The examples and perspective in this United States may not represent a worldwide view of the subject. Please improve this article and discuss the issue on the talk page. (September 2011)

Urban space (Florence)

One of the earliest examples of public spaces are commons. For example, no fees or paid tickets are required for entry. Non-government-owned malls are examples of 'private space' with the appearance of being 'public space'.

A public space is a social space such as a town square that is generally open and accessible. Public space has also become something of a touchstone for critical theory in relation to philosophy, (urban) geography, visual art, cultural studies, social studies and urban design. The term 'public space' is also often misconstrued to mean other things such as 'gathering place', which is an element of the larger concept of social space.

Definition[link]

Areas of usage[link]

Most streets, including the pavement, are considered public space, as are town squares or parks. Government buildings which are open to the public, such as public libraries are public space. Although not considered public space, privately owned buildings or property visible from sidewalks and public thoroughfares may affect the public visual landscape, for example, by outdoor advertising.

In Nordic countries like Norway, Sweden and Finland, all nature areas are considered public space, due to a law, the allemansrätten (the right to common passage).

Restrictions on state action in public spaces in the United States[link]

In the United States the right of the people to engage in speech and assembly in public places may not be unreasonably restricted by the federal or state government.^[2] The government cannot usually limit one's speech beyond what is reasonable in a public space, which is considered to be a public forum (that is, screaming epithets at passers-by can be stopped; proselytizing one's religion probably cannot). In a private—that is, non-public—forum, the government can control one's speech to a much greater degree; for instance, protesting one's objection to medicare reform will not be tolerated in the gallery of the United States Senate. This is not to say that the government can control what you say in your own home or to others; it can only control government property in this way. The concept of a public forum is not limited to physical space or public property, for example, a newspaper might be considered a public forum, but see Forum (legal) as the term has a specific meaning in United States law.

Parks, malls, beaches, waiting rooms, etc., may be closed at night. As this does not exclude any specific group, it is generally not considered a restriction on public use. Entry to public parks cannot be restricted based upon a user's residence. http://classweb.gmu.edu/jkozlows/lawarts/10OCT01.pdf

Social norms in public spaces[link]

In some cultures, there is no expectation of privacy in a public space, however civil inattention is a process whereby individuals are able to maintain their privacy within a crowd.

Eating and drinking in an outside public place during Ramadan in an Islamic country is sometimes not appreciated. In some Islamic Theocracies it is a punishable offense enforced by religious police.

Controversy and privatization[link]

Leyton Marshes, London, an example of land with long established rights of access, and equally long-standing restrictions

Public space is commonly shared and created for open usage throughout the community, whereas private space is individually or corporately owned. The area is built for a range of various recreation and entertainment. The physical setting is socially constructed which creates a behavior influence. Limitations are imposed in the space to prevent certain actions from occurring; public behavior that is considered obnoxious or out of character (i.e., drug and alcohol consumption, urinating, indecent exposure, etc.) are supported by law or ordinance. Through the landscape and spatial organization of public space, the social construction is considered to be privately ruled: by the implicit and explicit rules and expectations of the space that are enforced.

Which is generally considered that everyone has a right to access and use public space, as opposed to private space which may have restrictions, there has been some academic interest in how public spaces are managed to exclude certain groups - specifically homeless^[3] people and young^[4] people.

Measures are taken to make the public space less attractive to them, including the removal or design of benches to restrict their use for sleeping and resting, restricting access to certain times, locking indoor/enclosed areas. Police forces are sometimes involved in moving 'unwanted' members of the public from public spaces. In fact, by not being provided suitable access, disabled people are implicitly excluded from some spaces.

Further, beginning roughly in the 1960s, the wholesale privatization of public space (especially in urban centers) has become a fact of western society, and has faced criticism from citizen groups such as the Open Spaces Society. Private-public partnerships have taken significant control of public parks and playgrounds through conservancy groups set up to manage what is considered unmanageable by public agencies. Corporate sponsorship of public leisure areas is ubiquitous, giving open space to the public in exchange for higher air rights. This facilitates the construction of taller buildings with private parks; accessible only to those deemed fit. In one of the newer incarnations of the private-public partnership, the business improvement district (BID), private organizations are allowed to tax local businesses and retail establishments so that they might provide special private services such as policing and increased surveillance, trash removal, or street renovation, all of which once fell under the control of public funds.

Semi-public spaces[link]

A broader meaning of public space or place includes also places where everybody can come if they pay, like a café, train, or movie theater. A shop is an example of what is intermediate between the two meanings: everybody can enter and look around without obligation to buy, but activities unrelated to the purpose of the shop are not unlimitedly permitted.

The halls and streets (including skyways) in a shopping center may be declared a public place and may be open when the shops are closed. Similarly for halls, railway platforms and waiting rooms of public transport; sometimes a travelling ticket is required. A public library is a public place. A rest stop or truck stop is a public space.

For these "semi-public" spaces stricter rules may apply than outside, e.g. regarding dress code, trading, begging, advertising, propaganda, riding rollerskates, skateboards, a Segway, etc.

Public space in design theory[link]

Public space, as a term and as a concept in design, is volatile. There is much conversation around what constitutes public space, what role it plays, and how design should approach and deal with it.

Historical shift[link]

Historically, public space in the west has been limited to town centres, piazzas, church squares, i.e. nearly always engineered around a central monument, which informs the program of the space. These spaces acted as the 'commons' of the people; a political, social and cultural arena, indeed Jürgen Habermas' concept of the public sphere links its emergence with the development of democracy ^[5]. A good example of this is the New Deal projects. The New Deal was a brief period in the US under Roosevelt's government that produced a huge number of public works in an economic effort to boost employment during the depression. The result, however, was more than this. They constituted a legacy of what has been called the cultural infrastructure underlying American public space.^[6] The New Deal projects have been credited with significantly contributing to the quality of American life and encouraging unity between all aspects of the community. It has been recently argued, however, that the democratic ideal of public life through the use of public space has deteriorated. As our cities accelerate towards segregation (social, economic, cultural, ethnic), the opportunity for public interaction is on the decline. John Chase writes, “The importance of voluntary and obligatory participation in civic life has been usurped by the consciousness of the arbitrary nature of assigned cultural meanings and by the increasingly important role that consumption of goods and services plays in the formation of individual identity.”^[7]

Modern critique[link]

Modern architectural critics have lamented on the ‘narrative of loss’ within the public sphere. That is, modern society has withdrawn from public life that used to inform city centres. Political and social needs, and forums for expression, can now be accessed from the home. This sentiment is reflected in Michael Sorkin’s and Mike Davis’ declaration of “the end of public space” and the “destruction of any truly democratic urban spaces.”^[8] Another side of the debate, however, argues that it is people who apply meaning to public space, wherever it may be. It has been suggested that the concepts of public, space, democracy, and citizenship are being redefined by people through lived experience.^[9] Discussion has surfaced around the idea that, historically, public space has been inherently contradictory in the way that it has always been exclusive in who has been able to participate. This has caused the “counterpublics”, as identified by Nancy Fraser,^[10] to establish their own public spaces to respond to their own concerns. These spaces are in constant flux, and in response, its users restructure and reinterpret physical space. An example of this is in the African-American neighbourhood, Baldwin Hills, Los Angeles. Here, a parking lot has evolved into a scene of intense commercial and social activity. Locals gather here to meet and socialise, sell and consume goods. The example has been used to illustrate that the historical ideal of fixed public space around a monument is not viable for a contemporary diverse social range as “no single physical space can represent a completely inclusive ‘space of democracy’.”^[11]

Art in public space[link]

Main Article: Public Art

This sense of flux and change, informs how contemporary public art has evolved. Temporal art in public spaces has been a long established practice. But the presence of public art has become increasingly prevalent and important within our contemporary cities. Temporal public art is so important because of its ability to respond to, reflect, and explore the context which it inhabits. Patricia Phillips describes the “social desire for an art that is contemporary and timely, that responds to and reflects its temporal and circumstantial context.”^[12] Public art is an arena for investigation, exploration and articulation of the dense and diverse public landscape. Public art asks its audience to re-imagine, re-experience, re-view and re-live. In the design field, a heavy focus has been turned onto the city as needing to discover new and inspired ways to re-use, re-establish and re-invent the city, in step with an invigorated interest in re-juvinating our cities for a sustainable future. Contemporary design has become obsessed with the need to save the modern city from an industrialised, commercialised, urban pit of a death bed.

Approaching urban design[link]

Contemporary perception of public space has now branched and grown into a multitude of non-traditional sites with a variety of programs in mind. It is for this reason that the way in which design deals with public space as a discipline, has become such a diverse and indefinable field.

Iris Aravot puts forward an interesting approach to the urban design process, with the idea of the ‘narrative-myth’. Aravot argues that “conventional analysis and problem solving methods result in fragmentation…of the authentic experience of a city…[and] something of the liveliness of the city as a singular entity is lost.”^[13] The process of developing a narrative-myth in urban design involves analysing and understanding the unique aspects of the local culture based on Cassirer’s five distinctive “symbolic forms”.^[14] They are myth and religion, art, language, history and science; aspects often disregarded by professional practice. Aravot suggests that the narrative-myth “imposes meaning specifically on what is still inexplicable”, i.e. the essence of a city.

Footnotes[link]

References[link]

• 1. Illegal to be Homeless. National Coalition for the Homeless (2004).
• 2. Maasik, Sonia, and Jack Solomon. Signs of Life in the USA Readings on Popular Culture for Writers. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2006.
• 3. Malone, K. "Children, Youth and Sustainable Cities". Local Environment 6 (1).
• 4. "Conclusions of the International Seminar on the Planning of Collectively-Used Spaces in Towns", in: Monumentum (Louvain), Vol. 18-19, 1979, pp. 129-135.

See also[link]

External links[link]

• European Archive of Urban Public Space

Adam Greenfield is an American writer and designer, and is the founder and managing director of urban-systems design practice Urbanscale, based in New York. From 2008 to 2010 he was Nokia's head of design direction for user interface and services. He was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 1968.

Early life[link]

Greenfield graduated from New York University in 1989, earning a Bachelor of Arts degree in Cultural Studies. In 1995, he enlisted in the United States Army's reserve component Special Operations Command as a Psychological Operations specialist, holding MOS 37F and eventually achieving the grade of Sergeant.

Career[link]

After leaving the Army, Greenfield took up work in the then-nascent field of information architecture for the World Wide Web, holding a succession of prominent positions culminating in employment at the Tokyo office of Razorfish, where he was head of the information architecture department.

He co-taught a class in the 2006 and 2007 academic years called Urban Computing at New York University's Interactive Telecommunications Program with Kevin Slavin of New York design practice area/code.

Greenfield had earlier proposed an "open-source constitution for post-national states" called the Minimal Compact, although he appears to have done little work on this project in recent years. He is also credited with having coined the word "moblog" to describe the practice of publishing to the World Wide Web from mobile devices, and having organised a conference devoted to discussing this practice in Tokyo in mid-2003.

He is generally considered to be a thought leader in the information architecture and user experience professions. Greenfield maintains a personal Web site called Speedbird. In 2010 he founded an urban-systems design practice in New York, Urbanscale, which specialises in "design for networked cities and citizens."

Publications[link]

Greenfield is best known for his 2006 book Everyware: The dawning age of ubiquitous computing (ISBN 0-321-38401-6), which has been called "groundbreaking" by Bruce Sterling: "One puts it down with a strange conviction that web-designers have transcended geekdom and achieved Zen soulfulness."

In 2007, he co-authored the book Urban Computing and its Discontents (ISBN 978-0-9800994-0-9), which was an overview of informatics for urban environments.

He is in the process of writing his second book, the upcoming "The City Is Here For You To Use: Urban form and experience in the age of ubiquitous computing," expected in 2012.

Personal life[link]

He resides in New York City, with his wife, artist Nurri Kim.

See also[link]

• moblog
• ubiquitous computing

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Adam Greenfield

• Urbanscale
• Lift Asia talk on "The long here, the big now"
• [1], "IA or not IA," Greenfield's farewell to information architecture
• Discussion with Adam Greenfield on The WELL
• Minimal Compact on archive.org
• Video of a Greenfield presentation in Tokyo, via Boing Boing
• proposed ethical guidelines for developers of ubiquitous-computing environments
• Podcast interview on Talk News India where Greenfield talks about his book "Everyware: The Dawning Age of Ubiquitous Computing"
• "Urban Computing and its Discontents", a freely downloadable pamphlet co-authored with Mark Shepard

Fred Kent is the founder and president of the non profit organization Project for Public Spaces. The organization is dedicated to creating public places that foster communities.

He studied with Margaret Mead and worked with William H. Whyte on the Street Life Project, assisting in observations and film analysis of corporate plazas, urban streets, parks and other open spaces in New York City.^[1]

In 1968, Fred founded the Academy for Black and Latin Education (ABLE), a street academy for high school dropouts. He was Program Director for the Mayor's Council on the Environment in New York City under Mayor John Lindsay. In 1970, and again in 1990, Fred was the coordinator and chairman of New York City's Earth Day.^[1]

Fred is also an avid photographer, shooting thousands photographs of public spaces and their users.

Education[link]

He attended Columbia University where he studied Geography, Economics, Transportation, Planning, and Anthropology.

References[link]

1. ^ ^{a b} Fred Kent « Project for Public Spaces - Placemaking for Communities Archived 15 December 2010 at WebCite

• Project for Public Spaces
• 2000 profile from The Town Paper

External links[link]

• Fred Kent Papers at the Seeley G. Mudd Manuscript Library, Princeton University
• Listen to an interview with Fred Kent on CBC’s "The Current," October 24, 2005

"Some exciting new solutions to bad city planning and urban design are being discussed this week in Regina. It's called "Building Our Communities: A National Conference on Community Sustainability." One of the speakers is Fred Kent. His company, the New York-based Project For Public Spaces, teaches cities how to create a sense of place within their bleaker blocks. For instance he's responsible for the redesign of Bryant Park in front of the New York Public Library. It used to be a haven for drug dealers and thieves and now it's a hugely popular public gathering spot."

Richard Meier
Richard Meier in New York City, April 2009.
Born	October 12, 1934 Newark, New Jersey
Nationality	American
Awards	Pritzker Prize (1984)
Work
Practice	Richard Meier & Partners
Buildings	Barcelona Museum of Contemporary Art City Hall and Central Library, The Hague Getty Center, Los Angeles

For the American urban planner, see Richard L. Meier

Richard Meier (born October 12, 1934) is an American architect, whose rationalist buildings make prominent use of the color white.

Biography[link]

Meier is Jewish ^[1] and was born in Newark, New Jersey. ^[2] He earned a Bachelor of Architecture degree from Cornell University in 1957, worked for Skidmore, Owings and Merrill briefly in 1959, and then for Marcel Breuer for three years, prior to starting his own practice in New York in 1963. Identified as one of The New York Five in 1972, his commission of the Getty Center in Los Angeles, California catapulted his popularity into the mainstream. Richard Meier & Partners Architects has offices in New York and Los Angeles with current projects ranging from China and Tel Aviv to Paris and Hamburg.

Much of Meier's work builds on the work of architects of the early to mid-20th century, especially that of Le Corbusier and, in particular, Le Corbusier's early phase. Meier has built more using Corbusier's ideas than anyone, including Le Corbusier himself^{[citation needed]}. Meier expanded many ideas evident in Le Corbusier's work, particularly the Villa Savoye and the Swiss Pavilion.

Getty Center, Los Angeles

His work also reflects the influences of other designers such as Mies Van der Rohe and, in some instances, Frank Lloyd Wright and Luis Barragán (without the colour)^{[citation needed]}. White has been used in many architectural landmark buildings throughout history, including cathedrals and the white-washed villages of the Mediterranean region, in Spain, southern Italy and Greece.

In 1984, Meier was awarded the Pritzker Prize.^[3] In 2008, he won the gold medal in architecture from the Academy of Arts and Letters^[4] and his work Jesolo Lido Village was awarded the Dedalo Minosse International Prize for commissioning a building.^[5] Meier is a Senior Fellow of the Design Futures Council.^[6]

The Mayor of Rome Gianni Alemanno included in his campaign platform a promise to tear down the big travertine wall of Meier's Ara Pacis.^{[citation needed]} Mayor Alemmano has since changed his stance on the building and has agreed with Mr. Meier to modifications including drastically reducing the height of the wall between an open-air space outside the museum and a busy road along the Tiber river. The city plans to build a wide pedestrian area along the river and run the road underneath it. "It's an improvement," says Meier, adding that "the reason that wall was there has to do with traffic and noise. Once that is eliminated, the idea of opening the piazza to the river is a good one." The mayor’s office said Alemanno hopes to complete the project before the end of his term in 2013.^[7]

Meier is also the second cousin of the architect, theorist, and fellow member of The New York Five, Peter Eisenman.

Works[link]

Barcelona Museum of Contemporary Art

The Atheneum in New Harmony, Indiana, United States.

Museum of Television and Radio, Beverly Hills, California

Ara Pacis Museum, Rome

• Westbeth Artists Community, New York City, 1970
• Condominium of the Olivetti Training Center in Tarrytown, New York, 1971
• Meier House, Essex Fells, New Jersey, 1965
• Smith House, Darien, Connecticut, 1965–1967
• Douglas House, Harbor Springs, Michigan, 1973 [1]
• Bronx Developmental Center, The Bronx, New York, 1976
• The Atheneum, New Harmony, Indiana, 1979
• High Museum of Art, Atlanta, Georgia, 1983
• Modern Art Wing Des Moines Art Center, Des Moines, Iowa, 1984
• Daimler-Benz Forschungszentrum, today: Daimler Forschungszentrum, Ulm, Germany, 1992
• Stadthaus Ulm, Ulm, Germany, 1994
• Barcelona Museum of Contemporary Art, Barcelona, Spain, 1995
• City Hall and Central Library, The Hague, Netherlands, 1995
• Edinburgh Park Masterplan, 1995
• Rachofsky House, Dallas, Texas, 1996
• Neugebauer House, Naples, Florida, 1998 [2]
• The Paley Center for Media, formerly The Museum of Television & Radio, Beverly Hills, California, 1996
• Getty Center, Los Angeles, California, 1997 [3]
• Camden Medical Centre, Singapore, 1998
• White Plaza, Basel, Switzerland, 1998
• 173/176 Perry Street, Manhattan, 1999–2002
• Sandra Day O'Connor United States Courthouse, Phoenix, Arizona, 2000
• Peek & Cloppenburg flagship store, Düsseldorf, Germany, 2001
• Centre for Possibility thinking, Garden Grove, California, 2003^[8]
• Jubilee Church, Rome, Italy 2003 [4]
• Museum Frieder Burda, Baden Baden, Germany, 2004
• Ara Pacis Museum, Rome, Italy, 2006 [5] (There has been talk of dismantling and relocating the museum since the election of Gianni Alemanno in 2008^[9])
• City Tower, Prague, Czech Republic, 2004–2007
• Arp Museum, Remagen-Rolandseck, Germany 2008 [6]
• San Jose City Hall, San Jose, California, 2004–2007
• University of Scranton, Connolly Hall, 2007
• Weill Hall, Ithaca, New York, 2008
• Meier Tower, Tel Aviv, Israel (2008–present)
• On Prospect Park, Brooklyn, NY, 2003-2008^[10]
• International Coffee Plaza, Hamburg, Germany, 2010 [7]
• Vinci Partners Corporate Headquarters, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, 2012 ^[11]

References[link]

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Richard Meier

• Richard Meier official website
• Richard Meier in the National Gallery of Australia's Kenneth Tyler collection
• Official "Meier Tower" website
• Architecture of the Getty Center
• Ara Pacis Museum, Rome
• Burda Museum website
• Rachofsky House website
• An appreciation of the Hague City Hall
• Collages by Richard Meier
• Richard Meier video at Web of Stories
• "Big Red/Meier white," Cornell 50th reunion video

Getty Center.