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LUISA BRAVO

MARGARET CRAWFORD

Publics and their spaces:

Renewing urbanit y in cit y and suburb

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1 A CONSIS T EN T DICHOTOM Y IN SPACE A ND T IME

IN T HE SA ME COMP L E X URBA N W HOL E

In Europe, the beautiful old city, with its com-

pact morphological structure, seems to have

no relation to the suburban environment

sprawling outside the perimeter of recogniz-

able urban values. For many, the inner city

still serves as the dominant centre where the

whole suburban area converges, a stage for

community life and cultural identity. Howev-

er, the liveability of old cities has been trans-

formed during recent decades. To preserve

the historical values of buildings and public

spaces, municipalities have conserved,

sometimes obsessively, their physical ele-

ments, freezing their function for daily life.

This has turned many old cities into open-air

museums, with decreasing opportunities for

public and social interactions. Pedestrianised

zones attract shoppers and profits, bringing

chains of luxury shops that replace everyday

needs with boutiques for clothing, jewellery

and gifts. Museums and palaces become

cultural anchors (CRAWFORD, 1992. 29) in

historic centres, resembling theme parks for

tourists (INGERSOLL, 2006. 40). This process

is most visible in Italian cities such as Venice,

Florence and Rome. To preserve a physically

coherent environment, cities expel to the

periphery any function or architectural style

that doesn’t fit their model of coherence. As

a result, the historical European city appears

to be disconnected from the development of

contemporary society, leading to a decline in

the social significance of its public spaces.

Meanwhile, the vast land of suburbia

has become a complex and multifunctional

environment. Its sprawling morphology ac-

commodates new functions and typologies in

new spaces and territories, often independ-

ent of the historic centre (SEGAL et al., 2008.

7). During a single century, fast growing

suburbs in Europe have produced forms,

building types, and urban patterns com-

pletely different from historic morphologies.

Exurban development produces phenomena

as different as gated communities, ethno

burbs, lifestyle centres, shopping malls and

entertainment complexes, and restructured

rural towns. Far from the centre, they are

singular episodes in an “in between” zone,

neither city nor country. Every development

constitutes a new piece of a broader puzzle,

still to be completed.

Suburbs are a new kind of city, differ-

ent in scale and without definable centres.

Large populations exist in a multitude of

partial centres, or “edge cities”, clusters

of malls, office developments and enter-

tainment complexes along major highway

intersections (FISHMAN, 1990. 27). These

new environments are no longer subordinate

to the old city, as the word sub-urb (“under”

the city, from Latin) suggests. They are much

more varied and complicated than previously

imagined. Rarely guided by homogenous log-

ics of typology or pattern, their topographies,

social and economic histories develop and

mature over time, creating multiple layers of

place and meaning (HAYDEN, 2003. 235).

But for many people, the historic city still

remains the only mental representation of

the urban whole. For them, the myth of the

old city remains compelling (BRAVO, 2012).

Its centrality, density, well defined morphol-

ogy and walkability, compared to the frag-

mentation and heterogeneity of the suburban

cityscapes, still exercises a deep influence on

collective thought. Many Europeans cannot

imagine a city without a historical centre,

even though the inhabited area outside the

historical perimeter may be ten times as

large (SIEVERTS, 2003. 18).

2 DISCOV ERING P UBL IC L IF E

Thus the contemporary city exists as a series

of contradictions: compact versus modern,

historic versus suburban, too full versus too

empty, figure versus ground, over-defined

versus undefined space, pedestrian use

versus automobile and public transportation.

This polarisation hides the fact that these two

disparate conditions mutually constitute a

single urban whole, and that intervening on

one will affect the other. The city and suburb

are interdependent but their connections and

relationships remain elusive if investigated

only through physical form, through conven-

tional approaches to “public space” research,

focusing exclusively on urban patterns and

space. To become visible, these connections

must be analysed through the actual ways in

which humans aggregate. This will identify

places whose significance has been pro-

duced by the community and its social life.

Theories of urban morphology, based on

historical patterns such as those promoted

by New Urbanists, search the urban past for

useful principles to apply to sprawling envi-

ronments. Their criticisms of the modern city

are based on urban morphology and figure-

ground diagrams. As a result, they consider

a lack of density, the absence of a coherent

urban fabric, the presence of large housing

developments, unconventional public spaces,

big box retail stores, widespread automobile

use, poor walkability, and dispersed func-

tions reasons to attack suburbs as ugly and

uninteresting. They urge designers to use

traditional forms of architecture and public

space. They are not interested in understand-

ing the urban whole and the ways city and

suburb might grow and develop by respond-

ing to human behaviour. Instead, they apply

town-making codes and an architectural

lexicon based on history to provide useable

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morphologies. They claim that these design

principles will create a sense of place that

will reinvigorate urban community and im-

prove public life (ROBBINS, 2004. 216).

Instead, we argue that cities should be

designed around the everyday activities of

urban and suburban residents, such as work-

ing, commuting, walking, shopping, buying

and eating food. In American urban design

theory the concept of “everyday space” iden-

tifies the physical domain of everyday public

activity, of ordinary places that function as

connective tissue binding daily lives together

(CHASE et al., 2008. 6). These spaces can be

ambiguous, obvious, banal, un-designed or

invisible but with the potential to foster new

forms of social interaction even if they work

as collective places only a few hours during

the day or only a few days during the week

or the month. This reverses conventional

concepts of “public” and “space.” Instead

of reproducing the morphology of “public

spaces”, we should examine the activities of

different “publics”, observing the temporal

rhythms and daily itineraries that define their

spaces. This allows us to discover how these

spaces appear, disappear and reappear.

Often such common places as vacant lots,

sidewalks, front yards, parks, and parking

lots (BEN-JOSEPH, 2012) serve as public

space for private, commercial and domestic

purposes. In this way, the social life of differ-

ent “publics” produces places with commu-

nity significance.

These spaces, both urban and suburban,

constitute an “Everyday Urbanism”, continu-

ally shaped by communities and redefined by

their transitory activities. Apparently empty

of significance, such open-minded spaces

(WALZER, 1986. 470) can acquire constantly

changing meanings – social, aesthetic, politi-

cal and economic – as their users reorganise

and reinterpret them (CHASE et al., 2008. 29).

3 RECL A IMING “P UBL IC S”: AC T IONS A ND E X P ERI -

MEN T S OF SOCI A L ENG AGEMEN T

Increasingly, people and groups around the

world are producing their own everyday

urbanism: their activities bring incremental

improvements to streets, blocks and neigh-

bourhoods through use, small -scale informal

urban design and spontaneous interventions

of micro-urbanism. Often the results are tem-

porary but they can have a great impact on

residential communities. They utilise existing

spaces or require minimal investment, infus-

ing places with value and meaning (LANG

HO, 2012). 124 projects representing this kind

of urban activism or “tactical urbanism”

were shown in 2012 at the Venice Biennale,

United States of America pavilion, celebrat-

ing widespread desires for good places and

for the freedom to improve everyday public

life. These improvements can take place even

when there is no client, no architect and no

authority to sanction them.

Some empirical examples from Northern

California clarify how this works. Neither

Berkeley nor Oakland has an important his-

toric centre or public square following the Eu-

ropean model. Oakland’s Civic Center plaza

is a place where city workers eat their lunch

in good weather. The green square across

from the Berkeley City Hall is used mostly for

skateboarding and selling drugs to Berkeley

High students. Yet Oakland and Berkeley resi-

dents create rich public lives by assembling

a personal mosaic from the many different

kinds of public experiences available to them.

These experiences occur in multiple spaces

and times. They do not privilege central-

ity but exist anywhere in the city. Most do

not require specially designed spaces, but

appropriate urban streets and sidewalks,

transforming them through human occupa-

tion. They may occur daily, weekly, monthly,

or yearly.

One such everyday space is the corner

of Vine and Walnut streets in North Berke-

ley. Attracting different publics that change

throughout the day creates a lively sociable

space. Every morning, Peet’s Coffee serves

a varied public of early commuters who pass

through on their way to work, replaced by

students and writers who settle in with their

computers. Nearby groups of senior citi-

zens and people in wheelchairs gather daily,

enjoying the sun on planters and benches,

often accompanied by their dogs, which are

forbidden to enter Peet’s. Across the street,

the Quaker Meetinghouse houses a pre-

school and social services. Mothers dropping

off their children chat, heading to Peet’s for

longer conversations. Social service clients

claim the Meetinghouse steps, talking to

each other and passers-by. By 8:30 contrac-

tors, ready for work, gather to exchange

experiences in the benches across the street,

drinking their coffee. As the day progresses,

other publics, following their daily routines,

occupy these spaces in a complex orchestra-

tion involving a broad cross-section of the

city’s residents.

Every Thursday evening, a mobile “food

truck” event takes place on a little-used

street nearby. Around 6pm, food trucks with

offerings ranging from Filipino cuisine to

Chairman Bao Chinese dumplings to Crème

Brûlée pull in and open up. It is a festive

event, with crowds numbering in the hun-

dreds eating and drinking together on the

street. Three hours later, usually sold out,

the trucks close up and leave, chairs are col-

lected, trash removed and the street reverts

to its normal use. Similar food truck events

happen all over the Bay area with a changing

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calendar of times and places. The first Friday

of every month, a nondescript stretch of

Telegraph Avenue in Oakland closes down

for the Art Murmur. Originally generated by a

cluster of art galleries in the neighbourhood

who stayed open in the evening, it has grown

into a mega-event, with additional galleries,

one-night art installations, social and politi-

cal events, vendors, music performances

and even a food truck zone, using minimal

infrastructure. The original five-block site

has expanded to accommodate these new

activities. Similarly, the time, originally 6 to 9,

now extends until midnight. New art-related

businesses have located nearby to take

advantage of the event. The Oakland police

close off the streets and gallery owners clean

up. Other cities host similar regular events,

organised around art.

The first Sunday in September, the entire

two-mile stretch of Solano Avenue in North

Berkeley becomes the “Solano Stroll”.

Sponsored by the street’s merchants, it is a

day-long family-oriented street fair, featur-

ing rides and activities for children, marching

bands and displays from local schools, and

commercial booths selling food and goods.

Political groups of all kinds, civic, cultural,

and charitable organisations set up tables to

publicise their concerns. Hundreds of people

participate in the event and thousands more

attend. Although its sponsorship may classify

it as a commercial event, it attracts a diverse

crowd from across the city, celebrating a civic

engagement.

Randomly scheduled events also

proliferate. On Oct. 7th, Berkeley hosted its

first “Sunday Streets.” Seventeen blocks of

Shattuck Avenue, the city’s main commer-

cial street, were closed to traffic, so people

could bike, walk, or roller skate. Local groups

offered free events along the street. But not

every event is welcome – even Berkeley has

drawn strict lines about what is permissi-

ble. In 2009, the city banned the 13-year-old

event, “How Berkeley Can You Be”, a free

form, self-organised parade: popular for art

cars and parodies of political and social is-

sues, the parade’s free-flowing beer, nudity,

and flame throwing disturbed city officials.

This menu of varied events occurring at

different times all over the city offers resi-

dents many choices and opportunities to par-

ticipate in public life. Multiple locations bring

visitors to different and often less privileged

parts of the city, equalising them with better-

known and more valued areas. Since they

do not require singular or designed places,

their spaces can expand or contract with their

popularity. If people abandon them, they can

disappear without damaging the city fabric.

New ideas, events and spaces can appear

without physical transformation.

Similar types of do-it-yourself urbanism

are widespread in Europe and elsewhere.

Multiple examples of social engagement and

“lighter, quicker, cheaper” (as defined by the

non-profit Project for Public Spaces) inter-

ventions are taking place in historic cities and

suburbs, through actions of “tactical urban-

ism” (LYDON, 2011).

In Rome, a group of Italian artists and

architects, “Osservatorio Nomade”, working

as Stalker/on Laboratory, proposed experi-

mental strategies, using playful and interac-

tive tactics, to promote creative interactions

between the urban environment and its citi-

zens. Between 2004 and 2005 they created a

project, “Immaginare Corviale”, in a 958-me-

tre-long housing estate on the periphery

of Rome. Examining how public space and ar-

chitecture is transformed by daily existence,

they explored behaviours, uses and interpre-

tations of space. Establishing relationships

with residents and users, they proposed a

new public space inside the building, to be

shaped according to the different needs of

its residents. With the residents they created

an experimental TV station, “The Corviale

network”, a self-produced media channel that

was transmitted throughout the city (GEN-

NARI SANTORI, 2006. 114).

In 2011, the city of Bologna introduced

a participatory project called “Di nuovo in

centro”, involving citizens in improving pe-

destrian use of the inner core of the historic

city and the liveability of public spaces.

Micro-interventions of street pavement and

furniture, such as Wi-Fi, green spots, public

toilets, benches, road signs and waste collec-

tion, are aimed at creating comfortable and

tidy pedestrian paths and bike lanes where

cars are severely limited. Two main streets

into the main square (Piazza Maggiore) will

be transformed for complete pedestrian

use during weekends (T-days), as part of

a network of squares inside the historical

perimeter defined by commercial and cultural

activities. The project, although focused on

reorganising transportation/pedestrian flows

inside the centre, also supports urban activ-

ism and social engagement to create informal

public spaces, along the streets, in a parking

square or in an under-used place, as a meet-

ing point for everyday community life.

In 2010 an urban experiment promoted

in Bologna by the cultural association called

“Centotrecento”, demonstrated how a

narrow street could be transformed into a

successful neighbourhood tiny square, full

of people and activities. Just by removing

parked cars, an open space can become

more familiar, more domestic and more like

an interior, where it is possible to seat, eat

and converse like home. This creative and

innovative proposal, architect Stefano Reyes’

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graduation thesis, has deeply influenced

public opinion, opening up new possibili-

ties for encouraging genuine urbanity and

invigorating the idea of what a city can be.

4 CONCLUSION

How can we, as architects, engineers, urban

designers and planners, help link design and

top-down planning with bottom-up activism

to produce projects addressing everyday

public experiences? The answer can be found

somewhere in between. But first of all it is

necessary to change our point of view and

to establish a new approach to urban design

based on people and everyday spaces.

We should start by considering the city

as the whole that it really is, instead of what

it was or what it should be. We should find

ways to equalise the whole territory in terms

of value, land use and intervention. We need

to define new concepts and images designed

to understand and to define the entire existing

urban landscape, where historic good and

suburban bad taste coexist. This will produce

a more complex, nuanced and satisfactory

urbanism. In order to examine how people use

designed and non-designed places, we need

new tools, such as “everyday cartography”, a

technique that unveils real public life (KIM,

2014). These investigations should include

both formal and informal practices, identify

different publics and explore the ways differ-

ent activities and social geographies co-exist

in space. By deepening the urban analysis

and examining people’s paths, we can map

connections between entertainment, leisure,

working and residential spaces. We must

understand how sharing, appropriation and

participation mix the public with the private.

In short, we must document what is now

undocumented.

Finally, we should activate these theories

and knowledge. Historic centres should be

designed for living, not preserved as artefacts.

They should include contemporary functions,

such as stores providing daily needs, encour-

age transformation of existing buildings and

support contemporary design. We must accept

the presence of cars, without allowing them to

control the city. We must work on opportuni-

ties for the city as a unique whole, balancing

urban and suburban, density and functions,

facilities and publics, designing connections,

corridors or sequences able to generate spa-

tial relationships between different parts and

to stimulate new centres for public life. Urban

designers, acting as a part of contemporary

society, rather than superior or outside it, must

go beyond existing approaches and rethink

how to create physical and social equality.

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F IGURES

1

Bologna ( I t al y ) , p iaz za Galvani . A

place to s i t , sur rounded by beaut i ful

palaces and monuments, look ing

around ( image by Luisa Bravo) .

2

Berkeley (USA ) , Shat tuck Avenue. A

place to s i t , under a t ree on a t ra f f ic

is land, in f ront o f a c rowded p iz za

shop ( image by Luisa Bravo) .

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