Public space. What makes a public space successful? Unsuccessful? What defines or counts as “successful use” of a public space? What are the major dangers to public space? The minor or subtle dangers? What makes a public space pleasant to occupy? Since there is not a specific monetary value assigned to public space every time someone enters it, its value seems much quieter and more amorphous than the value that people assign to spaces that have been advertised or sold to them. Often, people do not even seem aware of the presence or absence of public space (unless it has just appeared or disappeared), but of the general feeling— liveliness, community, ugliness, or inhospitality— that lingers in that space.

Townsend’s point about the invisible infrastructure of cities (telecommunications networks) often being overlooked got me thinking about other aspects of a city that get overlooked. I think public space is certainly one aspect of urban life that requires people to speak specifically for it, rather than speaking for itself. Hayden assigns public space a very important role for a city’s people, claiming that it is the site for “the reproduction of social relations” in a city (Hayden 19). I had never thought about this before, but undoubtedly, the things and people you see occupying the public space in your city will have a profound effect on the way you view your city and its population. Your experience of your city could involve walking home through a public park scattered with piles of litter but nobody sitting around chatting. Or it could include walking home through a quiet park where people have spread blankets and sit in the sun, or chosen to eat lunch in the park rather than in their offices. The difference between those two things might just be adequate trashcans and comfortable benches, and maybe an initiative for public art in the park. Public space is one way for people not only to live out their hopes for a community, but for them to share that vision with the other people who have access to that space as well.

Today in Portland, I was intrigued by the story of the small park below the Westland Hotel. I have always thought of a public space as requiring a large-scale public works committee to improve it— I think I have tended to think in terms of National Parks or the whole New York City Highline, in that regard. To hear that that the use and future of that small park could be influenced by such small steps was amazing to me. In retrospect, thought, I have certainly had the experience of walking down the Highline and distinctly recognizing one small aspect of its construction or function that has been calculated to improve user experience. (Someone has put a bench right across from this lovely view; someone has arranged these tables and chairs in specific groups of 2 – 5 under this covered section; someone has taken the time to design and plant a variety of beautiful and interesting plants that I haven’t seen growing elsewhere in Chelsea.) On the Highline, that may have been part of a much larger planning project, but I think public space does not always have to be so top-down. It can be influenced, formally and informally, by the people who use it, and want it, and notice it.