The Fuzzy Side of Publicness: Visualizing Street Politics of Everyday life through the Lens of Distance

Abstract

The description of public space usually hinges on two narratives of publicness: one narrative criticizes the State’s attempts to condition publicness on the basis of functionality, and the other denotes publicness with space that can be appropriated by ordinary people. However, there are no “pure” moments in which either narrative is neatly differentiated since they are simultaneously active, or fuzzy, in situations of everyday life. Exploring this fuzziness, we propose a visibility framework for studying the physical and social embodiment of publicness as a lived experience. The framework employs socio-spatial distance as a variable for interpreting the emergence of situations that promote urban justice. Based on visual ethnography in public spaces in Cairo and Alexandria, the framework allows us to interpret the multi-valence and uncertainty characterizing the fuzzy side of publicness. The article concludes with reflections on the tense interface of control and self-organization that animates the dynamics of street politics.

Improvement Strategies for Enhancing User Satisfaction with Spatial Publicness in Privately Owned Public Open Space in Post COVID-19: A Case from Italy

“…Moreover, Smith et al aimed to enhance the suitability of public spaces for hosting events by evaluating the level of publicness through accessibility and considering factors such as payment methods and the mobility of event audiences [80]. The situation of distance (both social and spatial dimensions) as a relational variable was constructed as an instrument to explore the lived experience of publicness, incorporating novel indicators to examine the interplay between tangible and intangible expressions of publicness with the aim of enhancing the concept of visibility through empirical analysis [81]. The legal sense and lived sense are also further related to interpreting public space, respectively [82].…”

“…Functional Program [24,81,94,95] There are a variety of functions around the plaza. 27 Proportion of active commercial frontages is high.…”

Reimagining hope through the political: A post-foundational reading of urban alternatives beyond postpolitics

“…1 To locate ‘the political’ analytically within urban processes that generate hopeful alternatives, we emphasise the request of Fisker et al (2019: 9) to ‘imagine alternative spaces that are not free-floating utopias but differentiated trajectories grounded in the material realities from which they will have to spring forth’. By expanding what could be the credible objects of hope, informal encroachments that routinely break, nudge or loosen the boundaries of unjust urban orders can enter (or re-enter) the stage of urban politics as potentially transformative actions (Saleh et al, 2020). However, we should avoid romanticising all of these practices as kernels of hope unconditionally, since some of these practices might end up being criminal, vandalistic, offensive or detrimental to other social groups.…”

“…Novel reasons for hope about present conditions emerge when such practices are considered as partially unfinished alternatives. By focussing on this interface, hopeful alternatives to 'politics' can be found in the many cracks of urban space and power in counterpublic, self-organised communities of care and ways of cohabiting and using urban space alongside or beyond the instructed norms of the logic of politics (Saleh et al, 2020;Dikec x, 2017). Guided by this expansive conception of hope, we can detect underexplored discursive-material referents of the whereabouts of 'the political', which could enable us to both envision and enact urban alternatives arising from the ever-emerging counter-hegemonic practices in everyday life.…”

“…Signs of potential alternatives might be picked up by attending to the ambivalent interplay between order and self-organising practices scattered across urban life (Saleh el al., 2020). Although we agree with Lindroth and Sinevaara-Niskanen’s (2019: 644–646) assessment that the political implications of hope function as ‘a dynamic that simultaneously enables and disciplines; it is at once tangible and elusive’, we cannot concur with their broad generalisation that hope always entails ‘a promise of reaching an end-point, the “object” of hope’.…”