Rites of Way

Description

There are many ways to approach the subject of public space: the threats posed to it by surveillance and visual pollution; the joys it offers of stimulation and excitement, of anonymity and transformation; its importance to urban variety or democratic politics. But public space remains an evanescent and multidimensional concept that too often escapes scrutiny.

The essays in Rites of Way: The Politics and Poetics of Public Space open up multiple dimensions of the concept from architectural, political, philosophical, and technological points of view. There is some historical analysis here, but the contributors are more focused on the future of public space under conditions of growing urbanization and democratic confusion. The added interest offered by non-academic work—visual art, fiction, poetry, and drama—is in part an admission that this is a topic too important to be left only to theorists. It also makes an implicit argument for the crucial role that art, not just public art, plays in a thriving public realm.

Throughout this work contributors are guided by the conviction, not pious but steely, that healthy public space is one of the best, living parts of a just society. The paths of desire we follow in public trace and speak our convictions and needs, our interests and foibles. They are the vectors and walkways of the social, the public dimension of life lying at the heart of all politics.

Sujets

• Art
• Cultural Studies

Informations

• Publié par: Wilfrid Laurier University Press
• Date de parution: 07 avril 2011
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781554587230
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 2 Mo

Extrait

RITES OF WAY
Canadian Commentaries
Published in conjunction with the Literary Review of Canada , Canadian Commentaries features prominent writers exploring key issues affecting Canadians and the world. A lead essay commissioned by the LRC becomes the ground for responses by others, opening a place for a spectrum of views and debate.
We welcome manuscripts from Canadian authors. For further information, please contact the Series Editor:
Dr. Janice Gross Stein
Director, Munk Centre for International Studies
University of Toronto
1 Devonshire Place
Toronto, ON M5S 3K7
Canada
Phone: [phone]
Fax: [phone]
Email: [e-mail]
Mark Kingwell and Patrick Turmel, editors
RITES OF WAY
The Politics and Poetics of Public Space
We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts for our publishing program. We acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program for our publishing activities.

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Rites of way : the politics and poetics of public space / Mark Kingwell and Patrick Turmel, editors.
(Canadian Commentaries series)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Issued also in electronic format.
ISBN 978-1-55458-153-5
1. Public spaces. 2. Public spaces-Political aspects. 3. Public spaces-Social aspects. I. Kingwell, Mark, 1963- II. Turmel, Patrick, 1976- III. Series: Canadian Commentaries series
NA9053.S6R575 2009 307.1 216 c2009-903691-6
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Rites of way [electronic resource] : the politics and poetics of public space / Mark Kingwell and Patrick Turmel, editors.
(Canadian Commentaries series)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Electronic edited collection in PDF, ePub, and XML formats. Issued also in print format.
ISBN 978-1-55458-167-2
1. Public spaces. 2. Public spaces-Political aspects. 3. Public spaces-Social aspects. I. Kingwell, Mark, 1963- II. Turmel, Patrick, 1976- III. Series: Canadian Commentaries series
NA9053.S6R575 2009 307.1 216
Cover photograph by Lisa Klapstock: detail of Beige Cube Chair (from the Living Room series), 2002. Cover design by Blakeley Words+Pictures. Text design by C. Bonas-Taylor.
2009 Wilfrid Laurier University Press
Waterloo, Ontario, Canada
www.wlupress.wlu.ca
The excerpt from Private Jokes, Public Places , by Oren Safdie, is used with the permission of the playwright. The play was first published by Playwrights Canada Press. The excerpt from How Insensitive , by Russell Smith, is reprinted with the permission of the Porcupine s Quill. The novel was originally published by the Porcupine s Quill in 1994. The four excerpts from Occasional Work and Seven Walks from the Office for Soft Architecture , by Lisa Robertson, are reprinted with the permission of the author. The photographs on the part-opening pages- Girl Falling (page 1), Synagogue, Montreal (page 27), Crime Scene (page 69), and 132 Berry Road (page 121)-are reproduced with the permission of the photographer, Robin Collyer. Robin Collyer is represented by the Susan Hobbs Gallery, Toronto.
This book is printed on FSC recycled paper and is certified Ecologo. It is made from 100% post-consumer fibre, processed chlorine free, and manufactured using biogas energy.
Printed in Canada
Every reasonable effort has been made to acquire permission for copyright material used in this text, and to acknowledge all such indebtedness accurately. Any errors and omissions called to the publisher s attention will be corrected in future printings.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior written consent of the publisher or a licence from The Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency (Access Copyright). For an Access Copyright licence, visit www.accesscopyright.ca or call toll free to 1-800-893-5777.
CONTENTS
Acknowledgements
Introduction: Rites of Way, Paths of Desire
M ARK K INGWELL AND P ATRICK T URMEL
PART I
Masters of Chancery: The Gift of Public Space
M ARK K INGWELL
We Wuz Robbed
J OE A LTERIO
PART II
Public Space: Lost and Found
K EN G REENBERG
Architecture and Public Space
A LBERTO P REZ -G MEZ
The Enduring Presence of the Phenomenon of the Public : Thoughts from the Arena of Architecture and Urban Design
G EORGE B AIRD
Private Jokes, Public Places : An Excerpt
O REN S AFDIE
PART III
Holistic Democracy and Physical Public Space
J OHN P ARKINSON
Public Spaces and Subversion
F RANK C UNNINGHAM
Take to the Streets! Why We Need Street Festivals to Know Our Civic Selves
S HAWN M ICALLEF
How Insensitive : An Excerpt
R USSELL S MITH
PART IV
Beauty Goes Public
N ICK M OUNT
Protect the Net: The Looming Destruction of the Global Communications Environment
R ON D EIBERT
The City as Public Space
P ATRICK T URMEL
walks from the office for soft architecture
L ISA R OBERTSON
Contributors
Index
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Our thanks to the contributors, whose distinctive and insightful interventions have made for a book we hope will significantly advance the debate about public space. This collection is part of a series called Canadian Commentaries. We have certainly included Canadian voices and Canadian experiences in what follows. But the subject of public space is, like Canada s own cities and spaces, beyond restriction to a given nation, and so we also embrace work that makes connections to other sites, particularly ones in the United States and Britain. Books, especially anthologies, are public spaces in their own conversational fashion; we hope that the experience of reading this one will be like walking along the streets of a diverse, robust, stimulating urban neighbourhood.
Thanks to Bronwyn Drainie at the Literary Review of Canada , who commissioned the original essay on public space which, now revised, appears here. At Wilfrid Laurier University Press we were pleased to work with Brian Henderson, Leslie Macredie, Clare Hitchens, and Rob Kohlmeier. They have made our lives easy in ways too numerous to mention.
Julien Levac transcribed the sections of the book not available in electronic form (the excerpts from Robertson, Safdie, and Smith); Matthias Pich -Perron standardized the manuscript, which, in the manner of the day, arrived in numerous formats and styles; and Julien Delangie compiled the extensive index. Apart from the fictional excerpts and Kingwell s lead essay, the only text that was previously published is Nick Mount s essay on public beauty, which appeared in a slightly different form in Queen s Quarterly . Our thanks to Boris Castel, the editor there and a tireless champion of public discourse, for permission to use it here.
INTRODUCTION
Rites of Way, Paths of Desire
MARK KINGWELL and PATRICK TURMEL
T HE ARCHITECTURAL THEORIST CHRISTOPHER ALEXANDER, IN his monumental 1977 work A Pattern Language , traces what we might call the paths of desire that operate in buildings, walkways, towns, and cities. The pattern language of Alexander s thought is the new way of tracing those paths, allowing room for them, respecting the human interest in movement, solitude, complexity, stimulation, work, and rest. Though lately more appreciated by renegade computer programmers than workaday architects and urban planners, this is a language that, like the natural languages of our speech, allows individuals to articulate and communicate an infinite variety of designs within a formal system which gives them coherence. 1
Alexander and his colleagues examined and illustrated some 250 different aspects of this language, many of them to do with the subject of the book you hold in your hands. In particular, these thinkers were adept at plotting transitions from public to private, noting that this is never a simple or linear threshold but, often, a staggered, funnelled, or terraced series, with step-downs and in-between areas-porches, vestibules, gardens, walkways, and arcades-that complicate, stutter, and please our movement between realms. (Such thresholds are also the subject of some previous work of one of the editors, just as justice in the city has been explored by the other.) 2 But perhaps the most striking of the public-space insights in A Pattern Language comes at No. 94, Sleeping in Public.
It is a mark of success in a park, public lobby or a porch, when people come there and fall asleep, the highlighted text says, capturing the core insight of the section. In a society which nurtures people and fosters trust, the fact that people sometimes want to sleep in public is the most natural thing in the world. Such a person may have no other place to go, in which case we regard his or her sleeping as a civic gift; or, having a place to go, a person may just happen to like napping in the street.
The authors are under no illusions about such desires. In our society, sleeping in public, like loitering, is thought of as an act for criminals and the destitute. In our world, when homeless people start sleeping on public benches or in public buildings, upright citizens get nervous and the police soon restore public order. There follows a long passage from Samuel Beckett s Molloy , in which Molloy, resting his arms and head on his bicycle handles and drifting off, is confronted by just such a policeman. The question, he says, is always the same: What are you doing here? The answer he gives- Resting. -is always insuff