Prof. Dr. DANIEL ESGUEVILLAS, LEADER OF THE RESEARCH TEAM ON URBAN HABITAT (UH) http://urbanhabitat-uh.blogspot.com.es/Arquitectura | Escuela Politécnica Superior | Universidad Francisco de Vitoria | Ctra. Pozuelo-Majadahonda, Km. 1,800, Madrid, Spain | d.esguevillas@ufv.es

PUBLIC SPACE, AN ILLUSION?ABSTRACT

Recent Occupy movements have encouraged the debate on the role of public space in the contemporary urban regions, questioning the right to the city in the information society. Controversy arises over which practices of public space are legal and which not, or whether the citizens can make use of the common landmarks in an alternative way. If we continue to allow increasing privatization of the collective spaces and we restrict the effective use of open areas, we risk turning public space into a mere illusion.

KEYWORDS

Urban landscape, simulation, scenography, consumption, community

INTRODUCTION

In ‘City of Quartz’ (1990), Californian urban theorist Mike Davis thoroughly describes the destruction of public space in Los Angeles: ‘bum-proof’ bus benches designed to avoid its use by homeless people, cameras recording streets and boulevards for the sake of security, and gated private roads de-nying the citizens’ right to access the affluent neighborhoods. At the same time, brilliant new public facilities flourish in Downtown, where a new Catholic Cathedral by Spanish architect Rafael Moneo and an amazing Concert Hall by American Frank Gehry have put the spot back into the tourist guides of the county. These recreated common spaces belong to a new sort of hybrid public-private landmarks, like the commercial malls, that gradually substitute the traditional meeting role of historical squares in the changing urban land-scape of the postindustrial culture.

Even though Europe never shared an urban crisis like the ones faced by the United States ever since the 1960’s, and the European city stood as a strong reference for American authors Kevin Lynch and Jane Jacobs in their defense of a recovery of the urban centers as the key point of the city, nowadays restructuring crisis might question our successful history of public space as the memory of local identities. Public spaces have been traditionally linked to the idea of democracy as they served the different ruling systems to get in contact with their citizens for major events, like the ‘Autos de Fe’ (Trials of Faith) at the Plazas Mayores (Main Squares) during the Spanish Inquisition, and they were also used by people to trade and gather. Of course they have as well represented the classical place to express objection or disapproval to any subject affecting the community. Both students and labor unions typi-cally claim the streets as the basic property owned by the people, opposite to private lots and zoning. Indeed, minorities and lower classes tend to iden-tify with their surroundings more than what the globalized upper population does, because they keep a powerful link to the neighborhood as one of their most precious goods.

On the other hand, in the consumption society every element loses its use value and turns into an object of the cultural system of signs, concealing its underlying economic and social structures. Public space then loses its demo-cratic meeting spirit to become a simulated scenography of its traditional role, serving other interests like commerce or urban order. Recent renewal urban design projects in Central Madrid squares, like Callao or Santa María Soledad Torres Acosta, have removed benches and green areas to generate new homogeneous and continuous stone paved surfaces where all sort of commercial events can take place: from concerts to temporary markets or fancy terrace bars during the summertime. As no shades or water sources were foreseen, these occasionally private spaces have little to offer to the citizens during the sunny daytime, but they prevent the area from being fre-quented by prostitutes, homeless people and other undesired groups.

LUNA SQUARE AS A CASE STUDY

Located only fifty meters away from central Callao square, in downtown Ma-drid, Santa María Soledad Torres Acosta plaza receives its long name from a Spanish nun proclaimed saint in the 1970’s and it is better known as Luna square because its longitudinal space runs parallel to Luna street. Even though nearby fancy Gran Vía area has always been full of day and nightlife, Luna Square just showed the opposite. Early in the Transition it became a classical spot for drug-dealing, prostitution and underground collectives. In spite of heavy complains from frightened neighbors, it all stayed that way un-til Victoriya Nvosu, a twenty-nine year old Ukrainian prostitute, was violently stabbed to death on a sunny Friday evening in June 2006. A couple of days before, some members of the Asamblea Ciudadana del Barrio Universidad (University District Citizens’ Assembly) had uploaded to the net a polemical video that frankly showed the degradation of the area through the activities of drug-addicts and mafias. Media-oriented Mayor Gallardón soon reacted and invested four millions of euros in a renewal plan for the square, which was implemented in 2007.

To prevent the space from being use by underclass people, all sand and green areas were removed and the square was all paved with two shades of grey granite stones in diagonal stripes. The surface was flattened above an existing subterranean parking lot and a remarkable step was created by the arcade in the side closer to Gran Vía. Lighting was reinforced with eight light-towers, while symbolic trees and sitting areas were placed in the perimeter, where a small children playground was also found. Finally, a cocktail bar in the shape of a high-tech pavilion and a new police station transformed the square into a much safer area. But the neighbors missed a collective space where they could gather and stay, with benches, vegetation and fountains. The renewal not only razed the marginality but also any hope of public space.

The Town Hall included the area in its Plan de Barrio (Neighborhood Plan) and met with the Association of Neighbors in the frame of its strategy of Citizen Participation in Community Development (Madrid Participa). The neighbors demanded green or sand areas. In association with a local architecture firm,

Ecosistema Urbano, they presented a project to turn Plaza Luna into Playa Luna, an urban beach inspired in the famous Paris example, for only twelve thousand euros. The area would be filled with five hundred cubic meters of sand; and eight showers and a chiringuito would complement an installa-tion with fifty shades and two hundred chairs. Despite its neat looks and the pressure of the 2007 municipal elections, the Town Hall could not accept the proposal. Triball, a real estate developer, had already acquired tens of proper-ties to start a smooth gentrification process with the aim of turning the area, renamed Triball (Triangle Ballesta street) after Manhattan’s TriBeCa (Triangle Below Canal street), into Madrid’s SoHo.

The new configuration of Luna square proved to be a proper design for all sorts of commercial initiatives, from medieval markets to music festivals and product stands. Although temporary facilities, some of them were so ambi-tious and realistic that they actually recreated the public spaces demanded by the neighbors, but they were private and access was always limited. In October 2010, Adidas Street Originals transformed the square into a skater’s paradise with ramps, legal graffiti and concerts. Recycled containers orga-nized the square and fragmented it in specific spatial units where different atmospheres were recreated. Previously that year, in the middle of a sticky summertime, Nokia reinvented the project of Ecosistema Urbano and pre-sented Madrid Urban Beach for up to 500 visitors at a time. It consisted of a small pool, a surfing install and a stage for live concerts, inserted in an envi-ronment of white sand where you could sit and have an iced-drink, or even learn to dance some capoeira amidst projections of world famous sunsets.

Of course local collectives didn’t appreciate either the simulation of their urban beach proposal or the general mercantilization of a space devoted to trade for the sake of safety. In 2008 some of them organized the Desayunos en la Luna (Breakfast on the Moon), where neighbors would gather on the square on Saturday late mornings to share some home food on furniture and breakfast sets brought by participants. They stayed for more than a year, setting up a participative breakfast buffet a month, to claim for an inclusive public space in Luna square. But unfortunately, the Town Hall sank into a deep financial crisis that limited urban projects and extended its interest toward private funding of social activities. Still, spatial and social innovative spaces do not depend so much on money but on the citizens’ participation in reinforced urban debates.

CONCLUSION

Late controversy on Occupy movements questions the right to the city in the information society, where the growing importance of hybrid private-public spaces is altering the condition of public space in the contemporary city. Maybe we could get inspired by Archigram, a team of British architects from the 1960’s, who designed images of pop architecture to review the metro-politan life from the temporary character of technology. In their Instant City project (1969-1970), they explore the qualification of public space through ephemeral structures that provide instant use and satisfaction to the citizens.

Although Archigram ignore the urban or economical relationships underlying their proposals, their fascinating character should invite us to use temporary installations to qualify public spaces for the needs of the community and prevent them from becoming a simulated scenography of the consumption society.

LEGENDS

Fig. 1: Glamour, Instant City. Archigram, 1968. Archigram Archives, Univer-sity of Westminster.

Fig. 2: Santa María Soledad Torres Acosta Square Urban Renewal, Madrid, 2007. Picture: Ayuntamiento de Madrid.

Fig. 3: Adidas Street Originals Exhibit, 2010. Picture: Alfonso Herranz.

Fig. 4: Nokia Madrid Urban Beach, 2010. Picture: Omar Sallman.

Fig. 5: Luna Beach. Ecosistema Urbano, 2006.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

BAUDRILLARD, Jean. La société de consommation. Paris, Éditions Gallimard, 1970.

COOK, Peter (ed.). Archigram. New York, Princeton Architectural Press, 1999.

DAVIS, Mike. City of Quartz. New York, Verso, 1990.

HARVEY, David. Social Justice and the City. Oxford, Blackwell, 1988.

SOJA, Edward. Postmetropolis: critical studies of cities and regions. Oxford, Blackwell, 2000.

BIOGRAPHY

Daniel Esguevillas is an architect, graduated in the School of Architecture of the Polytechnic University of Madrid. He has a PhD in Advanced Architec-tural Projects (School of Architecture of the Polytechnic University of Madrid) and at present is a Senior Lecturer at the Francisco de Vitoria University in Madrid, where he serves as Assistant Dean of Architecture. His work covers architectural as well as urban projects as Consultant Partner at Extero. He co-ordinates the Research Team on Urban Habitat from the Superior Polytechnic School of the Francisco de Vitoria University in Madrid, which is now focused on the research project on Urban Replay, a spatial and formal reformulation of postindustrial cities, focused in the reactivation of productive uses.

Fig. 1

Fig. 2 Fig. 3 Fig. 4 Fig. 5