A Note on Human Interactions in Public Spaces

For us architects and designers, it is very important to realize that public spaces are places for community building. So, they should be made such that people like to engage with it. The reading on Social Life of Urban Spaces by William Whyte and the film, The Man with the Movie Camera (1929) set the tone of explaining how public spaces and interactions started taking place in the early 1900s.

Whyte’s article of working with the City Planning Commission in New York City in the 1970s to think closely about community building made me realize that the idea of community building has been a part of architecture since long. The part that I found interesting was that not only does the plan talk about how the community would be built, it also goes deep into analyzing the behavior of men and women interacting in this community.

The film, The Man with the Movie Camera shows different operations taking place in a city in Russia, giving a sense of everyday commotion in households, workplaces, and open areas. It was interesting to get a perspective of how public spaces used to look in 1929, more importantly, about the life at the time.

Today, the idea of community building has extended from just thinking about open spaces and gathering people around it. Today’s open spaces house a diverse community. So, it is important to think about the belief systems existing in those spaces. The readings discuss how the community responds when the public spaces contradict their belief systems.

Take Chinatown for instance. It comes from the name that Chinatown is a gathering of the Chinese community. Since Chinese consume fish and other seafood in their meals, the vegetarians may not be comfortable living in these public spaces.

An example of contradicting a belief system can be developing a public space through deforestation. While the idea behind creating a space was genuine, the people in that community may oppose this change because the action contradicts their belief system of environmental sustainability.

Discrimination in design is also an important factor to consider when designing public spaces. Since it is a common space for the entire community, the components present in that space should be free from bias so that people can collaboratively participate in that public space. The readings reference infrastructure development inequality, in which the government is prioritizing railways over buses. Since railways were primarily used by the elites at the time, the disproportionate allocation of resources to rail systems caused tensions among the minority residents.

 

Although the vision of creating community spaces has existed since the 1900s (or probably even before that), in context of today’s culture, I see public spaces as open areas where community building activities are done through interactions. Today, technology and use of mobile phones have captured our attention so much that we fail to interact with people around us when we are in a park, traveling in a subway, navigating through the city, etc. I admire technology for bringing productivity and in most cases simplicity to our lives. But, its heavy adoption has enclosed us in a digital world.

Consider technologies like Virtual Reality. One aspect of VR is to create virtual environments where you can connect with your friends around the globe and interact with them in real-time. That’s great! But what about the people in your immediate neighborhood? When I think of public spaces, I think of interactions and discussions. It is difficult to disconnect from the world, but my view of a public space would be an open area where people interact with each other – not their phones. The physical interaction is gradually disappearing, and I want to this to return to normal.

A few more examples where we see this happening: online shopping/ food ordering – you don’t go to a physical store, so you remove the interaction you could have had with the salesperson; online movie screening – you don’t go to theatres, so you miss the movie reactions when seen in a hall with a group of people; social media updates – you see the world through the trends on social media and ignore what you can see around you, so, your opinions form based on the information social media presents to you.

Don’t get me wrong. I am not against technology. But, I want to question its sustainable use and limit its involvement in community building.

Reading References:

[1]. Tactical Urbanism: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B8ut-BI3cpa2VkdFZGEwM0toUzA/view
[2]. William Whyte – Social Life of Small Urban Spaces: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B8ut-BI3cpa2MGRzLVk4ZU1RdGc/view
[3]. Discrimination by Design: https://www.propublica.org/article/discrimination-by-design
[4]. Theory of the dérive: http://www.bopsecrets.org/SI/2.derive.htm
[5]. The Man with the Movie Camera – Dziga Vertov: https://youtu.be/z97Pa0ICpn8