scholarly journals Negotiating Space and Visibility: Forms of Informality in Public Space

2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (17) ◽  
pp. 4807 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hesam Kamalipour ◽  
Nastaran Peimani

Street trading has become integral to how public space works in cities of the global South. It cannot be considered as marginal since it gears to the urban economy and works as a key mode of income generation for the urban poor to sustain livelihoods. A poor understanding of how forms of street trading work in public space can lead to poor design and policy interventions. While many practices of formalization aim at the elimination of informality, the challenge is to explore the complex informal/formal relations and the dynamics of street trading to understand how forms of informality negotiate space and visibility in the public realm. In this paper, we propose a typology of street trading, based on the criteria of mobility within public space and proximity to public/private urban interfaces. While exploring the degrees of mobility in informal street trading can be crucial to the modes of governance and adaptability involved, of critical importance is to investigate how street trading takes place in relation to the built form—particularly the edges of public space where public/private interfaces enable or constrain exchange and appropriation. The developed typology provides a better understanding of the dynamics of street trading and contributes to the ways in which the built environment professions can most effectively engage with interventions in public space without eradicating the scope for informal adaptations.

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.


2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 182-194
Author(s):  
Merve KAYA ◽  
Özlem KANDEMİR

The physical and representational contents of the public space are in a dynamic evolving state with the changes in the social structure and urban structure. In the historical process, the phenomenon of public space has been affected by the developments experienced with the change in the way individuals establish relationships in public life. Today, this transformation has occurred through virtual networks with the development of information and communication technologies. The paper aims to understand the public sphere dynamics that have changed with information and communication technologies. Accordingly, it limits its scope on these questions: How virtual networks affect the representational form of public space? What are the spatial structuring of this new representational public realm? What effect does this transformation have on urban areas that are the physical spaces of public realm? The method of the study is to explain theoretical discussions by supporting examples. In this context, it has been found that virtual networks, known as a new form of public space, transform the representative and physical form of the public space in a multifaceted manner by relocating the way individuals communicate with each other on a virtual layer. In this virtual transformation, it has been seen that the representative public space is now formed on social networks and platforms and the spatial structuring of these areas is defined as virtual network. The effect of virtual networks on the physical spaces of the public realm is possible by clustering data about urban areas in these virtual environments. Therefore, the visibility of virtual networks on the physical spaces of the publicity takes place through the understanding of space usage; moreover, virtual network data, which hybridizes with contemporary urban areas, reveals new qualities in the sense of the city by embodying it through maps. The physical transformation of the public space with information and communication technologies is made possible by the use of virtual network data in the design processes of this new sensory city.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Olivia Afonso Magalhaes

Sociotope mapping is a tool that has been used to identify values in public spaces, as defined by the public. By developing an original sociotope map using the sociotope map methodology, utilizing the technique created in Stockhom, Sweden, this research attempts to understand the values of public space within and around Ryerson University, while providing a critique on the utility of the tool in this context. The information collected from an online survey will be analyzed and visually displayed on a sociotope map. This may be utilized by the school administration, municipal planners, urban designers or landscape architecture professionals to understand what concerns may be provoked by the development of certain spaces and the resources valued by the public in the public realm. This project explores how different public spaces within the Ryerson University Campus are utilized and how useful is the sociotope mapping tool in inferring these values. keywords: planning; sociotope; parks planning; perceptions of space; engagement; public consultation.


2011 ◽  
Vol 637 (1) ◽  
pp. 165-183
Author(s):  
Giles Harrison-Conwill

This article examines the relationships between race, class, and citizenship in Venezuela’s burgeoning grassroots democracy as the nation’s 2012 presidential election approaches. Although the Venezuelan political arena is frequently overshadowed by policies and the personality of President Hugo Chávez, recently developing techniques of governance permit increased local autonomy. This and an associated push to integrate marginalized populations into social and political life have played a significant role in the production of community, public space, and localized conceptions of citizenship. While emergent Caraqueño democratic forms commonly idealize equality and collaborative governance, disjunctures among the city’s communities are social, geographic, and political. This article highlights the varying modes of political belonging greatly engendered by race and class in Caracas. These experiences of citizenship, in turn, have resulted in increased participation and access to power for some as they deny inclusion to others. This study of modes of citizenship focuses on the citizen and the public sphere, emerging modes of governance and the developing Venezuelan state, and dissidence within the democratic process.


2012 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-18 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mary P. Corcoran

A feature of late modern society is the economisation and privatisation of social life resulting in a decline in the public realm. Judt has observed that we are drifting toward a society of ‘gated individuals who do not know how to share public space to common advantage’ (2010: 216). Similarly Oldenburg (1989) has expressed concerns about the sustainability of third places – places that occupy the space between the marketplace, workplace and home place – in the modern era. He argues that ‘third places’ are being replaced by ‘non-places’ – places where individuals relate to each other purely in utilitarian terms. Non-places promote civil disaffiliation rather than civil integration. This article argues for an exploration of the ‘spaces of potential’ within the public realm of the city that can help to promote relationships of trust, respect and mutuality. Acknowledging and promoting such ‘spaces of potential’ amounts to a challenge to the privatisation and economisation of social life. Moreover, it creates the possibility of a reinvigorated public sphere and an enhancement of civil integration.


2015 ◽  
pp. 213-224
Author(s):  
Tobias Woldendorp

The article focuses on the sense of security as a very important element affecting the quality of life and its improvement. Attention was drawn to crime and security in public space, which, is used by old people. The aim of the study is to use the CPTED methodology – Dutch solutions in the field of crime prevention such as architectural, urban and green design. The main criteria used in the method is visibility, accessibility, attractiveness and territoriality. Observations and analysis on the use of this method were conducted by the author on the high-rise (real estate) in Łódź-Widzew.


2017 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 57
Author(s):  
Laura Camargo ◽  
Gabriela Tenorio

<p>From observing the current dynamics of cities and the development of contemporary architecture, great criticism arises in response to the creation of iconic buildings as formal experiments that do not contribute to the local experience. Motivated by this criticism, this paper aims to analyse and understand the importance and the participation of architecture in the construction of a better public realm. The analytical method seeks to understand, evaluate and manipulate the main attributes of a public space based on the features that make it a platform for public life. The analysis focuses on the public realm in three areas of study- the space resulting of the interaction between the buildings, the interstitial space and the constructed spaces. The projects chosen to analyse consisted on iconic buildings by the architect Renzo Piano, due to his international recognition - a body of work shaped by the contexts in which they operate. The projects are situated in global cities and propose new configurations of public space: Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; Potsdamer Platz, Berlin; and Saint Giles Court, London. The analysis seeks the features that make architecture successful in the sense that it aggregates people and creates interesting spaces that favour human permanence; the paper evaluates whether the projects of Renzo Piano display these features. Each project has its own particularities. Starting with the dimensions, each project contributes to the public space at a different scale. Nevertheless, the variables analysed were the same for each context, and the effects were considered regarding the proportions and the programmatic possibilities offered by each. After understanding the site and its history, the study of the public life and its local attributes, this paper highlights the strengths and weaknesses of each building and how they contribute to the specific place. The interpretation of the results took into account not only the present, but also the lifetime of each project, raising some potential problems or successes for the future. It is possible to conclude that the three projects contribute positively to the public space, stimulating urban improvements and constitute good-practice examples, each at a different intensity.</p>


2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marie-Paul MacDonald ◽  

Urban public spaces and their associated architecture should be capable of eliciting responses from all of the human senses, yet traditionally urban and architectural designers rely primarily on visual display to persuade the public of the qualities of new proposals. As it becomes more common to use a variety of media to depict and simulate proposed urban spaces, designers and teachers of design look for ways to sensitize emerging designers to the full spectrum of sensations that inform potential users of a public space. The design studios discussed in this paper bring together the issues of the design of the experience of visual and aural settings, in an era of podcasts and ear-buds.In order to address issues of sound and public space, the author selected examples from two architectural design studios that took place in 2016 and 2018. Undergraduate students composed their own programs and projects to take into account the aural as well as visual qualities associated with their design intentions and ambitions. The process began with a programming phase to designate performing and listening as interactions that constitute primary activities happening in the context of the proposed public built form and related urban space. The research continued with an exploration of the tectonics and materials of the projects. Preliminary field research located and mapped small centralized urban organizations related to the sonic: collectives and small businesses working, for example, in the areas of sound recording, radio and musical performance.


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