Bartlett Think-Tank » public life

‘Outside’: filming the public spaces of Beijing.

Patricia Simoes-Aelbrecht — Mon, 28 Feb 2011 08:00:44 +0000

One year ago, I wrote some notes on the urban public spaces of China (see post Reading the Urban Spaces of China). In it, I made a small reflection on the accelerating urbanization in China on the one hand and the differences in use of the public space between Western and non-Western countries on the other hand. Today I want to elaborate on the uses of public space a bit more. I want to introduce some insights brought by a short film ‘Outside’ of the Portuguese filmmaker Sergio Cruz I came across in TINAG a few weeks ago. In this film, Sergio brought a compelling portrait of Beijing public life during the preparation for hosting the Olympics in 2008, which he described as ‘a 24-hour live show full of music, dance and sports.’ This documentary film really made me think about three particular ongoing debates on public space. The first is the tolerance towards social behaviors in the public spaces of Beijing such as sleeping in public, selling in the street, and other considered deviant behaviors often not allowed in western countries. The second is the freedom Sergio had to film everywhere without ever having to ask permission and the acceptance of people to be filmed. The third is the actual intensity and diversity of Chinese public life. All these aspects show that despite China lack of freedom of speech and expression, Chinese public spaces are still very meaningful and democratic.

Sleeping in public, scene from film 'Outside' of Sergio Cruz.

To know more information about the artist and the Tinag screening see websites below:

Sergio Cruz: http://www.rhiz.eu/person-37213-en.html

TINAG events: http://thisisnotagateway.squarespace.com/salons-upcoming/

Theorizing the ‘sociology of public space’.

Patricia Simoes-Aelbrecht — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 09:17:10 +0000

The ‘sociology of public space’ is a research area still rather unknown and unexplored. Until recently, most social sciences conventional wisdom was that the public realm was inhabited and asocial (Simmel, 1903, Wirth, 1938). Their essential argument was always that public spaces of the city were densely filled with visual and sounds stimulus overload and as a result our public realm was populated by an asocial human behaviour. In addition, there was a tendency of some scholars to grant the social character of public realm but to think of it as irrelevant and uninteresting. It was just in the late 1950s that a group of authors came to challenge this social science’s conventional wisdom. They were Gregory Stone, Jane Jacobs, Ervin Goffman and William Whyte. Although they were not all concerned with the public realm per se, they were crucial to recognize the public realm as a social theory and to demonstrate its significance as well. Among these authors, Goffman and Whyte were the first to immerse into its study although their focus differed substantially. Goffman was the first to study it in a social-centred perspective with the focus on the organization of observable, everyday behavior, more in particular with the study of “interaction order”, the everyday social interaction among the unacquainted in urban settings. He demonstrated that what occurs between strangers passing on the street is as social as what occurs in a conversation between two lovers. Later, it was Whyte to make a study but in a spatial-centred perspective with a focus on the use of public spaces of cities, confirming not only the existence of a significant public realm social life but also how indispensable are public spaces for the vitality of the city.

Since then, there have been very few significant contributions, among them Lofland and Gehl are worth mentioning, that came to reassert once again the importance of the field of public-space sociology and to broaden its theoretical and analytical scope. But still a lot more could have been done, specially from a spatial perspective!

For those interested in or already busy with exploring the ‘sociology of public space’, please contact me. I will be very interested in discussing further since I am working in a project for an edited book and i am looking for future collaborators.

Reading the urban public spaces of China

Patricia Simoes-Aelbrecht — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 14:50:50 +0000

The last two decades debates on the future of public life and public spaces have been markedly western-oriented, negativist and raising often questions: does public space still matters for our public life?

To counter these views, I would like to offer a different and non-western perspective for the discussion. Here, I will talk about the case of China, more in particular about the cities of Beijing and Nanning, which I had the opportunity to visit this year in June. This visit made part of a Workshop on “the Quality of public space” in the UK and China, that we, the Bartlett School, were invited. The workshop took place in Nanning, a city in the south of China. There we had numerous opportunities to discuss the design of the city centres and public spaces with the present Chinese professors, planners and architects and it became obvious that not only we have different views in reading public space but also the problems we are dealing with sometimes seem irrelevant in comparison to theirs.

I do not intend to go on in detail on everything of what we discussed but some aspects deserve attention. So I will give some comments as I will go along the pictures below, in the hope that this can help us to understand how different the problematics and challenges of the public spaces of the Chinese cities are.

1. Chinese cities are facing great difficulties to keep the balance between progress (expressed by the accelerating urbanization) and protection of their historical heritage. In this picture of Nanning, it is evident how the old urban fabric is being swallowed and suffocated by massive high-rise buildings and sliced by new urban infrastructure.

2. There is a recent obsession to import European representations of public spaces to their cities. Here we can see an interesting example of that, the Olympic site in Beijing clearly resembles to a big boulevard in Paris.

3. Most Chinese cities are still dominated by small-scale businesses and commerce. It is unbelievable the variety of products you can find in these shops. In western cities, we hardly can find this anymore. This picture is an interesting example of a typical underground shopping street in Nanning; they call it Mouse Street. Off course, there is a danger that progress will soon get rid of them.

4. There is as well a growing informal sector of commerce; street vendors are an indelible feature of Chinese public spaces, as you can see in this picture of Nanning. In the western cities, there is too much regulation for this ever to be possible again.

5. People often sleep in public; this shows how safe streets still are. This contrasts very much with our present western situation.

6. I could go on trying to find more examples but I think it is clear enough how distinct the problematics of Chinese cities public spaces and public life are. To understand that, you do not have to go very far, just immerse in a gastronomic experience and see what they eat. I had a snake and turtle soup that were an absolute gastronomic delight !!!