Public Spaces for the Citizens

 Per the discussion on politics and public space, I felt it was necessary to dive into the idea of what public space means for a multitude of people. Considering the topic of the Agora, public space was built on the notion of democracy, which makes a lot of sense for a municipality in Athens that only dealt with the politics of it's people. Today, our public spaces are experienced by locals, tourists, passerby's, dogs, squirrels, you name it. In today's day and age, there are politics to be argued for every single one of those categories; but our job is to be architects and not politicians. 

Many of the public spaces today are talked about with notions of inclusivity and celebration of locale or culture, which is fantastic, however, overtime these public places become less about the place because it simply does not grow with the people, which ultimately doesn't achieve either inclusivity or celebration of place. Take Times Square for example; every New Yorker that I have ever talked to has been very candid about the fact that they do not go there; it's a "tourist trap". Now that is not always the case. For instance, the Washington Mall is a place of great pride for the people of Washington D.C.; an oasis of sorts, a place for lunch, and a place to voice their opinions. 

I guess the point is, public space is good, but it also often misses the mark on who it represents. Instead of monopolizing large portions of cities to give to what would inevitably be tourist (which I'm not arguing is always a bad thing), why can't we take the uglier spaces of a city (alley ways, subway stations, etc.) and give it back to the citizens of the city; allow those spaces to be transformed and transformative in order to increase the everyday pedestrians positivity in their commute to work, their return from the grocery store, and their desire to avoid Times Square.