public space, but the type of publicness they promote is conditional. In private-public space, private property masquerades as public land with rules of inhabitation often impenetrable, unknowable until they are broken. International owners activate networks of relations beyond the local; I question how private-public space fits with local communities, and how these networks shift notions of authenticity and inauthenticity in relation to public belonging. There is a specific focus on the public square as a form of private-public space, because the city square has a long-established spatial identity that embodies notions of publicity. The public square stimulates and contains public life, and neoliberal dynamics of ownership and management threaten public assemblages. Private-public squares do not fit into the majority of theories that have been developed on place, public space and private dynamics, but they are exemplative of a type of space increasingly prominent in Britain. I focus on four private-public squares in London to examine what can be learnt when a format of space is reproduced under incompatible conditions. How do these spaces work on a quotidian level and how does this intervention in public life shift urban identities and behavioural paradigms? The basis of my research is to examine concepts of publicness and privateness and how they apply to private-public squares in London, whilst utilising the practice of photography, observation and inhabitation to gain empirical ethnographic evidence. My research intends to assemble a toolkit to facilitate understanding about pseudo-public space, rather than ascribe fixed meanings to a subject which requires specificity.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Anna Constable

<p>This thesis aims to investigate, through design, spatial agency within the realm of New York City’s Privately Owned Public Spaces. The notion of agency in architecture is directly linked to social and political power. Starting in 1961, New York’s city planners introduced an incentive zoning scheme (POPS) which encouraged private builders to include public spaces in their developments. Many are in active public use, but others are hard to find, under surveillance, or essentially inaccessible. Within the existing POPS sites, tension is current between the ideals of public space - completely open, accessible - and the limitations imposed by those who create and control it. Designed to be singular, contained, and mono-functional, POPS do not yet allow for newer ideas of public space as multi-functional, not contained/bounded but extending and overlapping outward.  As public-private partnerships become the model for catalyzing urban (re)development in the late 20th century, bonus space is an increasingly common land use type in major cities across the world. The quality and nature of bonus spaces created in exchange for floor area bonuses varies greatly. In many cases, tensions in privately owned space produce a severely constricted definition of the public and public life. Incentive zoning programmes continue to serve as a model for numerous urban zoning regulations, so changing ideas of public space and its design need to be tested in such spaces.  These urban plazas offer a test case through which to examine agency, exploring how social space is also political space, charged with the dynamics of power/ empowerment, interaction/ isolation, control/ freedom. This thesis looks at one such site, the connecting plaza sites along Sixth Avenue between West 47th St and West 51st St. This is an extreme example of concentrated POPS sites in New York City. Here one’s perception and occupation of space is profoundly affected by the underlying design of that space which reflects its private ownership. Privately Owned Public Space can be designed that is capable of/ challenging the notion of the public in public space, and modifying the structure of the city and its social life.</p>


2018 ◽  
Vol 11 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 43-62
Author(s):  
Wisam Kh. Abdul-Jabbar

This study explores Habermas’s work in terms of the relevance of his theory of the public sphere to the politics and poetics of the Arab oral tradition and its pedagogical practices. In what ways and forms does Arab heritage inform a public sphere of resistance or dissent? How does Habermas’s notion of the public space help or hinder a better understanding of the Arab oral tradition within the sociopolitical and educational landscape of the Arabic-speaking world? This study also explores the pedagogical implications of teaching Arab orality within the context of the public sphere as a contested site that informs a mode of resistance against social inequality and sociopolitical exclusions.


Author(s):  
Natalia Kostenko

The subject matter of research interest here is the movement of sociological reflection concerning the interplay of public and private realms in social, political and individual life. The focus is on the boundary constructs embodying publicity, which are, first of all, classical models of the space of appearance for free citizens of the polis (H. Arendt) and the public sphere organised by communicative rationality (Ju. Habermas). Alternative patterns are present in modern ideas pertaining to the significance of biological component in public space in the context of biopolitics (M. Foucault), “inclusive exclusion of bare life” (G. Agamben), as well as performativity of corporeal and linguistic experience related to the right to participate in civil acts such as popular assembly (J. Butler), where the established distinctions between the public and the private are levelled, and the interrelationship of these two realms becomes reconfigured. Once the new media have come into play, both the structure and nature of the public sphere becomes modified. What assumes a decisive role is people’s physical interaction with online communication gadgets, which instantly connect information networks along various trajectories. However, the rapid development of information technology produces particular risks related to the control of communications industry, leaving both public and private realms unprotected and deforming them. This also urges us to rethink the issue of congruence of the two ideas such as transparency of societies and security.


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