(URS2) Public-private Dynamics of Urban Spaces

Despite unprecedented waves of privatization of public space and concomitant encroachments, such as commercialization, regulation, and sanitization, being in public spaces remains a fundamental component of our urban experiences. The increasingly complex public-private dynamics of urban spaces offer analytical insights into understanding how cities remain sites of publicness. Taking an expansive scope on various forms of urban spaces, this session explores themes of: participatory practices in developing urban spaces; the production of urban spaces through retail/economic activities; and, how the hybrid nature of urban spaces impacts, and is simultaneously impacted by sociability and conflict within these spaces. Tags: Communities, Rural And Urban

Organizers: Meng Xu, University of Guelph, Devan Hunter, University of Guelph; Chair: Devan Hunter, University of Guelph

Presentations

Charmain Levy, Université du Québec en Outaouais

The urban commons as a concept of urban citizenship: 2 case studies in Bologna, Italy

The urban commons as a concept and social practice represents a new socio-economic and territorial logic in sustainable urbanism. They take different forms and include several social groups, generating a multitude of ideas and practices, sometimes new and sometimes in continuity with the past. We explore how experiences of the urban commons contribute to debates in urban sociology, particularly around issues of citizen participation and urban governance. Through two case studies of urban commons in the city of Bologna we will analyse the structural and contextual conditions that led to their creation and the associative dynamics developed. This article offers an overview of how these projects contribute to participatory territorial development by comparing six different elements: the needs targeted and met; inclusion and democratic practices; the political aspect; ecological values and practices; feminist values and practices; and the appropriation of urban space.

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Non-presenting author: Marco Alberio, University of Bologna

Meng Xu, University of Guelph

The Mall as Everyday Space of Publicness: Accounts from Sanlitun Taikoo Li, Beijing

Scholars contest the role of malls as public spaces. While some treat malls as the spatial and symbolic materialization of urban fragmentation, exclusion, securitization, homogenization, and capitalist consumerism, others excavate the potential of malls as de facto spaces for encounters, performance of identities, and political action. Informed by and extending these latter strands of literature, I propose the concept of everyday space of publicness as an exploratory lens for analyzing ways in which urban inhabitants (re)produce the mall as public. Approaching publicness as a socio-spatial characteristic emerging from mall users’ practices, encounters, and interpretations of their experiences, everyday space of publicness sensitizes us to the specific processes by which commercialized spaces become publicized. The concept of everyday space of publicness is developed and exemplified using an ethnographic case study of Taikoo Li, an open-air mall in Beijing’s Sanlitun district. Analyzing mall life in Taikoo Li, I show how it becomes an everyday space of publicness across three dimensions: (1) spontaneous social activities; (2) cooperative practices of regulation between vendors and security guards; and (3) mall users’ tactful interpretations of the publicness they experience and produce. Although the mall is not a site for absolutely unfiltered encounters, it generates “affordances of sociability” across social differences (Horgan et al. 2020, 147). Despite the omnipresent regulation and surveillance imposed by mall authorities, participants in the unsanctioned economy actively use the mall to defend their right to the city. While mall owners deliberately seek to enhance consumption, mall users reinterpret it as an urban space for public life, unbeholden to consumerist logic.

Saara Liinamaa, University of Guelph; Meg Aebig, University of Guelph

At the dog park: Symbolic boundaries and everyday sociability

This paper examines dog parks as distinctive public spaces where the personal and public collide. Based on ethnographic observations at municipally sanctioned and unsanctioned ‘off-leash’ public parks, we are interested in the socio-spatial context and content of dog park interactions. This approach responds to a growing body of work on sociability and/in public spaces in the social sciences (Valentine 2008; Wise and Velayutham 2009; Lowe 2023). Curiously, dog parks as social spaces exhibit above average sociability and above average conflict compared to other everyday public leisure spaces. There have been many high-profile dog park conflicts in the news, including a serious dog attack on a child at an informal school green space in Toronto and a dog dispute turned assault on a dog walker by another dog walker at a designated dog park in Vancouver. Yet at the same time, dog parks are increasingly important sites for regular, sociable interaction in urban public space. By virtue of the mix of necessity and regularity, the dog park can become a key point of social contact within many pet owners’ lives. While there is considerable interest in underscoring the positive effects of dog facilitated social interactions for communities (Bulsara et al. 2007), there is the risk of generalizing or simplifying sociological understanding of these processes. Accordingly, in order to better understand the social life of the dog park and its mix of sociability and conflict, this paper emphasizes the role of symbolic boundaries (Lamont and Molnár 2002). Drawing on examples from our research, we will discuss the production, maintenance, and crossing of symbolic boundaries of various kinds (waste, personal space, class, gender, race and ethnicity, mobility, species). In particular, we will address instances that blur the boundary between public and private in unexpected ways, and to either sociable or conflictual ends. We use this case study to demonstrate how strong symbolic and spatial boundaries facilitate heightened positive and negative interactional unpredictability in public spaces.