Public space

The public space represents in the human society, in particular urban, the whole of spaces of passage and gathering which are with the use of all, either which they do not belong to anybody (in right e.g.), or that they raise of the public domain.

The city (town planning)

The general standard above implies a rule of law which guarantees right and freedoms of the citizens in the public domain, of which the freedom of circulation ; it does not exclude to develop in this article or of the parallel articles the concepts which precede republican public space or which derive from it in the contemporary metropolises or replace in the authoritarian regimes, etc For example:

In the protohistoric, ancient cities (concepts of civic space, religious space,…)
In the companies isolated, rural, insular, mountain,…
In the medieval and modern companies in Occident, until the French revolution: rights and rights of way related on the activity, the maintenance of the banks, rivers and ditches, with the access to harvests (fruit trees, walls, hedges,…). Certain features remain in the Belgian rural Code (right of scale) and the contemporary rural world.

The general standard also implies that are defined the public domain, the authorities which manage it and the regulations or restrictions which frame the open and anonymous statute of public space.

For example, rivers and rivers, wood and drills, parks and public gardens, streets and places…. In Belgium, the public domain is not registered and finds its base in a topographical survey which defines of them contours, pieces and constructions bordering (" Atlas of the ways and paths vicinaux" , about 1840). It defines the roadway systems which concern the public domain and are placed under the responsibility of the communal authorities (the local roadway system) or higher (the roadway system of great communication).

* public Right of way : right-of-way public existing on private bottom; they belong to public space.

Inclusion of office in the public domain: right of way whose bottom is not asserted, and falling into the public domain by regulation (to be specified).
Right of the residents of the public roadway systems : “the bordering properties of the specialized ways nonopen to general circulation and, in particular, the highways, ways of defense of the forest against the fire, tracks for cyclists and paths of tourists do not enjoy the rights recognized to the residents of the public highways” , extracted the Code of the French roadway system.
land Valorization and roadway systems: the access to public space opens rights to the residents and brings collective impétrants, spaces, public equipment.

At the same time, it forms the space structure of the roadway systems which connects the private Parcelle S grouped in small islands, supports their relation and their trade (gone opened, quays, networks of circulation,…), their subsistence (draining, water conveyance,…), their thickening (the dimension of the small islands,…), or their statute codifies (hierarchisation géo-social, monumental, functional,…) through a formal vocabulary based, summarily, on the street and the place. At the same time with these functionalities, it supports the expression of the life and public freedoms, and by nature the field of the social conflicts (public places) constitutes.
Like structure, it determines the natural development cities (extension of the urban checkerwork for example) and adapts to the site (network of the streets and network of waste water) and to the electric fluxes (ports, quays, stations, highways, boulevards…).
Son historical evolution is generally the discussion thread according to which is described the urban history; archeology (proto-histories cities), the compared cartography of the cities (e.g. through the models of Vauban), the theoretical writings located principal the model (to make ref.), for example:

the Greek city, Roman checkerwork
the Roman, French city colonial ( Casablanca, Morocco ), American (New York, the USA),…
figures and articulations rebirth or baroques ( three-pronged fork of Piazza del Popolo, Rome, 17th century (?) )
networks of Boulevard S in the urbanization hausmanienne, etc
the layouts Art schools , Art nouveau , Art déco ,…
technical evolutions mainly of the modes of displacement which see the cities adapting their public spaces to the railroad, the tram or the subway and the car.

This adaptation involves a modeling, of which the diagrams post-hausmaniens (plane of Besmne for the extension of Brussels, about 1860), modernistic theories (separation of the 4 urban functions, indetermination of public space).

In the extreme cases of the big cities, this adaptation reduces public space to a space monofonctionnel and technique.

The speculations on contemporary urban public space (see further) include a return of the pedestrian in the urban concerns, and thus a formal evolution which gives him a dimension (at least) dominating symbolic system: pedestrian, " zones trente" and " zone of wohnerf" in the Highway code Belgian, recourse to the archaisms of " forum" or " agora" in creations of public spaces (years 1980).

Urban public space is also a kingly sphere of activity : general organization of the city, urban interventions monumental symbolic systems or, planning, equipment (bridges, streets, sewers, etc), police force, etc the term Urbanisme , even if it is late (semi 19th?), is closely related on the expression of the regality on the city and to the exercise of the transformation of public space.

At the same time, it is field of freedoms much broader than freedom to circulate: freedom of demonstration, word, expression (musical for example), to trade… This field is defined constitutionally, is restricted by the bodies of the laws, payments and practices (police e.g.) and forms the theater of the opposition to the capacity, of the majority of the political and social conflicts (sit-in, occupations of crossroads, drifts of collective festivals, wills to be identified (identity fold p) rear e.g.), to adapt (gangster control e.g.) public spaces of a city or a zone.

Lastly, public space constitutes the space of collective life of its residents (inhabitants, tradesmen, craftsmen.) and the local forms of the collective life mark it in a multiform way: installation, environment, the color and decorations of the street, markets, the economic activities (itinerant salesmen, stalls,…) or collective (terraces, plays, processions, carnivals, etc) the social status and the anonymity of each one preserve more or less, with in the cities very large varieties of situations (of the homogeneous Ghetto S at the most diversified zones).

In contemporary town planning , the term is also used:

under its political angle (the policy of -, user-friendliness in -),
under its esthetic and cultural angle (typologies of -; composition of -; regulations of installation of -; festivals in; …),
under its technical angle and gestionnel (construction, companies, maintenance, lighting, plantations, materials of -,).

The term is opposed by definition

to private spaces where a fence must be crossed (carries, grid, access,…) and where anonymity must be raised except exception, the such Domicile, the head office, the Entreprise,
and with spaces where a fence must be crossed (carry, grid, access,…) and which accommodates the anonymous public under condition (entrance fee, payment of order interior,… called in Belgium public places) such as coffees and Restaurant S, Théâtre S, Amusement park, Shopping mall, Arts center, etc the sedentary behaviors and the recent evolution of the laws can abolish this anonymity.

Public space according to Jürgen Habermas

Public space is a concept very much used in social sciences. Defined initially by Kant, the concept knows a great passion since the Années 1960 and the publication of the thesis of Jürgen Habermas entitled public space: archeology of publicity like dimension constitutive of the middle-class company .

In this work, Habermas described “the process during which the public made up individuals making use of their reason adapts the public sphere controlled by the authority and transforms it into a sphere where the critic is exerted against the capacity of the State. ” the process in question is to be dated at the 18th century in England (some thirty years later in France), century of development of the urbanization and the emergence of the concept of space deprived in the middle-class of the cities. Habermas shows how the meetings of living room and the coffees contributed to the multiplication of the discussions and the political debates, which enjoy a publicity via the media of the time (correspondence, incipient press).

The concept of “Publicité” (within the meaning of the broad information circulation and of the subjects of debates via the media) is an element headlight of the theory of Habermas: this one must be included/understood like dimension constitutive of public space and principle of control of the political power. To some extent, the public opinion becomes more visible via its “publicisation”.

For Habermas, after its rise at the 18th century, the public space “controlled by the reason” will be declining, since critical publicity will leave little by little the place to a publicity “of demonstration and handling”, with the service of private interests. Habermas was cross critiquement with regard to the evolution of public space by the French historian Arlette Farge in Dire and badly to say , Seuil, bets, 1992 when it shows that public space is not only consisted by a cultivated middle-class or social elites but also the great mass of the population. This one, whose Farge follows the evolution starting from the informers spread in any Paris by general Lieutenent of police force, forges by itself the concepts of freedom of thought and popular sovereignty. For Farge, " the people are not only a ventre" , but tries to forge an identity while émancipant itself by the political discussion. Roger Chartier also used the approach of Habermas in the cultural origins of the French revolution (1990).

Today public space is in the center many problems, in particular in the field of sciences of the communication. One will quote in particular the analysis of Bernard Miège ( the company conquered by the communication ) which distinguishes, in a historical return on the models of public space, four great models of communication which organizes a widened and fragmented public space: the press of opinion (middle of the 18th century), the commercial press (starting from the middle of the 19th century), audio-visual mediums of mass (since the middle of the 20th century) and generalized public relations (since the Years 1970).

Religion

Some currents of the movement of the Secularity, resulting from the Laicism, wish to decrease or restrict the presence of the religion in public space. The concept of public space makes debate with regard to the reasonable Accommodements.

According to the bishop Alexis II: We regard as inadmissible the rejection of the religion out of public space. Time had just admitted that the religious motivation has the right to exist including in the public domain” .

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