In a summary book, Thierry Paquot, philosopher of the urban, retraces the history of the notion of public space. He shows the diversity of representations and uses of the public around which the life of city dwellers is organized, not without hesitation and without conflicts.
A double definition, that of public space as a place and practice and that (in the plural) of places accessible to (x), articulates the five parts of the work of Thierry Paquot. If philosophy and communication sciences wonder about public space, while urban planners, architects and engineers work on the register of spaces, for the author, the two approaches converge on the idea of communication, Sharing, exchanges and circulation of signs. From the reading of this dense and fine work, we are enjoying sharing the great erudition of the author whose multidisciplinary formation spins curiosity for the details and the rare characters but also for the challenge of the common places. Like Richard Sennett, Paquot maintains that public space is a place of chance and meetings that founds the richness of the city. It is in public spaces that the subject resurfaces ; Each one perceives in fact in the strangeness of the other the guarantee of their own singularity.
The factory of opinions
The thesis of Jürgen Habermas, dating from 1961, sees in public space an intermediate sphere between private and state. He analyzes the genesis of the bourgeois public sphere (as David Harvey does with relevance about the Second Empire), his transformations and those of the State, then the rise in power and the decline of opinion. However, we must not give up the concept of public opinion (however fictitious it may be) in the sense that it constitutes a paradigm which counterbalances the single voice of the State (p. 17). The exercise of power and political domination must be subject to the advertisement given to opinion within a collective debate. There are variants to this thought, and alternative subjectivities, for example proletarian, must be taken into account. Habermas will himself admit that he was excessive on the unity of democratic universalism. Taking into account the particularities, it announces the end of public culture. This is undoubtedly what opposes him to Richard Sennett. He distinguishes opinions on the social life of behaviors and defends civility in the name of urban civilization: “ The mask is the very essence of civility ». It protects others from everyone’s subjectivity … and intimacies “ tyrannical »» !
The art of converse, also called managers, reaches its peak in XVIIIe century in Europe. There are then more than a thousand newspapers in French. The concept of cafes is imported from Arab-Muslim societies but it is in Paris that cafes spread (there are more than a thousand in 1804). The spirit of the city, strong ideas and political proclamations circulate in cafes. Paquot excels in placing vignettes on subjects and authors, to sketch collective scenes or to report forgotten words to illustrate her words thanks to a learned bibliography.
Variable kinship terms
The migration of the exchanges of public space to that of the private space leads Thierry Paquot to question the links that these terms maintain, according to cultures.
“” Private »In Greece (aidôs) Also means modesty, intimacy, and respect (p. 47). A public worship is doomed to Hestia, goddess of the hearthocking home for the destiny of the city, while Hermès symbolizes mobility and communication, the two, consubstantial to each other, carrying out the unity of opposites. During the debate relating to the Grand Paris, Christian de Porzamparc also opposed Hestia (symbolized by a lamp) to Hermès, the movement, the trade, the agora, deploring the disappearance of the first: it takes streets for May the city reinstall itself, an opening to the game of time, sensory, the happiness of the transformable …
While in Rome Public and Private intermingle incessantly, their opposition asserts itself in the Middle Ages due to the very role played by the State. Publicus is the agent of the sovereign, Publicare means confiscating, withdrawing from particular use. But the grip of feudalities is such, notes Georges Duby, that everything becomes public. Analyze the disappearance of this tangle leads to quoting the thesis of Norbert Elias whose ethnocentrism is denounced (Duerr, Bruguière). And if the modern rationality of customs was due to the ability to withdraw the individual, anxious to conceal as much as appearing ? We had attempted collectively to answer this question, giving private life to the sense of secret life. Thus, the gardens without barrier of the Americans did not mean that they had no secret life, but that their codes were of another nature than those of the French.
Developments and interpretations of public spaces
In the Greek cities, the islet determines the streets and the territories are divided between public and individuals. Paquot then engages in facetious descriptions. Thus Aristotle defines the role of the customs police: monitoring the flute, lyre and zitup players, ensuring that the garbage is deposited beyond the fortifications, removing the corpses found … in the street, etc. (p. 69-70). Our imagination of public space, as we understand it today, is carried by the gathering space, in the physical and political sense, that is the agora. But there are many agiora to various forms, and difficult access to the small people or foreigners. The Etruscans give a religious and political meaning to the foundation of a city, according to a specific ritual which the Romans will be inspired, masters in the construction of public ways. According to Richard Sennett, the meanings given to the body accompany the formation of urban space. The relationship between the experience of men on their own body and the spaces in which they live is narrow. The belief of the Romans in a geometry of the body is reflected, for example, in their town planning and in imperial life.
To evoke the evolution of urban spaces, Françoise Choay suggests for the Middle Ages to talk about contact space, for the classic era, spectacle space, for the industrial era, circulation space and for our era, of connection space (p. 74). These are not continuity but rather of coexistence and sometimes unpublished combinations. In the Middle Ages, road use conflicts are frequent and the responsibility of hazardous environments. The embellishment of cities is reflected in XVIIe And XVIIIe centuries with the creation of squares, parks and walks. The display of street names only appeared in 1728 and the standardization of plates in 1847. The city became a spectacle (just like night), nuisances such as cemeteries and sewers are back on the public’s view . Jane Jacobs recalled that when we think of a city, “ If the streets of a city are interesting, the city appears interesting. If they are boring, the city appears boring ». She added that public space symbolizes a space of belonging to each other to a larger political entity, through a “ Empathy architecture ». Thierry Paquot also notes that the street can be kind, pretentious, lively, deserted, sad. The ambiguity of these attitudes is exposed by the Catalan Ildefons Cerda at XIXe century (to whom we owe neologism “ urbanization ) And by poets-urban planners such as Robert de Souza. In 1913, he deplored the discoloration of the Nice facades that artisans no longer maintain with solid knowledge. “” The streets, the places, the planting of trees, the “free spaces” (the expression is period and comes from English open space And designates the “in-between”, the “interstices”, the “vacant terrains”…), the lighting, the posters, the windows, the animation of the street (“the art of the street (…) is the Even movement of outdoor peoples ”), everything that characterizes a city must deserve the greatest care (…) (P. 84).
Diversity of uses
The expression “ public spaces »Date of the late 1970s and did not become trivially twenty years later. She retains her uncertain contours as we see in the last part. Admittedly, all kinds of laws today frame the use of public spaces. However, the inhabitants reclaim the vitality of the street, the harmony of the parks, the unexpected interstices, by diverted uses. But, when the precautionary principle induces to filter, monitor, exclude in the name of the general interest, that small groups appropriate public spaces, and, by means of intimidation, hunt users, when privatization Ancient public spaces leads to close, control, move away, so we can be alarmed. Living organism, the city continues to reinvent itself, but nostalgia for the missing stroller is powerless to arouse the Renaissance. Are we going to take refuge in virtual cities, looking for different dreams ? Will we only become spectators of urban spaces, prisoners that we are of our screens, our keyboards and our headphones ? The question is not “ The end of the public But that of the approval of a consensus that confirms individualism and not the feeling of feeling good, together, in shared spaces.