Public Space : Where The City is Humanized

From traditional market and large rivers to today’s shopping malls, corporate plazas, atria and festival places, public spaces have been one of the crucial components of cities for centuries. Despite their evident importance in cities, public spaces have become subject to broad concern for more than two decades, particularly under the influence of globalization and privatization policies, city-marketing and imaging programmes and urban regeneration projects, the new landscape of post-industrial cities has witnessed the emergence of attractive and alluring public spaces. The resurgence of broad interest in public spaces has led to a significant improvement in the quality of contemporary public spaces in cities. nevertheless, public space literature has frequently hinted at the changing roles and features of the public spaces.

Urbanists have long held the view that the physical and social dynamics of public space play a central role in the formation of publics and public culture. A city's streets, parks, squares, and other shared spaces have been seen as symbols of collective well-being and possibility, expressions of achievement and aspiration by urban leaders and visionaries, sites of public encounter and formation of civic culture, and significant spaces of political deliberation and agonistic struggle. While urban commentators and practitioners have varied in their views on the precise detail of collective achievement across time and space, they have generally not questioned the assumption that a strong relationship exists between urban public space, civic culture, and political formation, but I don't really care about their opinions. What we're going to talk here is how we can benefit from public spaces.

What is a public space? According to Wikipedia, “A public space refers to an area or place that is open and accessible to all citizens, regardless of gender, race, ethnicity, age or socio-economic level”; that is, a place where anyone can come, and further, where most events are spontaneous rather than pre-planned, where people mix with others or simply move about or sit and watch others. Public spaces have no entrance fee, no dress code, and no script. They offer surprises and unexpected pleasures: the sight of children playing, youth strolling, the elderly chatting, the fatigued resting, the lonely and melancholy and bored escaping their troubles. There are no clear distinctions between observers and observed; all are on stage, all are part of the audience.

Public spaces include parks, outdoor plazas and public gardens, as well as streets and sidewalks. While streets and sidewalks are of course primarily for circulation — the movement of people throughout the city — this is by no means their only use. Given the amount of space they consume and the multiple needs of people, it would be wasteful and inefficient to reserve them exclusively for movement. The traditional role of streets and sidewalks is not just for movement, but as marketplace and meeting place.

Public spaces play a wide range of roles, which can be classified physical, ecological, psychological, social, political, economic, symbol and aesthetic roles. If we consider that the city is made up of public and private spaces, the public space becomes and inevitable component of the city. Seen in various forms, such as streets, squares, plazas, market places and parks, public spaces play a number of physical roles. First of all, streets, boulevards, and avenues are the major communication channels of the city. They are the means of movements between objects, people and information from one sector to another, as they can contain facilities to ease intercommunication such as street and traffic signs, parking areas. Second, the serve the daily needs of the public on the street by containing street lights, furniture and signs, as well as public convenience facilities, like toilets and baby changing facilities. Public spaces also provide the places for a ‘variety’ and ‘diversity’ of activities. Being places of various economic, social and political activities, public spaces hold different activities together. Another role of public spaces is to differentiate open spaces in a city.

Public spaces are the inevitable components of cities with not only their physical but also ecological roles. They contribute to create ecologically healthy environments. With vegetation, they can ameliorate an unfavourable micro-climate and they can increase air turbulence, filter dust particles, direct cooling down and cleansing breezes.

As well as their physical and ecological roles, public spaces contribute to the mental and psychological health of humana beings in various forms. For example, some research proves that postoverative patiens recover more quickly, and need fewer analgesics if they convalesce in a ward which has a view of trees. Public space also play a role in the personal development of human beings, particularly by providing individuals with the arenas to demonstrate mastery, to meet challenges and to run a risk. Additionally, they provide the rhythm of relaxation and tension which is desirable for the psychological and mental health of human beings. Public spaces perform as the places of relaxation, which provide with relief from the stresses of daily life. But at the same time, they provide stages for ‘shocking’ stimulus, which increases the chance of direct confrontation and spontaneous reaction that leads people to be confronted with new sights and learn about others. Another psychological role of public spaces is to provide arenas for ‘social interaction’, places for active and social engagement with others. Social interaction promotes individual well-being with others, enables the people to discover ‘self’, ‘others’ and ‘environment’, and finally lead to the emergence of a sense of personal continuity in a rapidly changing world.

Performing as the arenas of social interaction, public spaces also play significant social roles. By welcoming everyone, they bring together different groups of people regardless of their class, ethnic origin, gender, and age, making it possible for them to intermingle. Consequently, they help “the formation of the richest quality of a multi-class, multi-cultural, heterogeneous society”. On the other hand, public spaces carry out educational, informative and communicative roles to strengthen public life. People coming from different segments of the society interact and learn about each other in public spaces. This is an important step for emergence of the ‘social coherence’ between diverse groups, and for the creation of community life.

As for the political roles of public spaces, they are closely related to their contribution to democracy. Public spaces encourage people to use and participate in the public arena by offering them with the opportunity to act freely, represent themselves and interact freely with others. Disagreements and conflicts become clearly visible when public discussions are held in public spaces. For this reason, they provide healthier arenas to resolve disagreements and conflicts than to keep them in private.

Another significant role of public spaces is economic. Throughout history, public spaces have been the major places where commercial activities have taken place. Since commercial activities moved to dedicated places in cities, commerce has also kept its close relation to public spaces in order to benefit from this great coming and going.

Actually, there are a lot of roles that public spaces hold. You can elaborate them by observing public spaces around you. That’s why as residence of a metropolitan city which, of course, should have enough public spaces for people to communicate and interact each other, we have to wisely use them as arena for having fun and releasing stress, etc. The fact is, we can hardly see public spaces in Makassar which can easily be used by people. Well, some of them have been showing their existence for years yet they always look dull. In other words, they are not well-designed and well-managed. To make a comfortable and awesome public space, there a couple of things we need to consider before building it. Cooperation between society and local government here play a crucial role. Creating new public spaces without this cooperation will always result in abandoned public spaces. That’s what always happens.

If you have been living in Makassar for quite long time, you should have spotted some public spaces, lie in some parts of the city. If compared with other cities in the world, Singapore for example, Makassar is far left behind in the number and management of public spaces. Small number and bad management of public spaces in Makassar yield society with no ardor to get out of from their homes, even only to breath fresh air in the morning. While we know that meeting other people and interacting with them can be a really helpful healing method. Imagine if all society are accustomed to use public spaces every day, wisely, then there will be a healthy and well-developed city. I have so many relations who often complain how difficult to find a good public spaces for informal meeting with their clients or relations. In this case, the entrepreneur's performance will show a bad impact and thus will result in low income. This, of course, will eventually influence the economic cycle in Makassar.

by Naskar Hansam | Hasanuddin University