Spaces of Becoming: Lessons for Planners from the Square Movements

ABSTRACT

The dilemma of openness reflects a long-standing ontological debate about public space. The dilemma is between creating boundless spaces that allow for an infinite diversity of uses but lack coherence, and bounding spaces to secure coherence at the cost of diversity. The implications for the theory and practice of public space planning, regulation, management and design are fundamentally different. By analyzing movement, occupation and identity in public spaces in the context of protest, I explore the concept of spaces of becoming: a fluid approach to public space interpretation and an alternative to the ‘dilemma of openness.’

KEYWORDS:

• Public space
• planning theory
• urban design
• boundaries
• Deleuze & Guattari
• social movements

Acknowledgments

I thank the editors, reviewers and colleagues who provided valuable comments for the improvement of this manuscript. I thank the funding institutions that supported this research. And, I thank all the activists from the square movements for inspiring this research (especially, the participants from Occupy Wall Street and The 15M/Indignados Movement).

Disclosure Statement

no conflicts of interests have arisen from direct applications of this research.

Notes

1. The park rules inevitably echoe Sharon Zukin’s (1995) notion of pacification by cappuccino.

2. An explicit expression of this was a banner with the legend “Do not name this” in the middle of the Barcelona encampment in May of 2011.

3. There were days when I attended several events in the same day.

4. Recent literature describe heterogeneous social movements as movements of movements (Mertes & Bello, 2004), non-movements (Bayat, 2010) and social mobilizations (Rebelaos.net, 2012).

5. The tradition known as botellón – that is, getting together in plazas and public spaces to drink alcohol in great amounts – is largely tolerated in Spanish cities.

6. Ironically, one of the busiest places for OWS activities was “60 Wall,” the atrium of JPMorgan’s headquarters.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by The Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnología (CONACYT), Universidad Autónoma de Tamaulipas (UAT), Secretaría de Educación Pública (SEP), The Clarence S. Stein Institute for Urban and Landscape Studies, The Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies (through the Tinker and International Research Travel Grants) and Cornell University’s Department of City and Regional Planning. Any opinions, findings and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the funders.

Notes on contributors

Silvano De la Llata

Silvano De la Llata is an architect, an urbanist and an educator. He received his PhD in City and Regional Planning from Cornell University (2014). He has taught studios and seminars on urban sociology, public space, design and urban history at Cornell University, universities of Tamaulipas and Anahuac (in Mexico) and, currently, at Concordia University (in Montreal). His research focuses on public space, urban design and the study of alternative urban uses as planning agents. He directs the project Cities X Citizens (www.citiesxcitizens.com), which bridges research, pedagogy and design practice, and focuses on the study of open urban systems, collaborative creativity and the democratization of city-making processes.