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Essay on the question of public spaces
Essay on the question of public spaces
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INTRODUCTION
Art festivals are temporary events that can result in long lasting value for building socially engaged communities. Focusing on participatory art festivals to explore the spatial and social relationships that offer ways for communities to build strong social connections within the public realm. In The Creative Community Builder’s Handbook, by Tom Borrup, five ways in which arts and culture can build communities are identified: by promoting interaction in public spaces, increasing civic participation, engaging youth, promoting stewardship, and increasing participation in civic agenda (Borrup, 2006). Each of these approaches can be connected with the types of interaction that occurs during a participatory art festival, proving them
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William H. Whyte studied the public spaces of New York and attempted to define what makes spaces that are welcoming and attractive to citizens, and encouraged social interaction. In his work The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces, he presents the case that tree canopies, water features, sculptures and food benders all play a role in attracting people to urban parks and plazas, but that most of all what attract people is other people. Similarly, Jane Jacobs wrote The Death and Life of Great American Cities in which she addressed the need for smaller, more localized neighborhoods that were designed around how citizens actually utilized the public spaces (Borrup, 2006). Today Placemaking is seen as an important part of the planning and designing of effective urban public spaces (Schneekloth and Shibley, …show more content…
It is a term used to address the type of “Guerilla Urbanism”, “D-Y-I Urbanism” and “Pop Up Urbanism” found in cities today. These are defined as: deliberate phased approaches to instigating change, offering local solutions to local planning challenges, with short term commitment and realistic expectations, with low risk and potential high reward, and development of social capital among citizens and groups (Lydon et al. 2011). Tactical urbanism is a bottom up approach to addressing small urban problems as a way to beautify neighborhoods, with the result of building strong community engagement, placemaking, generating civic pride, and stewardship. Community is not just a place, but also the cultural and social bonds related to that place, which make the community strong and engaged (Schneekloth and Shibley,
In September 1954, he moved out of Northwood in Long Island onto the Northern State Parkway to see his new house in the countryside. He specifically said that Long Island had been one of the most beautiful places in the United States, and his house was one small reason it would not remain that way much longer. His new house lacked in exterior grandeur, but it made up for comfort inside and costs in all together $25,000. Kunstler got his first glimpse of what real American towns were like when he was sent away to a boys’ camp in Lebanon, New Hampshire. He visited his hometown Northwood when he became a teenager and saw how it has entered into a coma with so little for one to do there. Northwood had no public gathering places, so teens were stuck in their little holes who smoked pot and imitated rock and roll. For the teenagers there, the waiting transforming moment was when one became a licensed driver, as I can say the same about my town. Kunstler went to a state college in a small town, Brockport in western New York State. The college was the only thing that kept the town alive with healthy conditions where it was scaled to people, not cars. He ends the chapter by pointing out that this book is an attempt to discover how and why landscape of scary places, the geography of nowhere, has simply ceased to be a credible human habitat happened and what we might do about
At the time Jane Jacobs was writing The Death and Life of Great American Cities, city planning was not a process done by or for the people who lived in them. Residents were rarely consulted or involved in decision making, rather it be left to few elites who dictated their vision of the city for everybody else to conform to.
In this means, what is suburbanization? As indicated by my exploration and studies around there of history I can without a doubt recognize that suburbanization is on an extremely fundamental level the term used to depict the physical advancement of the city at the urban-commonplace fringe, or basically the edges of the city. This in
In the reading “Walking in the City”, Michel de Certeau discusses the use of tactics and strategies when creating a city environment. Certeau explains that strategies are for big corporations, architects, and the wealthy and the powerful. These are the people who have a say in building the city. Strategies require urban planning, these people have the power to make these choices. On the other hand, there are certain tactics that civilians living in the city create to ease the difficulties of daily living. The little people, the civilians, or those who have no say, control the tactics according to Certeau. Tactics are created to make the living standards equal in a sense. The strategies and tactics that are used to create a city, play significant role in how the city will function as a whole.
‘There is much talk about community in everyday life’ (Popple, 2015, p. 11). Community often gets valued on its spirits as well measured by its population. It can be argued that community is a challenge of
* Urban Professional^s recognition of the increased variability, robustness, and interest in both the urban area and their work. * Conservation Activist^s commendation of the lower consumption of resources, and reduced pressure on sensitive environment areas, suggestive of a reduction in urban sprawl. * The Development Industry^s equations of profit established through better and higher levels of land use. Essentially urban consolidation proposes an increase of either population or dwellings in an existing defined urban area (Roseth,1991). Furthermore, the suburban village seeks to establish this intensification within a more specific agenda, in which community is to be centred by public transport nodes, and housing choice is to be widened with increased diversity of housing type (Jackson,1998).
This is the underlying truth as to why Participaction decided to do their 150 Play List. Doing all these activities helps Canadian ’s come closer together because it encourages us to do things together instead of separately. When we get communities together for events, it gives those people a sense of togetherness and Canadian pride because you know that these are the things that give us an identity. In a Journal named Thoughts about Togetherness, it says what exactly “togetherness” means.
Tony Hiss Author of The Experience of Place brings to our attention that as humans “We react, consciously or unconsciously, to the places where we live and work, in ways we scarcely notice or that are only now becoming known to us…In short, the places where we spend our time affect the people we are and can become.” Place defines characteristics in both human and extended moral communities. Place is not necessarily specific to gender, race, generation or specie. This understanding and recognition of place is fundamental when thinking about institutionalizing ecological and social responsibility.
Very few people would want to live in a place where they don’t have security. Whether it be in cities or subdivisions, Jacobs, if alive, would ascertain that there needs to be a sense of connectedness to maintain communal safety. Public living “bring[s] together people who do not know each other in an intimate, private social fashion and in most cases do not care to know each other in that fashion” (Jacobs 55). Now that families typically center themselves around suburban lifestyles, residents should understand that the same connections that Jacobs says were to be made in cities need to now be made in subdivisions. Jacobs was scared that with houses being spread out in the suburbs, little interaction between neighbors would take place. In order to avoid this, neighborhoods need to promote a sidewalk lifestyle that they currently do not (Jacobs 70). With Kotkin stressing how urban areas are no longer preferable places to raise a family, saying only seven percent of their populations are children, he lacks compassion for the transients that now inhabit cities. Undoubtedly, those who now inhabit the city should also feel safe in their environments. Nowadays, members of a city isolate themselves from interactions with other citizens making it difficult to establish a social
In this chapter, we learned about how different communities were developed. We learned about preindustrial cities, industrial cities, and postindustrial cities. We learned the process of urbanization through the functionalist and conflict perspectives. We also learned about the many different types of communities that there are. Communities are found everywhere. No matter where you go, you will always find yourself in a community of some sort, and you will always belong to a community somewhere, whether it be residential or political, or both. It’s amazing to think about all the different types of communities there are in this world, and which types of communities you yourself might be associated with.
Jacobs views diversity as the number of ways in which limited areas of space are allocated, as opposed to having an inherent racial or cultural connotation. Jacobs emphasizes that various types of business and residences are the elements of prospering city neighborhoods. Jacobs begins to explore three main myths. These myths are arguments often cited by city planners against diversity. To begin, the first myth that Jacobs attempts to discredit is that diversity is unattractive. She repudiates this assertion by saying that the opposite is in fact true, in which homogeneity is unappealing. I believe that it is quite detrimental when city planners attempt to create a contrived atmosphere of diversity in order to conceal the existing homogeneity. This is accomplished by artificially building different shapes and styles of buildings to give outsiders the impression of diversity. Jacobs underscores the flaws of contrived diversity in the following excerpt:
Carl Sandburg’s Chicago and Rachel Carson’s A Fable for Tomorrow are literatures that both reflect upon two different type of cities, yet their illustration of their city is entirely different. The authors used imagery different tones, and rhetorical appeals to portray their ideas. Chicago is optimistic and celebratory, viewing the city of Chicago as exciting. On the other hand, A Fable for Tomorrow renders a devastating picture of the land, through bleak imagery, of a small town that does not exist but has thousands of counterparts in America. While both authors reflected their passage upon two different type of cities, they had different approaches and opinions about their cities.
...f place, and facilitating place attachment is placemaking. When people create an identity within their physical environment, they are placemaking. Placemaking is defined as “the ability to shape public spaces within a community with an emphasis on community and connection between the environment and the user” (PPS, p.). There are several important principles of place making to take into consideration.
Sociologist … explained that open pattern of suburb is because of seeking environment free noise, dirt and overcrowding that are in the centre of cities. He gave examples of these cities as St. John’s wood, Richmond, Hampstead in London. Chestnut Hill and Germantown in Philadelphia. He added that suburban are only for the rich and high class. This plays into the hands of the critical perspectives that, “Cities are not so much the product of a quasi-natural “ecological” unfolding of social differentiation and succession, but of a dynamic of capital investment and disinvestment. City space is acted on primarily as a commodity that is bought and sold for profit, “(Little & McGivern, 2013, p.616).
Public space is all around us in various social, economic and political forms and can be seen as an essential part of everyday life. Research on public space by mid-twentieth century urbanists like Jane Jacobs and William Whyte ‘understood public space physically as the space between buildings in a city, and socially as both a space of community formation and of ‘strangers’ (tourism visitors, outcasts) (Mitchell and Staeheli, 2009). More recently, public space has been a topic of opportunity and discussion, creating a public ‘sphere’ where public opinion is formulated. According to Clive Barnett (2014), ‘the concept of the public sphere has become a central reference point…to evaluate rapid changes in the institutional configurations, economic