A New Index for Public Space: After Distancing

A New Index for Public Space: After Distancing offers readers a re-evaluation of the notion of publicness as a lens to unpack the complexity of urban space. A "new index" is proposed to reconstitute the promises and the predicaments of public space to better prepare for the contemporary challenges of post-pandemic, conflict-ridden society. Part I provides a theoretical introduction to the idea of public space and publicness, laying out the book’s rationale; Part II offers a new index of terms, including affects, alignments, atmosphere, conviviality, diagrams, documenting, flow, and more; and Part III applies the proposed lexicon with a "random walk" approach, inviting the reader to use the lens of nonlinear evolutionary dynamics as a means for envisioning the future of publicness. This book is the outcome of a conversation across disciplines – specifically, urban design and social theory – revolving around the recognition that public space is inherently fragile, messy, conflicted, and evolving. This book will be of interest to urban planners, architects, and urban designers, as well as human geographers, sociologists, political theorists, and those working in community development.

Table of Contents:
Part I - Introduction 1. Thinking through Indexes Part II - The Index 2. Affects 3. Alignments 4. Atmosphere 5. Conviviality 6. Diagrams 7. Documentation 8. Elements 9. Flow 10. Memories 11. Refuge 12. Statements 13. Syncs Part III - Conclusion 14. Walking through Indexes

About the Author :
Tali Hatuka is an architect, urban planner, and professor who founded and directs the Laboratory of Contemporary Urban Design in the School of Social and Policy Studies at Tel Aviv University in Israel. Andrea Mubi Brighenti is a social theorist and a professor at the Department of Sociology, University of Trento, in Italy.

Review :
"This erudite and provocative book melds social and political theory with design thinking to produce a new set of terms to understand both the nature and the phenomenology of publicness. Inspired by the challenges of physical distancing that accompanied the global pandemic, the authors show the durability of the public realm while offering new ways to interpret and produce a range of disordered, agonistic, and spatially-situated interactions that will continue to make public spaces the lifeblood of cities." Diane E. Davis, Charles Dyer Norton Professor of Regional Planning and Urbanism, Harvard Graduate School of Design "How can we talk about public space and make sense of its continuous mutations in contemporary cities? As the authors suggest, we need to explore patterns of experience and affect along with efforts to conceptualize sociospatial crises. This book is an inventive and highly successful experiment in analyzing publicness that offers to city dwellers and planners alike an index of terms to be used in thinking about city life as a multifarious set of realities and possibilities." Stavros Stavrides, Professor of Architectural Design and Theory, School of Architecture, National Technical University of Athens “Triggered by the contemporary challenges and appreciation of the post-pandemic future of urban space the authors continue the quest to understand and assess public space. Through a new index they introduce us to a series of fresh and inspiring methods and prompts that traverse disciplinary boundaries and help explore the experiential and phenomenological dimensions of public space. The book is a welcome addition that introduces researchers, teachers, and students in the built environment and social science disciplines to innovative ways of examining the future of public space and eventually to show new ways to 'read' the city.” Vikas Mehta, Fruth/Gemini Chair, Ohio Eminent Scholar of Urban/Environmental Design, and Professor of Urban Design, University of Cincinnati "This is a playful book on how public space negotiates distance and propinquity amongst human and nonhuman bodies. It is a truly exciting cornucopia of affects, memories and desires that crisscross one another like a boardgame. But like most good boardgames, here too there is wisdom, depth and astute observation of all the things that compose ourselves and our lives. The authors have managed the impossible: to create an intensely visual, lyrical, ludic net of possibilities about our post-Covid world in way that is both celebratory and cautionary, visionary and sobering. In many ways, through its innovative form, its collaborative process of writing, and its ground-breaking content, this book opens up an entirely new way of being in public. This is a fundamentally beautiful and useful book." Andreas Philippopoulos-Mihalopoulos, Professor of Law & Theory, University of Westminster, UK; Artist and Fiction Author