COMM 190: Politics & Cultures of Display (Spring 2019)

Routine discussions on public space typically omit a gamut of possibilities ripe for critical discussion. This book, the latest in the SOM Thinkers series, aims to address these questions. Here, Rachel Monroe challenges American preconceptions of the wild, wide-open West by addressing issues of surveillance; the series' first fictional piece, by China Mi ville, covers an under-examined area of public space under the guise of detective fiction; a study of public art by Ben Davis sheds light on the myths and stigmas that have accrued to public art, also asking what it can become; Christopher DeWolf shares a sensory navigation trip through a directionless Hong Kong; Michelle Nijhuis writes on the shifting ecologies of national parks; Sarah Fecht explores architecture and social life beyond Earth; while Jaron Lanier meditates on the idea of public space online, linking the prevailing, free-for-all model of the internet with a characteristically American yearning for freedom and repudiation of rules and structure. Also included are examples of public art works by Lawrence Weiner.

Common Worlds: Paths Toward Sustainable Urbanism explores expert and lay approaches to sustainable urbanism, focusing on the politics and civic aesthetics of space and place; project-based learning and it consequences for the life chances of youth; and the prospect of intergenerational civic engagement. Extended case studies of sustainable urbanism describe areas undergoing demographic and socioeconomic change over the two decades since the end of the Cold War. The case studies, based upon participatory action research, are framed through the lens of transformational anthropology, which focuses on the structural factors and power relationships that contribute to social and economic disparities within a population. This approach is based upon principles of personal and group transformation, and it holds researchers responsible for collaborating with communities and groups in co-constructing research, thereby enhancing the constituents' ability to carry out subsequent transformational change studies rooted in and shaped by the local community. Each case also focuses on a movement in support of aesthetic improvement, including preservation, conservation, and restoration efforts on behalf of parkland, open space, agricultural land, and marine wetlands in the face of external threats to their sustainability.

This book is about understanding, contextualizing and carrying out critical analyzes of the policies intended and/or implemented by the various public and private actors in urban public spaces, as well as the daily, or eventual, politics exercised by the organized civil society and by citizens. It presents a collection of contributions about the public space in different theoretical, conceptual and methodological approaches. Coming from different disciplines, the authors share an understanding about the need to analyze the uses and appropriations of the city by social subjects and groups as they represent difference and see the city as a place to share life experiences; as such, they argue, through their cases studies, that places of public use should be thought of and understood as concept and as social practice. As an analytic tool, the book offers a five-dimension model to explore how people relate to daily life activities and confront imposed inequalities in their meeting places, how they engage in individual and collective manifestations and/or how they symbolically appropriate public spaces in face of the late capitalism led by large corporations and globalization. Together the authors seek to contribute to a city of utopia, where all differences can be seen and dealt with in public spaces and where free individuals can present themselves and engage in a vita activa.

Space is both a product and a prerequisite of social relations, it has the potential to block and encourage certain forms of encounter. In Common Space, activist and architect Stavros Stavrides calls for us to conceive of space-as-commons - first, to think beyond the notions of public and private space, and then to understand common space not only as space that is governed by all and remains open to all, but that explicitly expresses, encourages and exemplifies new forms of social relations and of life in common. Through a fascinating, global examination of social housing, self-built urban settlements, street trade and art, occupied space, liberated space and graffiti, Stavrides carefully shows how spaces for commoning are created. Moreover, he explores the connections between processes of spatial transformation and the formation of politicised subjects to reveal the hidden emancipatory potential of contemporary, metropolitan life.