scholarly journals Micropolitics of Public Space: On the Contested Limits of Citizenship as a Locational Practice

2015 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 63-83 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrés Di Masso

This article provides a social-psychological account of how public space dynamics may be consequential for the daily construction of citizenship. The article is organised around three interrelated ideas that are illustrated by a case study. First, it is argued that certain social-psychological processes that are typically involved in the construction of citizenship can be re-conceptualised as place-based processes that are located in public space. This interest in the ‘locational’ construction of citizenship implies focusing on membership, belonging, status, rights, entitlements and recognition as emplaced practices rather than as dislocated entities. The second idea relates to the troubled nature of citizenship as a place-related psychological category whose boundaries are hotly contested whenever disputes about controversial behaviour in public spaces surface. Accordingly, ‘the citizen’ is constantly re-shaped as everyday place-discourses and territorial practices in the public domain unfold in problematic ways. Finally, it is argued that such ‘locational’ constructions and enactments of citizenship in public space are usually framed by broader ideological dilemmas that are relevant to the maintenance and change of a given socio-political order. The ultimate purpose of the article is to demonstrate the potential for public space to become a possible site for grounding a social psychology of citizenship.

2018 ◽  
Vol 22 (4) ◽  
pp. 449-459
Author(s):  
Kin-Ling Tang

This article argues that in order to understand the resistance potentials of taking space movements, the temporal dimensions and spatial practices implied cannot be neglected, or else there would be a tendency to be overoptimistic about resistance in these movements. Using the Umbrella Movement that took place in Hong Kong in 2014 as a case study, this article notes that representational space and spatial practice by protesters were guided by a dualistic view of the public and the private, which in turn is the dominant ideology in neoliberalism, and that their acts of resistance were not able to go beyond the confines of conceived space. In the movement, protesters reclaimed public spaces through privatizing them. Based on the work of Lefebvre, this article argues that only with a radical critique of neoliberal values embedded in capitalism including the public-private dualism can any real transformations of everyday life and hence revolution be possible.


2020 ◽  
Vol 19 (3) ◽  
pp. 676-703
Author(s):  
Luke M. Cianciotto

This study concerns the struggle for Philadelphia's LOVE Park, which involved the general public and its functionaries on one side and skateboarders on the other. This paper argues LOVE Park was one place composed of two distinct spaces: the public space the public engendered and the common space the skateboarders produced. This case demonstrates that public and common space must be understood as distinct, for they entail different understandings of publicly accessible space. Additionally, public and common spaces often exist simultaneously as “public–common spaces,” which emphasizes how they reciprocally shape one another. This sheds light on the emergence of “anti–common public space,” which is evident in LOVE Park's 2016 redesign. This concept considers how common spaces are increasingly negated in public spaces. The introduction of common space to the study of public spaces is significant as it allows for more nuanced understandings of transformations in the urban landscape.


Author(s):  
Marina Perez

The current city calls for the reconsideration of a close relationship between gray infrastructure and public spaces, understanding the infrastructure as a set of items, equipment, or services required for the functioning of a country, a City. Ambato, Ecuador, is a current intermediate city, has less than 1% of the urban surface with use of public green spaces, which represents a figure below the 9m2/ hab., recommended by OMS. The aim of this paper was to identify urban public spaces that switches of green infrastructure in the city today, applying a methodology of qualitative studies. With an exploratory descriptive level analysis, in three stages, stage of theoretical foundation product of a review of the existing literature, which is the theoretical support of the relationship gray infrastructure public spaces equal to green infrastructure. Subsequent to this case study, discussed with criteria aimed at green infrastructure and in the public spaces of the study area. Finally, after processing and analysis of the results, we provide conclusions for urban public space as a definition of the green infrastructure of the current city of Latin America; in the latter, the focus is to support this article.


Ensemble ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol SP-1 (1) ◽  
pp. 54-59
Author(s):  
Sanjukta Sattar ◽  

The COVID-19 pandemic has paralyzed public life world-wide. The need for maintaining physical/social distance has led to a change in the order and nature of human activities across public spaces. As a result, the usual rhythm of activities in public spaces has come to be disrupted. Taking this into consideration, the study delves into the disrupted rhythm of the urban public spaces under the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and the consequently imposed lockdown. By adopting a case study-based approach, an in-depth analysis has been carried out to comprehend the change in the daily rhythm of a local road in the wake of the pandemic and lockdown. Lefebvre’s technique of ‘rhythmanalysis’ has been applied to carry out this study, as it is highly suited in studying the flow of everyday life in a spatiotemporal context. The article traces the change in the rhythm of activities in the study area during the pandemic and lockdown in comparison to the usual rhythm of activities that existed in the area before the pandemic. The findings of the study reveal that the pandemic has taken a toll on the study area, where the pre-existing rhythm of the public space has been overtaken by a disrupted rhythm that has given rise to chaos and confusion.


2010 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 187-207 ◽  
Author(s):  
David J. Madden

A case study of the renovation of New York City's Bryant Park, this article revisits the end of public space thesis. the renovated park signifies not the end of public space but the new ends to which public space is oriented. in Bryant Park, a new logic of urban publicity was assembled and built into the landscape. the social and technical means by which this transformation was achieved are analyzed. New public spaces of this sort promulgate a conception of the public that is decoupled from discourses of democratization, citizenship, and self–development and connected ever more firmly to consumption, commerce, and social surveillance. If such places do not herald the end of public space, they do represent “publicity without democracy.”


Religions ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (4) ◽  
pp. 159 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shani Umiel-Feldman

The term ‘Public Sphere’ is used to distinguish it from the private. Here, we will use the term ‘Public Spaces’ to distinguish between various types of public spheres, differing from one another not only in their controlling identity, but also in the level of obligation to be in them and the extent in which they demand obedience from their participants. The new typology proposed in this paper conceptualizes the Israel Defense Forces [IDF] as a legally binding Public Space, using the case study of the Jewish religious law prohibiting Orthodox men to listen to a woman’s singing voice. This prohibition has sparked a strong public controversy and ongoing clashes between the army and religion. The case study illustrates a wide range of confrontations over the identity of the IDF’s space. While examining similar cases in other armies around the world, the paper presents a model explaining the terms and conditions for disputes on the nature of Public Spaces around the world, and when to expect confrontations between identities in different Public Spaces. Finally, the paper attempts to predict the extent and scope of such confrontations, on four dimensions: (a) The level of obligation to be in the Public Space; (b) the level of greediness of the Public Space; (c) the level of heterogeneity of identities within the Public Space; and (d) the level of personal identity greediness of persons and groups whose identity differs from the hegemonic identity in the public space.


2020 ◽  
Vol 40 (1) ◽  
pp. 172-178
Author(s):  
Jake Harwood ◽  
Karen Tracy

This Epilogue discusses the papers in the Special Issue ( JLSP 40th Anniversary) in terms of the broader field of language and social psychology. It reflects on the key terms (“language” and “social psychology”) in terms of how they intersect and the relative emphasis on each in work published in JLSP. We also present an argument for increasing the consideration of context in language and social psychology research, and we distinguish between a desire to generalize versus universalize our knowledge about language and social psychological processes.


2021 ◽  
pp. 239965442110338
Author(s):  
David Jenkins ◽  
Lipin Ram

Public space is often understood as an important ‘node’ of the public sphere. Typically, theorists of public space argue that it is through the trust, civility and openness to others which citizens cultivate within a democracy’s public spaces, that they learn how to relate to one another as fellow members of a shared polity. However, such theorizing fails to articulate how these democratic comportments learned within public spaces relate to the public sphere’s purported role in holding state power to account. In this paper, we examine the ways in which what we call ‘partisan interventions’ into public space can correct for this gap. Using the example of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) (CPIM), we argue that the ways in which CPIM partisans actively cultivate sites of historical regional importance – such as in the village of Kayyur – should be understood as an aspect of the party’s more general concern to present itself to citizens as an agent both capable and worthy of wielding state power. Drawing on histories of supreme partisan contribution and sacrifice, the party influences the ideational background – in competition with other parties – against which it stakes its claims to democratic legitimacy. In contrast to those theorizations of public space that celebrate its separateness from the institutions of formal democratic politics and the state more broadly, the CPIM’s partisan interventions demonstrate how parties’ locations at the intersections of the state and civil society can connect the public sphere to its task of holding state power to account, thereby bringing the explicitly political questions of democratic legitimacy into the everyday spaces of a political community.


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 ◽  
pp. 101269022110296
Author(s):  
David Sayagh ◽  
Clément Dusong

Cycling in public spaces is both a mobility and a physical activity underpinned by considerable issues, but women practice significantly less, particularly during adolescence. A few studies have sought to study this phenomenon but mainly on the basis of social psychology theories. Based on 84 semi-structured biographical interviews conducted in France, this article aims to discuss their findings using gender, mobility and socialization sociology. We first show how a ‘feminine’ socialization to risk taking, body aesthetics, sport, street and mechanics is an obstacle to cycling during adolescence, especially in the working-class environment and all the more so in spatial contexts with strong norms of male appropriation of public space. We then show how the fact of having cyclists in one's social environment and a sporting inclination plays an important role in limiting the risk of abandonment. By highlighting processes of reinforcement of gendered bodily and spatial inclinations, our results shed light on the links between the socio-construction of inequalities in accessing public space and of inequalities in accessing physical activities. Furthermore, they encourage the study of bicycle socialisation in an intersectional way and suggest the interest of studying the links between urban, ecological, health, sport and mobility socialisations.


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