Appropriating public space: transformations of public life and loose parts in urban villages

ABSTRACT

Appropriation of public space is a widespread trope of informal urbanism, attributed with supporting community bonds and economic livelihoods. Yet, appropriations remain confined to acclamations of their flexibility or chastised as encroachments, without an understanding of how and why they appear in particular urban conditions. Existing narratives that link appropriation to ambiguous demarcations, regulatory restraints, and spatial affordances, are ultimately insufficient. This paper investigates public space appropriation and its transformation through extensive mapping of twelve urban villages across China and India. As erstwhile rural communities are enveloped by the formal city, they subsequently densify, exacerbating the pressure on public space. This study draws attention to the impact of densification on the intensity and distribution of appropriation. It invokes the concept of “public space arenas” to argue that people not only passively use space but are enacting performative codes as they tacitly monitor public space appropriations in a self-regulatory process.

KEYWORDS:

• Urban informality
• appropriation
• urban villages
• mapping

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This research is supported by an Australian Postgraduate Award and an International Postgraduate Research Scholarship.

Notes on contributors

Matthijs Van Oostrum

Matthijs Van Oostrum is an urban designer with a PhD from the University of Melbourne. He obtained his masters in Urbanism at TU Delft and has working experience in India and the Netherlands. His research interests include urban informality, urban morphology, urban morphogenesis, urban coding and public life studies.