Public spaces have long been the focus of urban social activity, but investigations of how public space works often adopt only one of several possible perspectives, which restricts the questions that can be asked and the answers that can be considered. In this volume, Anthony Orum and Zachary Neal explore how public space can be a facilitator of civil order, a site for power and resistance, and a stage for art, theatre, and performance. They bring together these frequently unconnected models for understanding public space, collecting classic and contemporary readings that illustrate each, and synthesizing them in a series of original essays. Throughout, they offer questions to provoke discussion, and conclude with thoughts on how these models can be combined by future scholars of public space to yield more comprehensive understanding of how public space works.
Table of Contents:
Locating Public Space
PART I – Public Space as Civil Order
Introduction
The Death and Life of Great American Cities – Jane Jacobs
The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces – William H. Whyte
The Character of Third Places – Ray Oldenburg
The Moral Order of Strangers – M. P. Baumgartner
Street Etiquette and Street Wisdom – Elijah Anderson
PART II – Public Space as Power and Resistance
Introduction
The End of Public Space? People’s Park, Definitions of the Public, and Democracy – Don Mitchell
Fortress Los Angeles – Mike Davis
Whose Culture? Whose City? – Sharon Zukin
Dispersing the Crowd: Bonus Plazas and the Creation of Public Space – Gregory Smithsimon
Defying Disappearance: Cosmopolitan Public Spaces in Hong Kong – Lisa Law
PART III – Public Space as Art, Theatre, and Performance
Introduction
Art and the Transit Experience / Creating a Sense of Purpose: Public Art and Boston’s Orange Line – Cynthia Abrahamson, Myrna Margulies Breitbart, & Pamela Worden
The Harsh Reality: Billboard Subversion and Graffiti – Timothy W. Drescher
The Paradox of Public Art: Democratic Space, the Avant-Garde, and Richard Serra’s `Tilted Arc’ – Caroline Levine
Those "Gorgeous Incongruities’: Polite Politics and Public Space on the Streets of Nineteenth Century New York – Mona Domosh
Soundscape and Society: Chinese Theatre and Cultural Authenticity in Singapore – Tong Soon Lee
Relocating Public Space
Toolkits for Interrogating Public Space
About the Author :
Anthony M. Orum is Professor Emeritus of Sociology, University of Illinois at Chicago; and Visiting Scholar, Center for Urban Research and Learning, Loyola University, Chicago. He is the 2009 recipient of the American Sociological Association's Robert and Helen Lynd Award for lifetime achievement and service. In 2007 and 2008, he was a Fulbright Scholar at Fudan University in Shanghai, China where he began his first systematic studies of public spaces. He also has written, among other books, Introduction to Political Sociology, the most recent edition of which was co-authored with John Dale.
Zachary P. Neal is Assistant Professor of Sociology and Global Urban Studies at Michigan State University. In addition to public space, he has written about restaurants as urban cultural markers, the influence of networks among cities on their economic development, and quantitative methodology in the social sciences.
