Loose Space

Possibility and Diversity in Urban Life

Karen Franck, Quentin Stevens, Karen Franck, Quentin Stevens

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2006
• ISBN:
  9781135993177
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Architecture
• Subtopic: Architecture General

In cities around the world people use a variety of public spaces to relax, to protest, to buy and sell, to experiment and to celebrate. Loose Space explores the many ways that urban residents, with creativity and determination, appropriate public space to meet their own needs and desires. Familiar or unexpected, spontaneous or planned, momentary or long-lasting, the activities that make urban space loose continue to give cities life and vitality.

The book examines physical spaces and how people use them. Contributors discuss a wide range of recreational, commercial and political activities; some are conventional, others are more experimental. Some of the activities occur alongside the intended uses of planned public spaces, such as sidewalks and plazas; other activities replace former uses, as in abandoned warehouses and industrial sites. The thirteen case studies, international in scope, demonstrate the continuing richness of urban public life that is created and sustained by urbanites themselves

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• Presents a fresh way of looking at urban public space, focusing on its positive uses and aspects.

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• Comprises 13 detailed, well-illustrated case studies based on sustained observation and research by social scientists, architects and urban designers.

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• Looks at a range of activities, both everyday occurrences and more unusual uses, in a variety of public spaces -- planned, leftover and abandoned.

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• Explores the spatial and the behavioral; considers the wider historical and social context.

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• Addresses issues of urban research, architecture, urban design and planning.

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• Takes a broad international perspective with cases from New York, London, Berlin, Amsterdam, Rome, Guadalajara, Athens, Tel Aviv, Melbourne, Bangkok, Kandy, Buffalo, and the North of England.

Part I Appropriation

DOI: 10.4324/9780203799574-2

People create loose space through their own actions. With their bodies they lay claim to public spaces, pursuing activities of their choice, activities not intended in the design or program of these spaces. To do so, they use the physical features of their surroundings when they find those features helpful, and overcome or ignore them when they are constraining. The authors in this section explore the more benign forms of appropriation for commercial, leisure and cultural purposes: namely, activities that occur in planned public spaces that generate little if any tension, that constitute the everyday life commonly associated with a city’s streets and squares. All three following chapters focus on particular kinds of spaces and the activities that occur there; each author explores the opportunities afforded by those spaces and the ways people exploit those opportunities.

Leanne Rivlin, in Chapter 2, notes the kinds of places that people in New York City find to engage in their own, often recreational, pursuit of public life—places that are designed for one purpose but, once chosen and appropriated, serve another. Freedom of choice is both a condition and a consequence of their discoveries of “found space.” In Chapter 3, Nisha Fernando observes the vibrant street life created by commercial and cultural activities that occur on and adjacent to sidewalks, as shopkeepers, vendors, restauranteurs and consumers make full use of the “openended” qualities of urban streets in New York’s Little Italy and Chinatown and in cities in Sri Lanka. Drawing upon the concept of liminality, in Chapter 4, Quentin Stevens recounts the playful ways both young people and adults occupy public space in Melbourne, London and Berlin as they step out, possibly just for a moment, from their daily routines, enjoying the freedom that in-between spaces and in-between times offer. Many of the leisure time activities Rivlin and Stevens describe arise from a freedom of choice. The commercial, social and ceremonial uses that Fernando outlines arise more from cultural circumstances; she is the only author in the book to examine cultural similarities and differences.

Each author describes a diversity of users and uses, focusing on access and opportunity and revealing how everyday appropriation of urban space is inclusive. Each pays close attention to the ways people use everyday features of public space to support desired activities, often in very creative ways, and bring additional props with them. The activities making the spaces loose occur in addition to their intended functions, which are typically the circulation of pedestrians and vehicles. The intended and the unintended occur side by side or they overlap and intermingle, creating moments of congestion and possibilities for tension and conflict. As recounted in these chapters, however, these circumstances help generate the density, diversity and vitality of urban public life.

Some acts of appropriation in these chapters are fleeting, others are longerlasting, sometimes extending over the course of an entire day. They may be spontaneous and unexpected or they may occur on a regular schedule, possibly every day. Thus, while actions that make space loose are not originally intended in its design, they may become expected aspects of life in particular urban neighborhoods, even contributing to the identity of those neighborhoods.

Sidewalks, streets, steps and building entryways figure prominently in this section. These kinds of spaces are fully and easily accessible, open to public view and generally perceived as safe. While people may take physical risks in them, they are not inherently dangerous places. They are reasonably well maintained and in good condition. Since the spaces are intended for circulation, or immediately adjacent to spaces of circulation, no special effort is required to discover or locate them; they appear on many people’s routes through the city. They are right there—convenient places to take a break from the everyday routine or to make a purchase, either spontaneously or pre-planned. Given their locations, the spaces in this section are generally occupied by many people and host a variety of activities. The mixing of uses is synergistic: commercial activities of buying and selling create opportunities for contact and communication and offer opportunities, as Fernando describes, for maintaining and displaying cultural identity and community ties.

In these chapters, users of loose space choose locations precisely for their density and their close relationships to other spaces and other activities, seeking the liveliness, the adjacencies and the overlaps a city offers. Vendors find locations where there will be many pedestrians; so do street performers and others offering their services. Those who wish to watch the passing scene seek good vantage points, often at a boundary or junction between spaces. Activities spill over from one space to another—from interior to exterior, from building entry to stairway, from sidewalk to street. Shops, services and restaurants extend their business out onto adjacent streets and sidewalks. Like sidewalk vendors, they blur the boundary between spaces of commerce and spaces of circulation. People enjoy occupying the boundary as they sit on a wall or hang items for sale on a fence. Only Stevens refers directly to the concept of liminality but it is applicable to many of the cases presented.

The city of loose spaces is not only seen but felt. The overlapping of different activities and the softening of boundaries between one space and another create visually and sensually rich experiences: the smell of food from a street vendor or an outdoor restaurant; the sound of music from an arcade, a restaurant, or a street performance; the texture of the step or wall one is sitting on. The density and mixing of uses, the encounters between those people who are moving along and those who are standing (or sitting) all require negotiation. Loose spaces in this section are places of constant movement and change as the crowd ebbs and flows, as vendors come and go, as lunchtime is over or the street festival comes to an end.

Chapter 2 Found Spaces

Freedom of Choice in Public Life

Leanne G. Rivlin

DOI: 10.4324/9780203799574-3

In the panoramic peasant scenes depicted in the works of Peter Bruegel the Elder, the sixteenth-century painter, and in William Hogarth’s paintings of eighteenth-century street life, the vitality of the public spaces and their many different functions is displayed. The public arena has long contained marketplaces, vendors of various kinds of merchandise, entertainers, children playing, rituals and celebrations, casual and arranged meetings and a much enjoyed activity—gazing at the passing scene. After the development of designed spaces for public life, especially marketplaces, commons areas, squares and plazas in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and parks in the nineteenth century, many of these activities occurred in settings specifically designed to accommodate them. However, some of these same activities and others, spontaneous and ad hoc, occur in “found spaces,” places intended for other uses that people have occupied to meet their public life needs. By looking closely at contemporary found spaces and their uses and users, we can discover much about public behavior and come closer to understanding what people are seeking in their use of the public domain.

The research on found spaces that provides evidence for this analysis of public life began in the mid-1980s, during a time when there was considerable dissatisfaction with public spaces. Architects, landscape architects, planners and users criticized their design and management for their failure to meet people’s needs, for their commercial rather than human qualities, for their non-use, misuse and abuse (Carr et al. 1992). New York City, for example, experienced a plague of “bonus plazas” following the city’s “incentive zoning” passed in 1961. During the 1960s, 1970s and into the 1980s bland, barren, windswept plazas were built in many parts of Manhattan such as Sixth Avenue (Avenue of the Americas). They were attached to high-rise office buildings whose developers received permission from the city to increase the bulk or height of their constructions if they provided these outdoor areas. Incentive zoning of this form spread to other urban areas where similar plazas were created. The plazas were considered threats to public life for their increasing privatization of public space (Whyte 1988; Kayden 2000).

Although bonus plazas still exist in New York, many have been modified under the guidance of William H. Whyte who offered an alternative plan, adopted by the city in 1975. This required that developers providing privately owned public space in return for more floor space include specific amenities that Whyte advocated, especially seating surfaces such as the edges of planters and low walls and benches. The city also has allowed developers to provide indoor atria and concourses rather than the outdoor plazas which were more difficult to monitor and maintain. In fact, Whyte (1988) believed that managers of buildings that included bonus spaces were more concerned with excluding certain types of users than with issues of aesthetics. Found spaces offer alternative to these problematic spaces and to public parks.

Found Spaces

Found spaces are a neglected area in the study of public spaces and public life yet they constitute a large portion of the outdoor urban places used by children and adults. They contrast with tight spaces (Sommer 1974) that are heavily programmed places with extensive rules and prescribed ways of being used. In the case of bonus plazas, many have limited resources available to users. Found spaces, a term that I have used to distinguish them from sites designed as public spaces, offer a sense of discovery and serendipity that is special to their functions (Rivlin 1986).

It became clear in my observations of public spaces and public life that the conventional public places designed to accommodate people, such as parks, plazas, squares, and playgrounds, were not the only settings used by people for their leisuretime activities. The other outdoor public settings are “found” in the sense that users locate and appropriate them for uses that they serve effectively but which they were not originally designed to serve. The found nature of these spaces contrasts with the planned nature of other public spaces and together they form the outdoor settings used by people. Found spaces offer alternative places for public life since their uses spring from a complex matrix of needs brought to them by users. We see people in found spaces all the time—neighbors chatting on a street corner, a vendor selling things on a city block, children playing in an empty lot. These activities do not differ dramatically from those occurring in spaces designed for leisure activities, but they do differ in their origins, their diversity and often in the physical qualities of their sites.

Although found spaces can be seen in many local neighborhood areas, people often travel a distance to reach them. They can become a favorite place to be alone or simply the location of a special street vendor selling fruit. The spaces meet the needs of people in a casual manner. Unlike designed spaces, it is the users themselves who locate and program found spaces although the traffic of the passing pedestrians and performances of street entertainers are qualities that can contribute to making the site a found space. Performers also are drawn to areas with potential audiences since they rely on donations for their work.

After the attack on the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, a number of found spaces appeared in Lower Manhattan. Some of them displayed efforts to locate missing people, with names and photographs placed on walls, construction sites and outside hospitals. Others were memorials with flowers, flags and diverse mementos—silent tributes to a tragic loss. People passing by stopped to look at the displays, and to add their own contributions, sharing the sadness and the power of the event.

Primarily, found spaces are places that enable people to exercise their freedom of choice (Proshansky et al. 1970), allowing them to be active pursuers of their own interests. Rather than being captive audiences, passive consumers in a designed world that mandates what happens in a site, freedom of choice offers a different kind of opportunity. It allows people to be “cognizing and goal-directed organisms,” making active attempts to satisfy their needs in their “interactions and exchanges” with the physical environment (ibid.: 174). As a result, people make an effort to organize the environment so that it maximizes their freedom of choice. The freedom allows people to manipulate the environment and to add resources to it, which are ways they can create opportunities for privacy, deal with density, reach out to others to form a social environment, and satisfy other personal needs.

Freedom of choice is at the core of people’s ability to discover possibilities in the environment and thereby to make use of found spaces. Although this capacity may develop as the individual matures, it is especially evident in pre-school children who have not yet been socialized to filter out their desires. One example observed in...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half-Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Illustration Credits
• Notes on Contributors
• Tying Down Loose Space
• Part I Appropriation
• Part II Tension
• Part III Resistance
• Part IV Discovery
• Annotated Bibliography
• Index