5x5 Public Space Presentation

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“Theorizing Public Space” A 5x5 presentation on John R. Parkinson’s Democracy & Public Space

Transcript of 5x5 Public Space Presentation

Page 1: 5x5 Public Space Presentation

“Theorizing Public Space”A 5x5 presentation on John R. Parkinson’s Democracy & Public Space

Page 2: 5x5 Public Space Presentation

What is public? What is private?

John Dewey’s definition of public:

“…all those who are affected by the indirect consequences of transactions to such an extent

that it is deemed necessary to have these consequences systematically cared for”(p. 50)

Parkinson (2012)’s concept of private:

• “…a private sphere of activity that is the ‘locus of initiative’ in which free individuals

makes autonomous decisions…”(p.50)

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The characteristics of public

1. “Freely accessible places where ‘everything that happens can be observed by anyone’, where strangers are encountered whether one wants to or not, because everyone has free right of entry (Geuss, 2001: 52)…

2. The things that concern, affect, or are for the benefit of everyone, Arendt’s second sense of ‘public’ (1958: 52). This realm includes ‘common goods’ (Hardin, 1968), goods like clean air and water, public transport, and so on…

3. The people or groups that have responsibility for that realm covered in (2), which might include rulers, or ‘public figures’, or might be defined more broadly to mean all of us: ‘the public’ as a noun, not an adjective.

4. Things which are owned by the state or the people in (3) and paid for out of collective resources like taxes: government buildings, national parks in most countries, military bases and equipment, and so on.”

(Parkinson, 2012. p. 51)

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Key concepts

Issue of “liminal spaces” – between private and public; area of conflict

Principle of civil inattention or disattendability

Scripts for encountering others in public

The socially constructed elements of physical space

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Considerations

What are the ‘scripts’ that are being ‘written’ for Lisgar Park? How we can influence or change these?

How can we work to overcome the principle of civil inattention or disattendability?

What are the democratic implications of public space in Toronto?