Speaker
Description
One of the central tasks of city public spaces is to provide settings for unplanned social encounters and interactions (Mehta, 2013). Access to interpersonal participation and encounters in public spaces affects citizens’ well-being (Toolis, 2017). Stevens notes, “It is in public open spaces that people are best able and most likely to engage with the social diversity gathered together in cities” (2007: 5).
However, critical theorists warn that public spaces may lose their open and democratic significance as meeting places (Bjerkeset, 2019). In their opinion, contemporary urban planning and design may limit democratic use of public spaces (e.g., Mitchell, 1995; Low, 2006) due to increased commercialization, commodification (Groth and Corijn, 2005) and privatization (Bergsli and Hanssen, 2017).
New and experimental planning efforts can counteract the fear of losing public life by allowing for future imagination and experimentation through tactile explorations in public spaces. Experimental planning practices can “create important openings in the rigid, formalized planning systems for greater flexibility and expedient change” (Hou, 2020: 118).
This paper explores temporary interventions as a form of experimental planning that can increase social interactions among diverse citizens through participation and use of public spaces. Temporary interventions can function as playful events that “encourage bystanders to join in, taking on a more active level of public engagement” (Stevens, 2007)
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Through in-depth interviews with planners and designers working with temporary interventions and ongoing participatory observations of public space interventions in Oslo, Norway, this paper investigates how these interventions affect citizens’ interactions in these spaces. The central question is how temporary interventions create opportunities for spontaneous and unplanned social encounters and interactions between strangers. As Goffman (1966: 124) states, “acquaintances in social situations require a reason not to interact, strangers require a reason to do so.”
The expected findings suggest that these interventions can stimulate encounters between strangers through participation in the moment and the short term. However, long-term interactions and use of these spaces depend on the interplay between the physical design’s temporary-permanent dimensions and the evolving social dynamics.
References
Bergsli H and Hanssen GS (2017) Byrom for alle? Plan 49(01). Universitetsforlaget: 40–43. DOI: 10.18261/ISSN1504-3045-2017-01-10.
Bjerkeset S (2019) Bedre enn sitt rykte? Hverdagsbyrom som møteplass. In: Henriksen IM and Tjora A (eds) Bysamfunn. Trondheim: Universitetsforlaget, pp. 55–69.
Goffman E (1966) Behavior in Public Places . The Free Press.
Groth J and Corijn E (2005) Reclaiming Urbanity: Indeterminate Spaces, Informal Actors and Urban Agenda Setting: Urban Studies 42(3): 503–526. DOI: 10.1080/00420980500035436.
Hou J (2020) Guerrilla urbanism: urban design and the practices of resistance. Urban Design International 25(2): 117–125. DOI: 10.1057/S41289-020-00118-6/METRICS.
Low SM (2006) The Erosion of Public Space and the Public Realm: paranoia, surveillance and privatization in New York City. City and Society 18(1): 43–49. DOI: 10.1525/city.2006.18.1.43.
Mehta V (2013) The Street : A Quintessential Social Public Space. Abingdon: Routledge.
Mitchell D (1995) The End of Public Space? People’s Park, Definitions of the Public, and Democracy. Annals of the Association of American Geographers 85(1): 108–133. DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-8306.1995.tb01797.xa.
Stevens Q (2007) The Ludic City: Exploring the Potential of Public Spaces. Oxfordshire: Routledge.
Toolis EE (2017) Theorizing Critical Placemaking as a Tool for Reclaiming Public Space. American Journal of Community Psychology 59(1–2): 184–199. DOI: 10.1002/AJCP.12118.
| Keywords | Public space, temporary interventions, urban design, social interactions, participation |
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| Best Congress Paper Award | No |
