Stavros Stavrides: Public Space as Commons
Written by Stavros Stavrides. This concept-defining text first appeared in the anthology Uncovered: Nicosia International Airport (edited by Başak Şenova and Pavlina Paraskevaidou).
Can public space be efficiently described as the space of public use? Should we ignore the role of those who guarantee or allow public use? And should we ignore also the effects which various forms of public use have on the users? In the prospect of such a problematization of the term “public space” we can possibly explore an area of spatial knowledge which seems today crucial: space as a formative element of social bonds and ruptures. Especially in a period of social economic and cultural crisis, as the one we now experience, it is important to think about the “publicness”, the public character of public space. “Societies in movement” [1] question strongly those decisions and practices which redefine the “public” by prioritizing, both ethically and functionally, the “private”. Societies in movement seem to seek for a re-invention of the “public realm”. Could it be that “publicness”, and especially the public realm as practiced in public space, emerges in a period of crisis in the form of the common?
We can think of public space as space produced, defined and controlled by an established authority in an effort to regulate the public behavior of the people from which this specific authority draws its legitimization. In such a view, public space is not simply space given to people, neither space used by people. The mark, the stamp of a certain authority prevails. To ignore or defy this mark often produces dissident public acts but, also, generates counter-acts which, brutally expressed or not, explicitly show where the power to define public space mainly lies.
We can, however, think of public space as a kind of inherently ambiguous in its production, definition and uses space, which is essentially marked by contest. “[P]ublic space is always a contestation over the legitimacy of what can be brought and what can be excluded from the life one chooses and is required to have in common with others”.[2] According to such a view, public space is instituted through contest and, what is more important, remains essentially contestable.
Public space is indeed defined by the contest which moulds its uses and social meanings but we need to understand contest not simply as a state of things but rather as an ongoing process. Public space is always in the making. This transformative power of contest, however, has a potential qualitative limit. Beyond this limit public space becomes something else: common space, space of commons, space as commons. Contest will and, perhaps should never cease altogether. But once public space reaches the condition of common use as defined and performed by its users, then contest becomes framed in a significantly different context. Once people mark public space by their participation in its creation, meaning and use, contest takes the form of multifarious negotiations which lack the power to challenge the agreed upon character of a common good.
Public space as commons, then, is not simply an established utopia of space open to all. Common space is also and always in the making. Common space is a process of producing spaces through “commoning”, to use the term introduced by P. Linebaugh. [3]
Common space is shared space. Whereas public space, as space marked by the presence of a prevailing authority, is space “given” to people according to certain terms, common space is space “taken” by the people. A community of common space users develops by appropriating space and by transforming it to potentially shared space. Rules about how this sharing is to be performed develop in the process of creating space as common. But there is an important difference between those rules and the ones imposed by an authority overlooking public space. These rules are made and remade, therefore remain contestable, by various groups and persons who negotiate their presence in such spaces without any reference to a predominant center of power. In order for common space to remain common there have to be developed forms of contestation and agreement about its use and character which explicitly prevent any accumulation of power. Especially, any ac– cumulation of situated, space-bound power.
What has been called the “squares movement” in Greek, Spanish and other European cities, is also a kind of space commoning. In these collective practices, the rules of public use of space were developed in open direct democracy assemblies while at the same time a very wide variety of different forms of public expression were allowed to fourish. Anger or protest were combined with the building of alternative social “forms-of-life”.[4] Solidarity, which can be both the motive and the result of sharing, was expressed in a myriad of practices and, importantly, in the common care for space. In Syntagma square, for example, sharing often meant combining forces of different but equal individuals in order to deal with ordinary or extraordinary challenges: when the square was reoccupied after the police has swept people away by massive tear gas dropping, (among other forms of brutality), human chains were formed, which, by being extended throughout the square, transported small bottles of water from hand to hand in order to wash the pavement from the poisonous tear gas remains. Lack of adequate water had triggered collective inventiveness which produced a unique experience of space commoning. Life in those dissident or even rebellious squares was expressed and supported by acts which transformed public space to common space.
Common space is in-between space. Common space can be considered as threshold space. Whereas public space as discussed here, essentially has the mark of an identity, “is” (which means “belongs” to an authority), common space tends to be constantly redefined: common space “happens”.
“The wisdom hidden in the threshold experience lies in the awareness that otherness can only be approached by opening the borders of identity, forming -so to speak- intermediary zones of doubt, ambivalence, hybridity, zones of negotiable values”.[5] In common space, differences meet but are not allowed to fight for a potential predominance in the process of defining, giving identity to space. If common space is shared space, then its users-producers have to learn to give, not only take. Common space can thus essentially be described as “offered” space. Space offered and taken the way a present is. True, the offering and acceptance of a present can mediate power relations. But the commoning of space presupposes sharing as a condition of reciprocity.[6] Commoning can thus become a form of offering which keeps roles interchangeable.
The threshold character of common space somehow guarantees that. Use does not define proprietors; expression-through-space does not define owners of specific space identities, of spaces-as-identities. Think of the squares and streets of Tunisia and Egypt during the Arab uprisings: Powerful rebellious arenas of public expression and protest but essentially open to everybody. Perhaps one of the most important aspects of such a spatial commoning was the regained presence of women in re-invented public spaces. The fact that those uprisings did not emerge from any established political center but were from the start polycentric has contributed to their distinct appropriation of space. Common space was created as porous and shared, and was defined by practices which were expressing common anger but, many times, collective joy too, this peculiar joy that often marks the experience of commoning as sharing.[7]
Are we facing a major shift in the definition and production of public space? Are we witnessing, in Europe, in Africa, in the Americas and in other parts of the world too, a renewed presence of people in arenas of public expression? And do these events mark the emergence of common space, space practiced as commons? Perhaps it is too early to be sure. However, space once more is not simply the expression of an existing social bond but becomes a crucial means to invent the future. A possibly different, shared and defined-in-common future.
1. Zibechi, R. Dispersing Power. Social Movements as Anti-State Forces. Oakland: AK Press, 2010, pp.11.
2. Henaff, M.and Strong, T.B. Public Space and Democracy. Minneapolis: University of Minnessota Press, 2001, p. 4.
3. Linebaugh, P. The Magna Carta Manifesto. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008.
4. Agamben, G. Means Without End. Minneapolis: University of Minnessota Press, 2000, p 9.
5. Stavrides, S. Towards the City of Thresholds. Trento: Professionaldreamers, 2010, pp.18.
6. De Angelis, M. and Stavrides, S. “Beyond Markets or States: Commoning as Collective Practice (a public interview)”, AnArchitektur. no 23, 2010, (also at http://www.e-fux.com/journal/view/150).
7. cf Ehrenreich, B. Dancing in the Streets. A History of Collective Joy. London: Granta Books, 2008 and Solnit, R. 2009 A Paradise Built in Hell. The Extraordinary Communities That Arise in Disaster, N. York: Penguin Books, 200
Leave a Reply