(Un)Expected Contemporary Public Space

From Firenze University Press Journal: Bollettino della Società Geografica Italiana

Valeria Cocco, Dipartimento Metodi e Modelli per l’Economia, il Territorio e la Finanza, Sapienza Università di Roma

This research is part of the recent debate about public space, “including all varieties of pseudo-public space” (Carmona 2019, 53); in particular, it analyzes the concept, the nature and the function of public space in urban areas, drawing an empirical analysis in Rome. The study moves from the evi-dence that contemporary public spaces do not always seem to coincide with “formal public spaces” (Carmona 2019, 47). In fact, even if the public spaces’ planners had the ambition to design a well public space, this is not always meeting the reality (Carmona 2019). The recent transformation of public, cultural and social spaces is dictated by the strong dynamism and fluidity of the city which has seen a response in the birth of a postmodern theoretical approach with reference to that part of literature defined as critical. From the new multidiscipli-nary lines of reflection on the interaction between indi-vidual, place, society and on social and territorial trans-formations, a renewed centrality emerges with reference to the relationship between the individual and the trans-formations that innervate the territory (Maggioli 2015), to the relationship between places and social subjects (Berdoulay, Entrikin 1998), to the geography of every-day life (Lindón e al. 2006). In this context, the strong link between individual and space, as well as the interpretation of microeconomic and social dynamics create a complex scenario characterized by many phenom-ena that are not easily decipherable (Innerarity, 2008).

Thus, as economic and social geographies change, the transformation involves also the nature of public spaces (Galuzzi, Vitillo 2018). Indeed, the contemporary public spaces could be seen as public or semi-public (or semi-private) urban areas acquired, more or less progressively, by the same communities (Hou 2010; Carmona 2019) in a process of re-appropriation of the city made by individuals and groups, and used as collective spaces. In particular, some authors (Francis e al. 2012; Gehl 2020) noticed that new public spaces are successful, while traditional public spaces are not. Thus, a reflection naturally arises: what are the elements that make public spaces successful and coherent with the need of the people? According to Gehl (2020), in the contemporary society, people are looking for a space that must be comfort-able, welcoming and livable (i.e. the square must have points of support as benches and sit walls to be seen as a public space). Carmona (2019) argues that “spaces become more meaningful as users interact with them” (Carmona 2019, 54). Other authors (Francis e al. 2012) seem to associate to public spaces a strong sense of community with the wellbeing, the feelings of safety and security.

Thus, in the XXI century cities, meeting and connection places could become public spaces and the extended use of public space must be seen as a development form of society (Gehl 2020). In other words, the great social transformations of the last decades have contributed to change over time the ways in which society has transformed spaces, places and forms of living, and, at the same time, experts have adopted a new opinion which has moved away from those classic theories which today appear short-sighted and unable to face existing reality and to propose alternative solutions consistent with the needs of individuals, and which place the concept of space in the declination of collective, open, public space at the center of a great literary debate.Overcoming the debate about public space in the neoliberal approach view and in the critical view, the need to “retheorise public space discourse on the basis of the actual experiences” (Carmona 2015; Carmona 2019, 47) and the need to define the elements that make public space successful and coherent with the need of the people (Gehl 2020) emerge as relevant points of this research.Indeed, the literature about the evolving of pub-lic space concept is various and wide, as wide is the renewed interest in how the urban fabric could affect the sense of community, whilst there is a lack of empiri-cal research that analyzes the renewed concept of public space in relation to the collective use and practices, the association between sense of community and the quality of public space (Francis e al. 2012; Carmona 2019; Gehl 2020).Thus, the research aims to focus on the empiri-cal analyses of a case study involving the spontaneous creation of a public space. In particular, this paper draws on research conducted in Rome, in the area of the MAXXI Museum. The case study analyzes the use of a void — an area that was not built inside the MAXXI Museum, located in the Flaminio district of Rome — as a public space. In fact, according to the original project of the museum, for not very clear reasons, some of the buildings into the project were never built and the area remained an empty space. In this research the void had not to be interpreted in the declination of waste and residual space (Stravato 2010), but it could be defined as an open or collective space when a place of identity, socialization, meeting and/or leisure is created in that void (Albanese 2018).

Thus, in this scenario, the phenomenon of space recovery is to be considered strictly connected to the concepts of identity and landscape where the contemporary citizen, living in a liquid space, tends to adapt changes in the surrounding context (Bau-ma, 2012; Berizzi 2018) and the frequent and contemporary processes and practices of re-appropriation by people (e.g. urban gardens, self-managed green spaces, places of cultural production, public spaces used for collective activities, etc.) act as a sign of vitality and dynamism of cities, as practices of freedom (Cellamare 2014). In this perspective, cities try to regain a cultural role to raise the quality of life through the re-appropriation of the territory (Albanese 2018) and the inhabitants seem to return to the center of the logic of urban develop-ment policies (Crosta 2010). In the midst of this cultural revolution emerges a renewed need of people to meet, for which cities increase their quality of life by assign-ing new collective values and meanings to emptiness (Cellamare 2014). In this regard, by reasoning around the concept of social identity of places and urban experience in individual local contexts of interaction (Zajczyk 1991), the protagonist of citizens’ daily life becomes the collective space, regardless of its private or public char-acter (Cellamare 2016; Albanese 2018). Therefore, over-coming the functional vision of modern urban models, the loss of meaning of the clear division between pub-lic and private open spaces, their origin and ownership, and also the difference between internal and external spaces stands out (Albanese 2018), public or semi-pub-lic space could be defined as a space with collective use (Crosta 2000) and shared (Barnett, 2014), starting from the assumption that it is the social interaction and the action of individuals that make the use public of the territory (Barnett 2014; Crosta 2010).

In a nutshell, the research is moved by the desire to reconstruct functions and use by the population and verify if the MAXXI Museum could be an example of public space produced by the re-appropriation of citizens, showing the results of a survey carried out in the MAXXI Museum pole. The construction of the contribution is characterized by a first part in which I will briefly reconstruct the functional profile of the Flaminio district of Rome and a morphological analysis of the MAXXI Museum space; then, in the second part of the research, I will focus my attention on the aim and the real use of the MAXXI Museum pole, highlighting the empirical findings and results of a survey carried out in the MAXXI Museum. In particular, the methodology for collecting information was articulated in direct observation, questionnaires addressed to the users of the MAXXI not-built area, extensive inter-views both to the users of the space and to relevant people connected with the MAXXI (i.e. the deputy artistic director of the Museum). The survey was carried out in July 2018 at different hours’ time and days, in order to guarantee a more complete view of the sample — 150 users interviewed, of which 123 respondents –.Moreover, in consideration of the fact that Covid-19 pandemic has changed — and will, probably, continue to change — the needs of individuals, the research intends to start ref lections about the improvement policies addressed to create a cultural ecosystem and the perspectives of contemporary public spaces integrated with museums and cultural heritage during and after the pandemic times.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.36253/bsgi-1026

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