Some of the ques­tions we’re ask­ing as we explore Social Spaces: what’s the place of pub­lic space in your city? What’s the big idea behind pub­lic art, and does it really do any­thing to serve the pub­lic? Which streets, parks, malls and pre­cincts draw life to them? Can a good pub­lic space make you feel more con­nec­ted to the people around you? Can act­ive streets inspire cre­ativ­ity and entre­pren­eur­ial ingenuity?

Pub­lic space is “at the very heart of any defin­i­tion of a city” (accord­ing to Deyan Sudjic, dir­ector of London’s Design Museum) and suc­cess­ful pub­lic spaces have the power to give their users a feel­ing of par­ti­cip­a­tion in pub­lic life. Good pub­lic spaces encour­age social inter­ac­tion and inclus­ive­ness, entre­pren­eur­ial cre­ativ­ity and a feel­ing of par­ti­cip­a­tion in a lar­ger community.

Guest con­trib­ut­ors intro­duce us to people using pub­lic spaces in innov­at­ive ways, share new think­ing on city-making, and take us through streets and spaces that draw human move­ment to them. Cre­at­ive urban thinkers dis­cuss how cit­ies are deal­ing with the demands of global cap­ital, devel­op­ment and migra­tion; from the dis­ap­pear­ing hutongs of Beijing to the quest for dens­ity in the sprawl­ing sub­urbs of Sydney.

Here’s some of the ideas and pro­jects we’re explor­ing as we con­sider the spaces and places that bring people together in our cities.

Small details that make a big dif­fer­ence: streets­capes, bins, benches, lane­ways and car spaces

Boom Bench by NL Architects

“Above all, small ideas for revital­iz­ing urban areas work, as the suc­cess of Bry­ant Park and its emu­lat­ors has demon­strated. Why? Because, as Whyte (and Jane Jac­obs as well) under­stood, people in pub­lic spaces respond to thou­sands of subtle visual and aural cues, and suc­cess­ful places manip­u­late these cues (often without pre­med­it­a­tion) to provide famil­iar assur­ances of com­fort and well-being. The cues prompt a per­son who encoun­ters a new place to pre­dict a pos­it­ive exper­i­ence there—above all, that he will be safe. The most import­ant cues trans­mit a sense of order and social con­trol.”
Andrew M. Man­shel, “A Place Is Bet­ter Than a Plan” in City Journal

The smal­lest ele­ments in our pub­lic spaces can com­mu­nic­ate a lot about the rela­tion­ship between a city and its people. What mes­sage does a city send with benches that play your favour­ite music, bins that roam around and chairs you can move? Read about the Boom Bench and more here.

The big pic­ture: bland­ness and local iden­tity in the global city

Osaka hous­ing estates | Photo by Charles Landry

“But as the world urb­an­ises, cit­ies are being glob­al­ised. Not only is urb­an­isa­tion increas­ingly reach­ing every­where, every­where is increas­ingly reach­ing into the city, con­trib­ut­ing to a major recon­fig­ur­a­tion of the social and spa­tial struc­tures of urb­an­ism and cre­at­ing the most eco­nom­ic­ally and cul­tur­ally het­ero­gen­eous cit­ies the world has ever known.”
– Edward Soja and Miguel Kanai, “The Urb­an­isa­tion of the World” in The End­less City

Much of what makes a city unique and dis­tinct­ive is being lost as more and more cit­ies aim for the “global city” ideal. Charles Landry dis­cusses the “geo­graphy of bland­ness” and the death of diversity – and alludes to a solu­tion in civic cre­ativ­ity in his first con­tri­bu­tion to the Cre­at­ive Cit­ies blog this month.

Access­ible cit­ies: mobil­ity and pub­lic transport

Buses, bikes, trains and ped­es­tri­ans pass through the transporort hub of Vic­tory Monu­ment, Bangkok | Photo by Jess Scully

“Pub­lic space without the pos­sib­il­ity of move­ment in it is like a dead but­ter­fly in a spe­ci­men case: move­ment means access, which is the real issue con­nec­ted with space.”
Deyan Sudjic, “The­ory, Policy and Prac­tice” in ‘The End­less City’

Ale­jandro Guti­er­rez, asso­ci­ate dir­ector of Arup, estim­ates that on aver­age we lose 20 days a year com­mut­ing to and from our work­places (in “Cur­ated Com­munity”, Monocle issue 15). Some com­ment­at­ors have described good pub­lic trans­port as a form of social justice, a prac­tical tool for eras­ing some of the inequal­it­ies of our cit­ies and open­ing the entirety of the city to all urban dwell­ers. Are the spaces of your city access­ible to all?

“One recent study con­duc­ted by offi­cials at the Paris Metro—which looked at “missed con­nec­tion” ads placed by urb­an­ites look­ing for love in the city—found that the Metro “is without doubt the fore­most pro­du­cer of urban tales about fall­ing in love.” The seats closest to the door, it seemed, offered the best oppor­tun­it­ies for fall­ing in love with the proper stranger. “The Metro is not the emo­tional desert, the social vacuum, that we some­times believe it to be,” observed the chief of the Paris Metro.”
Tim Vander­bilt, “Under­ground Psy­cho­logy” in Slate

The train plat­forms, sub­way cars, bus stops and bike paths of our cit­ies are also a unique kind of pub­lic space shared by many on a daily basis. We can choose to abide by the unspoken rules and rituals of these spaces (Erving Goff­man defines this as the ritual of “civil inat­ten­tion” as we stu­di­ously avoid mak­ing con­tact with our fel­low com­muters), or we can see these spaces as a new place to inter­act with the people who share our cities.

Points of con­nec­tion: pub­lic art that actu­ally serves the public

Hand From Above by Chris O’Shea | Image by Pixelsumo on Flickr

Pub­lic art has a bad name in many cit­ies, tak­ing the shape of heavy metal flour­ishes out­side cor­por­ate headquar­ters or trib­utes to his­tor­ical fig­ures, anonym­ous under ver­di­gris. Is it pos­sible to cre­ate art that truly con­nects with the pub­lic, that cre­ates moments of won­der and ima­gin­a­tion in urban life, or offers oppor­tun­it­ies for reflec­tion and inter­ac­tion in pub­lic spaces?

It is pos­sible, and UK art col­lect­ive Grey­world do just that, through work that trans­forms the simplest ele­ments in the pub­lic realm, and gives people an excuse to con­nect with strangers to share their opin­ions or remark on the exper­i­ence. Chris O’Shea’s Hand From Above sur­prises ped­es­tri­ans and makes people feel noticed in the anonym­ity of a busy shop­ping mall.

“Plin­ther” JC-J at One & Other | Tra­fal­gar Square, London

Ant­ony Gormley’s One & Other in Tra­fal­gar Square, Lon­don, turned the fourth plinth (usu­ally reserved for com­mis­sioned pub­lic art) into a plat­form for 2400 people to use the space as their stage or soapbox.

Sydney’s Art & About fest­ival allows art to take over the streets of the city, from the By George lane­way pro­ject in the nooks and cran­nies of the cent­ral busi­ness dis­trict to I Heart Kings X, a pro­ject which uses knit­ting to expose the rich social fab­ric of the city’s red light district.

km.o was an artistic inter­ven­tion designed to trans­form the exper­i­ence of vis­it­ing Vic­tory Monu­ment, one of the most chaotic and con­ges­ted pub­lic spaces in Bangkok. Draw­ing on the entre­pren­eur­ial spirit of the city of Bangkok, km.0 presen­ted ingeni­ous cre­at­ive solu­tions to the issues presen­ted by the space and sug­ges­ted a new inclus­ive, sus­tain­able vis­ion for the future of the city.

Illus­tra­tion of the km.0 inter­ven­tion at Vic­tory Monu­ment, Bangkok

Users of Vic­tory Monu­ment were presen­ted with inform­a­tion on the qual­ity of the air around them, the num­ber of cars and ped­es­tri­ans in the area, or with invent­ive ways to use water and waste in the city, and then given the oppor­tun­ity to reflect on how this impacts on their own lives. Through the Code 59 per­form­ances at the monu­ment at the centre of this thriv­ing social space, tour­ists and loc­als were re-connected to the his­tory of the place and invited to con­sider their own role in its future.

km.0’s use of art and per­sonal engage­ment to inspire new think­ing about pub­lic space under­lies some of the ideas we’ll address in our dis­cus­sion about social spaces.

The con­ver­sa­tion is always open, flex­ible and is on-going. Tell us what you’re inter­ested in, what chal­lenges your city faces, and sug­gest stor­ies for us to explore. Share your ideas in our com­ments, Tweet your thoughts to @creative_cities, and help shape the conversation.