Definitions and Theories of Public Space
The part of the book ‘Order in the Streets. The Political History of Warsaw’s Public Space in the First Half of the 19th Century’ Detailed information is here https://storage. googleapis.com/flyers.peterlang.com/ March_2020/978-3-631-80070-6_normal_English. pdf
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| Цитувати: | Definitions and Theories of Public Space / A. Łupienko // Місто: історія, культура, суспільство. — 2020. — № 8(1). — С. 97-116. — Бібліогр.: 113 назв. — англ. |
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| citation_txt | Definitions and Theories of Public Space / A. Łupienko // Місто: історія, культура, суспільство. — 2020. — № 8(1). — С. 97-116. — Бібліогр.: 113 назв. — англ. |
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| description | The part of the book ‘Order in the Streets. The Political History of Warsaw’s Public Space in the First Half of the 19th Century’ Detailed information is here https://storage. googleapis.com/flyers.peterlang.com/ March_2020/978-3-631-80070-6_normal_English. pdf
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Місто: історія, культура, суспільство Місто: історія, культура, суспільство
DOI 10.15407/mics2020.08.097
УДК 94(438)
Łupienko Aleksander,
PhD (history), Instytut Historii PAN, Warsaw
DEFINITIONS AND THEORIES
OF PUBLIC SPACE*
Space and Place
The “public space” of the book’s title is a term created by and for twentieth- century urbanism. In
this book it refers to earlier centuries. In the nineteenth century, the concept did not yet exist; fur-
thermore, the actual division of a city into functional units only began to appear towards the end of
that century.1 Insofar as public places (mainly squares and city streets) existed in earlier times, no overall
distinction had been made between private and public spaces. Yi-Fu Tuan has made a specific distinction
between both of these terms. For him, space is a shapeless environment whose centre is a moving observer.
To quoting him: “Space assumes a rough coordinate frame centred on the mobile and pur- posive self.”2
Moving and looking he is able to experience empirically (visu- ally) phenomena in this space; the other
senses simply enrich his impressions. A human, however, does not tolerate shapeless, formless phenomena,
thus he or she imposes a framework on space, giving it a “geometric personality.”3 “All people undertake to
change amorphous space into articulated geography,”4 Yi-Fu Tuan writes. Space that has been “tamed” and
that lies within an imposed frame- work, from a simple clearing in a forest to a whole country, becomes a
place. Hence Tuan believes that: “when space feels thoroughly familiar to us it has become a place.”5
© Aleksander Łupienko, 2020
* The part of the book ‘Order in the Streets.
The Political History of Warsaw’s Public Space
in the First Half of the 19th Century’
Detailed information is here https://storage.
googleapis.com/flyers.peterlang.com/
March_2020/978-3-631-80070-6_normal_English.
pdf
1 In a pre-industrial town or city, there were no
distinctions between residential and manufacturing
districts; workplaces were usually synonymous
with dwellings. There were, of course, parts of the
city associated with certain functions, e.g. plots
of land allocated to the clergy alongside a church.
Certain types of crafts were also situated in special
places, such as tanneries by a river. However, this
was a purely pragmatic division, unconnected
with any deeper notions of urban planning. See
the many socio-topographical works on ancient
cities, such as J. Wiesiołowski, Socjotopografia
późnośredniowiecznego Poznania (Poznań 1997).
2 Y.-F. Tuan, Space and Place: the Perspectives of
Experience (Minneapolis-London 2001) [original
version 1977], p. 12.
3 Y.-F. Tuan, Space and Place…, pp. 17, 36–37.
4 Y.-F. Tuan, Space and Place…, p. 83.
5 Y.-F. Tuan, Space and Place…, p. 73.
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Christian Norberg-Schulz also discusses distinguishing a place from a “domain” in the context of the
density of a network of paths. Describing the con- cept of (perceived) “existential space”, he states that
“[…] we know the denser areas better because physically or intellectually we have ‘conquered’ them by
means of more paths. The denser areas thus become places, although they may not have a clearly-defined
boundary, whereas the other areas remain domains” [underlining – A. Ł.].6 It emerges from this that space
(or a domain) is some- thing limitless and undefined, while a place is something specific, defined and to
some degree also tangible. In times past, certain specific, tangible places (e.g. public places) were delin-
eated, but nothing as abstract as space was identified or described in a town or city. Even in the ostensibly
abstract, mediaeval saying that “town air sets you free” (Stadluft macht frei) the word “space” was not used;
only the more concrete, “material” word “air.”
Let us now move from the tamed, archaic term “place” to the word “space.” In his famous 1974 book
The Production of Space (La production de l’espace), Henri Lefebvre conducted a perceptive analysis of
the essence and development of space. Puzzling over the reason why up to then there had been no general
theory of space (one covering its mental as well as its material aspect), he noticed that real, material space
had slipped somewhat into the background since the time of Descartes. While in ancient and mediaeval
times the concept of space was described in vague terms by various thinkers, the Renaissance had brought
new, scientific studies of the rules of representing space in the form of the prin- ciples of linear perspective.
Supposedly defining space, in his famous coordinate system Descartes de facto limited it (res extensa) to
the field of mathematics, from which other sciences only then borrowed it. Hence, according to the author,
today we talk about geographical space, economic space, sociological space and so on, and a general the-
ory has not been developed.7 Lefebvre tried to create a theory based on the works of Hegel and Nietzsche
and—in this case, more to the point—of Karl Marx. Lefebvre’s Marxist theory begins from the assumption
that clean, uninhabited space does not exist, and in any case is invisible. Following Leibnitz, the author sets
himself the task of studying occupied (inhabited) space.8 Inhabited space—before humans appear—is nat-
ural space. When humans ap- pear in it, the space immediately becomes social space. An inherent feature
of social space is its deformation by humans. It becomes a place of production and reproduction. Putting
it another way, social space, including the urban space that interests us, is always a social product.9 The
key statement is that space is not only a passive place for life and events, but expresses certain concrete
social relationships. Every era has created its own space.10 It has done so using as a basis the space created
by previous eras that it has then modified. For example, the state appropriates the space of certain lands; a
certain social group dominates within the urban space, and so on. Even the very shape and siting of build-
ings, monuments, and roads have their own social significance.11 Certain places in this space, creating the
impression of transcendence and monumentality,12 have a deep effect on the observer. Lefebvre calls such
space absolute. He proposed that social space could serve the dominance of one social class over another.
6 C. Norberg-Schulz, Existence, Space &
Architecture (London 1971), p. 27.
7 H. Lefebvre, The Production of Space (Oxford
1991), p. 8.
8 H. Lefebvre, The Production of Space, p. 169.
9 H. Lefebvre, The Production of Space, p. 26.
10 H. Lefebvre, The Production of Space, p. 31.
11 H. Lefebvre, The Production of Space, p. 137.
12 H. Lefebvre, The Production of Space, pp. 220–
223.
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Space and Hegemonic Practices
Such reasoning leads us to a statement that has great significance for the histor- ical sciences. If space, as
studied by historians, is never neutral or abstract, then we must ask the question of its role in the develop-
ment of social relationships. Lefebvre’s conclusions indicate that space, its appearance, form and function
can express dominance. This was not a new conclusion, since Antonio Gramsci had drawn attention to it
before the war. This Italian socialist philosopher, a pris- oner of Mussolini’s regime who died in 1937, was
the first to point out the all- encompassing dominance exerted over the masses by privileged social groups.
Gramsci wrote: “One might almost say that he [man-in-the-mass – A.Ł.] has two theoretical Conscious-
nesses, […] one which is implicit in his activity […] and one superficially explicit or verbal, which he has
inherited from the past and uncritically absorbed.”13 It should be added here that, according to Gramsci,
traditional philosophy and religion build this consciousness.14 This is but a small fragment of this philos-
opher’s thinking, written in prison, which inspired a constellation of left-wing thinkers and which still
excites political scientists to this day.
We find a similar thesis on the special dominance of certain social groups in, for example, Guy Debord’s
theory of the spectacle. The object of criticism by the principal theoretician of the movement of situation-
ists and letterists of the 1950s in France was post-war triumphalist capitalist society. In his book La Société
du spectacle in 1967, he summed up his earlier ideas. In Debord’s view, “Modern society has thus already
invested the social surface of every continent—even where the material basis of economic exploitation is
still lacking—by spectacular means. It can frame the agenda of a ruling class and preside over that class’s
con- stitution. And, much as it proposes pseudogoods to be coveted, it may also offer false models of revo-
lution to local revolutionaries.”15 Space, the value system, as well as human consciousness, have been taken
over, as the writer claims, by the capitalist system of the production of consumer goods. Debord called the
mechanism of affecting people’s lives created in this manner the spectacle, since it monopolises people’s
attention and does not allow them to think of anything else. Urbanism, whose function is to alienate people
and prevent rebellion, has also been harnessed to serve the spectacle. “Urbanism is the mode of capitalism
appropriating the natural and human environment, which, true to its logical development towards absolute
domination, can (and now must) refashion the totality of space into its own peculiar décor.”16 “But the
general trend toward isolation, which is the essential reality of urbanism, must also embody a con- trolled
reintegration of the workers based on the planned needs of production and consumption.”17 For Debord, one
of the cures for the existing situation was the method of so-called détournement, reversing, which “restores
all their sub- versive qualities to past critical judgements that have congealed into respectable truths—or, in
other words, that have been transformed into lies.”18 This was sup- posed to depend on changing the func-
tion of places that had formerly existed, in line with the needs of the masses and their awareness.
13 A. Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks
(London 1995), p. 641. See: http:// abahlali.org/
files/gramsci.pdf [accessed: 5 April 2018].
14 A. Gramsci, Prison Notebooks, p. 770.
15 G. Debord, The Society of the Spectacle, trans.
Donald Nicholson-Smith (New York 1994), p. 37.
16 G. Debord, Society…, p. 122.
17 G. Debord, Society…, p. 122.
18 G. Debord, Society…, p. 145.
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Others, inspired partly by Gramsci’s works to write about hegemonic practices, were Chantal Mouffe
and Ernesto Laclau. In their famous work Hegemony and Socialist Strategy they described hegemonic
practices performed by various social subjects with the aid of “articulation”; that is, discursively changing
the identity of other subjects. Without going into the details of this theory, we can say in summary that
Gramsci’s Marxist theory has lived to see modern creative reinterpretations.19
These theories are of course imbued with ideology, but the conclusion on various forms (including
spatial) of dominance remains valid. When applying these theories to the nineteenth century, we need to
add some nuance to this as- sessment. Urban space in the first half of the nineteenth century was not total-
ly controlled or dominated. City streets saw demonstrations protesting against legal norms and customs.
These could be large marches, riots, the erection of barricades, as well as barely-noticeable minor opportu-
nistic demonstrations (called micropolitics by Patricia Mann).20 An example of a street confrontation was
the issue of smoking tobacco on the streets of Berlin in the nineteenth cen- tury. The authorities banned it
in 1832 and breaking this ordinance in any way was treated as an attack on the state. Therefore, during the
1848 revolution, there were those who smoked ostentatiously in the streets, thus showing their defiance
of the monarchy.21 State control over space was just developing, but, as we shall see, observers of events
in Warsaw’s open public spaces at that time were under the great influence of the relative effectiveness of
actions taken by the Russian (and their subordinate Polish) city authorities and their services.
“Public”, the Public Sphere and its Political Dimension
The prescriptions quoted above refer to urban space, buildings and squares; in other words, the ingredients
of the de facto public space. It is now time to focus on the second element of this term. The adjective “pub-
lic” has a longer history. It is a term of ancient provenance, deriving directly from the Latin publicus, which
in turn came from the Greek koine. To examine its definition, we need to turn to Roman law, which made a
distinction between what was private and what was public (there was a division between private and public
law). The adjective publicus thus had various definitional nuances,22 the main ones being:
• defining those things that pertained to the state, including the treasury. The state itself was called res
publica. Public, that is, belonging to the state, were the law (ius publicum), the land (ager publicus),
and also officials, buildings, etc.;
• naming objects designated for public use (res publico usui destinatae), e.g. the forum, but also build-
ings such as theatres, baths, etc.;
• defining finally those things that were open and widely disseminated (information).
19 Ernesto Laclau, Chantal Mouffe, Hegemony and
Socialist Strategy: Towards a Radical Democratic
Politics (London-New York 2001) (originally
published 1985), specifically chapter 3: Beyond
the Positivity of the Social: Antagonisms and
Hegemony.
20 See M. Domosh’s “gender” article on
“micropolitics” playing out on the streets of New
York City in the nineteenth century in “Those
‘Gorgeous Incongruities.’ Polite Politics and Public
Space on the Streets of Nineteenth-Century New
York City”, Annals of the Association of American
Geographers (1998), vol. 88, No. 2, pp. 209–226.
21 R. Beck, La place publique dans les villes, lieu
des conflits, XIXe siècle in: La Place Publique
Urbaine du Moyen Age à nos jours, eds. L.
Baudoux-Rousseau, Y. Carbonnier, Ph. Bragard
(Arras 2007), pp. 123–131.
22 I take this definition from J. Sondel, Słownik
łacińsko-polski dla prawników i historyków
(Kraków 2003).
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Thus “public” meant everything that referred to, or was connected with, some office or institution,
as well as what took place openly before witnesses, in a gen- erally accessible place. These definitional
nuances were also known in the period we are examining. In the nineteenth-century press, the word
“public” appears most frequently in the following contexts: “public order” (the first definition), “pub-
lic buildings” (the second definition), as well as most often “public charity, approbation, distinction, a
public view, something displayed in public, for public consumption” (the third definition). Furthermore,
the noun “the public” used to describe an often-unspecified group of people who are observers, an
audience, and often the target of things taking place in public, derives from the third def- inition of the
adjective “public.” Today, we associate this word mainly with the theatre, but in the past, it referred to
different audiences in addition to the public as the body of citizens of a city or country.
In her philosophical work, Hannah Arendt accepted and criticised this role of “the public.” An eye-wit-
ness to the tragic example of society’s passivity during the Third Reich in Germany, she sought its causes
in the inertia of the public sphere, in the widest sense of the word. The term “public sphere” also belongs
to a more recent period and it has replaced the older, more specific terms: “public affairs” and “policy.” In
Arendt’s view, modern times have brought with them passivity in the public sphere, while the golden age
of the public sphere idealised by her was the time of the city-states of ancient Greece. Public space—polis,
agora—is a place for “action” (i.e. influencing other people, which Arendt places in opposition to “la-
bour”—satisfying biological needs, or “work”—trades).23 City-states provided people with the opportunity
to lead two parallel lives: a private life and a public life between which “there is a sharp distinction.”24 Pri-
vate life, whose mainstay was the home, was a place for satisfying essential physical needs (“reproduction
of the workforce”, as the sociology of the city describes it), for where there is necessity, there can be no
freedom,25 including forcing by means of violence, and ordering instead of persuading was characteristic of
life beyond the polis, for the home and family life, where the head of the household wielded unquestioned
despotic power. Nevertheless, this despotic rule over physical needs was essential for creating the free
public sphere of the polis.26
In Greece, isonomy, equality, was based not on the fact that people were born free, but that the state
removed natural inequality. Equality did not belong to the people but was an attribute of the polis.27 This
public sphere, not democratic of course, was the ideal state structure, where citizens (but not all inhabitants)
jointly created policy. According to Arendt, this ideal has been warped in modern times when so-called
social space has replaced the public sphere. Characteristic of that space was the concept of an assembly of
people not as a group of unique individuals, whose ability to “act” was conditioned by their rule over do-
mestic arrangements, but as a kind of harmonious whole. The model for this was the Christian vision of the
human race as a body (corpus) joined by an apolitical family link (brothers and sisters), where concern for
the immortality of human achievements in the public memory was replaced by concern for the immortality
23 H. Arendt, The Human Condition (Chicago-
London 1998) (originally published 1958), p. 7.
24 H. Arendt, Condition…, p. 24.
25 H. Arendt, On Revolution (New York 1963),
pp. 57–58.
26 H. Arendt, Condition…, pp. 28–31.
27 H. Arendt, On Revolution, p. 23.
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of the soul.28 Another model was the rigorous feudal division of the community into estates based on social
status. The most important feature of this transfor- mation was the empowerment of all members of society
(a certain social pro- motion for women, a gradual move away from slavery), which led to an opening to the
public gaze in the private sphere of the home and all that that entailed, as well as of what was essential for
survival. “Society is the form in which the fact of mutual dependency for the sake of life and nothing else
assumes public sig- nificance, and where the activities connected with sheer survival are permitted to ap-
pear in public.”29 In other words, the social sphere has taken over the public sphere. Activity gradually be-
gan to disappear from the public sphere, accompa- nied by the rise of work. In the ancient polis, wealth and
possessions served above all to allow one to be independent from work, seen as satisfying human needs, in
order to spend time on public affairs.30 Modernity has brought us the cult of work in order to increase our
wealth, while displaying passivity in public affairs. This process was already apparent in the Middle Ages,
when the public square was a market place, somewhere to present in public the process of production.31
Experts on the agora agree with this interpretation. Aleksandra Wąsowicz notes that the logos (the word)
ruled the ancient agora, whereas in a mediaeval market place it was the stall (trade).32
The French Revolution in turn gave birth to the dogma of man’s innate equality, which the state was
meant to protect. This gave the state a convenient pretext to interfere in the ancient sovereign privacy of
the home. The nineteenth century was already the age of work, where the need to satisfy physical needs,
the need to work for a living,33 became a constituent element of life, and we began to perceive society as
a community of employers and employees, and the ideal of the free citizen of the Greek polis, who does
not have to work and who is a fellow-competitor in the public political debate, had been consigned to the
past. The eminent theoretician of democracy and the public sphere is Jürgen Habermas. He has a different
focus in his by now classic work on the subject of the modern public sphere.34 In Arendt’s view, the private
domestic sphere was shown as the domain of the head of the household’s despotic power, as some- thing
transitory, while the public sphere was the place of rivalry between equal citizens and something that was
not transitory.35 Thus had it been in ancient times. The Middle Ages had brought a new, rather curious type
of public sphere, namely the representation of power. The highest authority was God, the king was his vas-
sal, and at the same time the highest ruler of a country’s lands. Feudal lords represented this authority as a
state of affairs: they did not hold these positions temporarily, but they were a permanent embodiment of au-
thority.36 An inter- esting process began to take place from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. On the
one hand, the court took over the whole representation of power, which from the eighteenth century began
to privatise itself37 (it remains somewhat iso- lated from the state in the way that the privy purse is separate
from the state treasury); on the other hand, the state became impersonal with the development of a complex
network of government offices, with their associated bureaucracy. In Habermas’s view, the modern public
28 H. Arendt, Condition…, pp. 53–56.
29 H. Arendt, Condition…, p. 46.
30 H. Arendt, Condition…, p. 84.
31 H. Arendt, Condition…, p. 159.
32 A. Wąsowicz, “Nowe tendencje w badaniach
placów antycznych: agora”, Kwartalnik Historii
Kultury Materialnej (1992), R. 40, No. 3, pp. 275–
281.
33 H. Arendt, Condition…, pp. 126–127.
34 J. Habermas, The Structural Transformation of
the Public Sphere. An Inquiry into a Category of
Bourgeois Society (Cambridge 1991) (originally
published in 1961 as Strukturwandel der
Öffentlichkeit).
35 J. Habermas, Transformation…, p. 3.
36 J. Habermas, Transformation…, p. 7.
37 J. Habermas, Transformation…, pp. 30–31.
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sphere was created in these conditions. The tide of material goods as the domain of private domestic financ-
es became a public matter.38 A tide of publicly-available information also appeared in the form of ephemeral
writings and later the press. In the eighteenth century, it was already the mature bourgeoisie that disposed of
these goods (a bourgeoisie whose roots the author seeks in the small group of renaissance humanists), and
which was conscious of itself and opposed to the authorities.39 Here we are getting close to a key statement:
the public sphere of the bourgeoisie was the “sphere of the opinion of private individuals coming together
in public.”40 We need to empha- sise the adjective “private”, given that every “bourgeois” was economically
inde- pendent of the authorities. He controlled his own finances as private property and not, as in the Mid-
dle Ages, an earthly fiefdom. His wealth was a place of private autonomy and relaxation between his public
duties, as well as the source of his independence from daily heavy work, and it was “apolitical.”41 In result,
it was possible that rational and critical public debate, nourished and matured in French literary salons and
English coffee houses, where there was an opportunity to express views irrespective of one’s social status,
could become the phenom- enon of the eighteenth century.42 In order to take part in such a discussion, one
had to have free time. Thus the bourgeois public opinion was born, which was opposed to all forms of dom-
ination and tyranny. It was these “private individuals coming together in public”,43 who became the engine
of democratic change. Without this support in the form of a private, self-sufficient financial base, there was
no possibility of free political discourse. The weak spot of society today, as Habermas summarises it, is its
lack of just such a mature public sphere. Opinions are not born out of serious discourse, but are adopted,
with the help of the mass media, by citizens worn out through daily work. The characteristics of such a
public sphere are: 1) a small number of people expressing their views and enor- mous numbers of recipi-
ents (similar ideas can be found in the works of Richard Sennett, according to whom it was precisely in the
nineteenth century that the high-profile personality of a leader dominated the crowd);44 2) an inability
to make a counter-argument (vide television); 3) any broader debate being con- trolled by a variety
of institutions; 4) citizens not being autonomous units, as at every stage of life they are under state
control (where they work, how they bring up their children, etc.).45
The conclusions to be drawn from Habermas’s theories in the context of public space is, firstly, the re-
quirement to shape it “for communication.”46 In other words, this space should serve for the public expres-
sion of views or con- versation. In Habermas’s work, the principal spaces for this kind of commu- nication
were cafés. In this book, whose subject is open, urban space, there is no room for a deeper development
of the issue of public interiors. However, interpersonal communication in open, urban space is also an in-
structive sub- ject of research. A positive example of this is Speakers’ Corner in Hyde Park, London, where
anyone may speak out in public. A negative example, however, to a certain extent was the nineteenth-cen-
tury reconstruction of Paris. During the time of Napoleon III, a great network of open streets was created,
which did not foster interpersonal communication, unlike earlier secluded squares that had been conducive
38 J. Habermas, Transformation…, p. 19.
39 J. Habermas, Transformation…, pp. 51–56.
40 J. Habermas, Transformation…, p. 27.
41 J. Habermas, Transformation…, p. 28.
42 J. Habermas, Transformation…, p. 33.
43 J. Habermas, Transformation…, p. 27.
44 The writer proposes the example of Alphonse de
Lamartine. See R. Sennett, The Fall of Public Man
(Cambridge 1977).
45 This argument becomes even more relevant in the
era of improving methods of social control, thanks
to advances in technology.
46 See K. Miciukiewicz, Pomiędzy sferą publiczną a
przestrzenią publiczną w mieście, in: Sfera publiczna.
Kondycja - przejawy - przemiany, eds. J. P. Hudzik,
W. Woźniak (Lublin 2006), pp. 213–232.
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to such contact.47 Camillo Sitte (about whom more later) emphasised this aspect in his main work of 1889,
although his arguments were aesthetic and not political. Another inference we can draw is the issue of the
openness of public space and its accessibility to all.48 Any appropriation of parts of it, any exclusion of in-
dividuals from it on the grounds of social class or skin colour, testify to the crisis described by Habermas.
Public space, precisely as the “bourgeois” forum for political discussion, should be accessible, communal
and independent of everyone, as well as clearly distinguishable from private space. This requirement can
seem like a pious hope, especially since a larger city, which is after all what Warsaw was in the first half of
the nineteenth century, “creates” an anonymous public space, in which it is difficult to exchange opinions
on the street.49 Nonetheless, the ideal of the inclusivity (openness) of public space should be taken into
account.
At the end of this section, I would like to refer to yet another source of thinking about public space.
This is Carl Schmitt’s The Concept of the Political.50 This scholar, lawyer and political scientist, tainted
afterwards by collaboration with the Nazis and removed from political influence after 1945, created in
1933 a theory of “the political” that helps us to understand the process of creating nineteenth-century
national groupings, but also reveals some mechanics of the aforementioned public sphere. In Schmitt’s
currently widely-commented vi- sion, we find a description of a political operational method within a
state and between states. Schmitt wrote on “the political” under the influence of his own thoughts on the
subject of supranational agencies between the wars, however his conclusions will help us to understand
what happened in public space during the nineteenth century. Describing the concept of “the political”, he
pointed out that for a state to function properly there must exist a defined enemy in the sense of a political
opponent. “The enemy is solely the public enemy, because everything that has a relationship to such a
collective of men, particularly to a whole nation, becomes public by virtue of such a relationship.”51 The
state thus allows people to form themselves into differing blocs, whose rivalry produces what Schmitt calls
the “political entity”, or “unity.” “The political does not reside in the battle itself […], but in the mode of
behaviour which is determined by this possibility, by clearly evaluating the concrete situation and thereby
being able to distinguish correctly the real friend and the real enemy.”52 This emerges from the statement
that differences between people and states are inevitable, while the political allows human groupings to
co-exist. “The political can derive its energy from the most varied human endeavours, from the religious,
economic, moral, and other antitheses. [The] […] motives can be religious, national (in the ethnic or cul-
tural sense), economic, or of another kind, and can effect at different times dif- ferent coalitions and separa-
tions.”53 Chantal Mouffe, whom we have already met, also drew inspiration from this thinking. Her vision
of a properly-functioning democracy is based on an agonistic model in which “[a]dversaries fight against
each other because they want their interpretation of the principles to become hegemonic, but they do not
put into question the legitimacy of their opponent’s right to fight for the victory of their position.”54 As we
47 K. Miciukiewicz, Pomiędzy…, pp. 214–215.
It has been customary in professional lit- erature
to see this as preventative moves against street
disturbances; in Napoleon III’s day, urban
barricades became a thing of the past, although this
could also have been due to the beneficial effects
of increased public works at the time; see David H.
Pinkney, Napoleon III and the Rebuilding of Paris
(Princeton NJ 1972), pp. 35–36.
48 K. Miciukiewicz, Pomiędzy…, p. 220.
49 D. Niczyporuk, Przemiany przestrzeni publicznej
na przykładzie Lublina, in: Wokół socjologii
przestrzeni, eds. A. Majer, P. Starosta (Łódź 2004),
p. 147.
50 Carl Schmitt, The Concept of the Political, trans.
George Schwab (Chicago-London 2007), originally
published in Hamburg in 1933 as Der Begriff des
Politischen.
51 C. Schmitt, Concept…, p. 28.
52 C. Schmitt, Concept…, p. 37.
53 C. Schmitt, Concept…, p. 38.
54 Chantal Mouffe, Agonistics. Thinking the World
Politically (London-New York 2013), p. 7.
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shall see, the political as a feature of the public sphere was also a feature of public space in Warsaw after
1815, in which there was a rivalry between individuals and groups with differing political visions.
The Influence of Public Space on People
Psychology also studies the effect of space on the human psyche. A pioneering work in this field is Kevin
Lynch’s often-quoted The Image of the City. The writer studied open, urban spaces (in other words, public
space) using several specific US cities. On the basis of a number of interviews with the inhabitants of these
cities, he tried to establish which elements of the urban infrastructure were espe- cially meaningful to peo-
ple, came easily to mind, and were remembered. He also asked them to draw from memory places that they
often visited. Starting from the assumption that inhabitants are not merely external observers of the urban
spectacle but also part of it,55 he concluded that particular elements of urbanism and their location have
specific connotations for people. In other words, when seeing certain places and parts of the town (towers,
walls, roads, etc.), people unconsciously assign a certain meaning to them. Thus, the aim of urbanism is the
creation of a clear and legible space that will have a positive influence on the inhabitants’ psyche.
From an analysis of the interviews and resultant descriptions, the author has proposed that there are
five types of elements that define a city.56 These are: roads, meaning all permanent features that people do
not see as boundaries but as lines of communication (streets, paths, motorways in drivers’ eyes); verges,
which are linear elements that are not roads and which often delineate certain spaces (a wall, a row of trees,
the routes of motorways in pedestrians’ eyes); “districts”, meaning areas that can be entered, and which
in some way differ from the surrounding areas (districts, characteristic streets); “junctions”, meaning in-
tersections or a concentration of characteristic elements at one location (road junctions, metro stations);
and finally “landmarks”, which are external, unique and distinctive elements, often associated with roads
(towers, masts, a group of buildings). Later in the book, Lynch suggests how we might want to mould these
elements in order to create understandable, harmonious and memorable arrangements, what he calls “im-
ageability.” The point is to endow the ever-changing city57 with cer- tain features of continuity and coher-
ence,58 even a poetic character,59 so as also to ensure that all decisions taken in such a city have coherence.60
The author was not a pioneer in speaking of the poetry of public space. Camillo Sitte, whom we have
already met, was already seeking aesthetic beauty and picturesqueness in urban planning at the end of the
nineteenth century. This Austrian architect, urban planner and well-known theoretician, who died in 1903,
suggested in his main work, Der Städtebau nach seinen künstlerischen Grundsätzen,61 a change in the
principles of planning urban space. He produced a critique of contemporary, nineteenth-century methods
of laying out new streets and plots, turning to the “ancient” ability to create artistic urban values. He most
criticised the cult of open space in a city,62 based on thoroughfares that were re-scaled in terms of width, a
55 K. Lynch, The Image of the City (Cambridge-
London 1966), p. 2.
56 K. Lynch, Image…, pp. 47–48.
57 K. Lynch, Image…, p. 2.
58 K. Lynch, Image…, p. 112.
59 K. Lynch, Image…, p. 118.
60 K. Lynch, Image…, p. 119.
61 The original German publication dates from
1889, and the quotation here is taken from a French
translation: C. Sitte, L’art de bâtir les villes (Paris
1996).
62 C. Sitte, L’art…, p. 35.
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dense network of straight streets, fre- quent four-way or even larger intersections (leading to traffic jams),
as well as the current tendency to demolish structures near monumental buildings, thus “opening them up.”
Likewise, large, open city parks found no favour with him; instead, he preferred small enclosed gardens
within the walls of specific plots.63 The second, most important thing that Sitte criticised was removing
current city space from public life and depriving people of contact with art (currently locked up behind
museum walls).64 In his view, current squares were designed mechan- ically,65 soullessly symmetrical, with
monuments and buildings always situ- ated in the centre, precisely on the lines of pedestrian thoroughfares.
A deeper reason for this was, according to Sitte, rising land prices in cities and the need to create structures
with the greatest floor area and the broadest façades. Thus, the preferred horizontal projection of new build-
ings was rectangular, or, as Sitte put it, “convex.”
He contrasted the current “convexity” of structures with the ancient “con- cavity”, that was nothing
more than buildings on newly-designed accessible public squares.66 The virtue of the ancients, and also of
people from the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, was their sense of harmony and scale;67 they created
squares that were not too large, they laid out enclosed streets (with buildings tightly packed on either side,
with small junctions of no more than three streets), as well as artfully-located monuments and fountains
in the squares. The reason for the last of these was, according to Sitte’s interesting hypothesis, the lack of
paved streets in ancient cities.68 For on an unpaved road, the ruts and tracks of people and horses could al-
ways be very clearly seen. Monuments and fountains were located precisely in places not affected by these
tracks, which was usually on the edge of squares, where they did not collide with the flow of traffic. The
actual shape and proportions of squares were worked out gradually in natura, without an initial rigid plan,
which made them irregular; but this irregularity turned out not be noticeable. This gave the fabric of ancient
European cities artistic values.
Sitte concluded his thoughts with his own conception for rebuilding the famous Viennese Ring, which
would have changed this broad, cavernous and almost shapeless street into a system of intimate, connected
squares, each of which would have been organically linked with specific imperial buildings, such as the
parliament, the theatre, or city hall. In conclusion, it is worth mentioning Sitte’s idea that a city is a kind of
work of art, which every day has an influence on the masses, just as the theatre influences the upper clas-
ses.69 This thought links Sitte’s and Lynch’s theories and is a common feature of something that I would call
the psychological school of urban studies.
The Theatricality of Public Space
The influence of space on man is linked to the issue of its theatricality. The idea of the city as theatre is pres-
ent in human culture at least dating back to the appear- ance of the motif of the city as a stage set for Greek
theatre. The theatre and the city had been intertwined for centuries. The sixteenth century, for example, saw
the development of illustrations of two dramatic settings: tragedy and comedy.
63 C. Sitte, L’art…, p. 108.
64 C. Sitte, L’art…, pp. 112–113.
65 C. Sitte, L’art…, pp. 59–60.
66 C. Sitte, L’art…, p. 145.
67 C. Sitte, L’art…, p. 22.
68 C. Sitte, L’art…, p. 24.
69 C. Sitte, L’art…, p. 120.
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The writer was Sebastiano Serlio, an Italian theoretician of architecture and urbanism. A “tragic” set-
ting depicts a street in an Italian town, whose frontages consist of regular buildings with arcades, somewhat
uniform in style (classical form, full of pathos); a “comic” setting is in turn the opposite: here stylistic and
spatial chaos rule, the buildings are of different heights—it is a little mediaeval gothic town. Both settings
can be found in the second volume of his main trea- tise and are still interpreted variously to this day.70
The opposite also was true: treating, perceiving and even designing the city or town as theatre. A city’s
main squares were often designed in their entirety on a single drawing board (more on this in the chapter
on the history of public space), like a plan for a stage set, although spaces that developed over years were
also affected by a process of stylistic homogenisation in order to make them ap- pear more coherent and
monumental, and make an impression on passers-by. An example of streets that over decades became a
“theatre” for performances by the commercial aristocracy and a hallmark of their towns include the Strada
Nuova in Genoa71 and the Strada Romana in Siena.72 In Siena’s heyday in the fifteenth century, there was
a special office called the Ornato73 (the “beauty”) whose officials were responsible for actively influencing
the appearance of the town’s principal through the arterial road called the Strada Romana, the route for
pilgrimages to Rome. On the one hand, they could compel the owners of buildings standing along this thor-
oughfare to carry out essential repairs to their façades, or to remove bays jutting over the road thus spoiling
its appearance; while on the other hand, they could financially support those who had decided to renovate
their property.74 Furthermore, it was at this time that modern “statu- tory” zoning for commercial activities
was developed: all “dirty” or “unworthy” trade and industry was relegated to the outer suburbs, while the
more “ele- gant” trades (goldsmiths or textile dealers) received inducements to move into the ground floors
of houses along the pilgrimage route.75 All of this indicates that people then were conscious of the visual
effect that a group of buildings lining a road could produce. A hundred years later, the Strada Nuova in
Genoa was completely rebuilt. The old aristocracy, returning to power in the sixteenth century, broke with
the mediaeval Italian trend for creating enclosed, separate districts of buildings belonging to specific fami-
lies in favour of an open-space street plan,76 although it did not abandon private, family ownership of some
streets. In the design of these roads’ outer walls, echoes of Sebastiano Serlio’s previously-mentioned urban
theatrical settings could be seen, as well as the principles of the three unities of time, place and action, taken
from Aristotle’s theory of drama.77 As we shall see, the theme of caring for the appropriate ap- pearance of
central streets was also evident in nineteenth-century Warsaw. This line of thinking led, for example, to a
prohibition on Jews owning properties on principal streets.
The path from the theatricality of urban space in ages past leads to the twentieth-century theory of the
theatricality of human relationships and of daily life in general. The theoretician of the “theatre of daily
life” is Erving Goffman, author of the famous book The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life.78 Among
the conclusions to be drawn from it is that all of us have façades, just like buildings. It is our external
70 See T. Zarębska, Teoria urbanistyki włoskiej XV i
XVI wieku (Warszawa 1971), p. 95.
71 G. L. Gorse, “A Classical Stage for the Old
Nobility. The Strada Nuova and Sixteenth- Century
Genoa”, The Art Bulletin (1997), vol. 79, No. 2,
pp. 301–327.
72 F. J. D. Nevola, “ ‘Per Ornato Della Città’. Siena’s
Strada Romana and Fifteenth-Century Urban
Renewal”, The Art Bulletin (2000), vol. 82, No. 1,
pp. 26–50.
73 F. J. D. Nevola, “Per Ornato….”, p. 30.
74 F. J. D. Nevola, “Per Ornato….”, pp. 32–33.
75 F. J. D. Nevola, “Per Ornato….”, p. 31.
76 G. L. Gorse, “A Classical Stage…”, p. 307.
77 G. L. Gorse, “A Classical Stage…”, pp. 303-304.
78 E. Goffman, The Presentation of Self in Everyday
Life (Edinburgh 1956). See also U. Hannerz,
Exploring the City: Inquiries Toward and Urban
Anthropology (New York- Chichester 1980), chapter
six: The City as Theatre: Tales of Goffman,
pp. 202–242.
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appearance and manner. We create this façade to help other people to assess a situation quickly, which is
how the author has named a single or mul- tiple interaction between two or more people. This definition
is nothing more than the rules of the game; in other words, the principles on which interactions should be
based, whether we are dealing with a police official, with someone who has found our hat, or perhaps with
our boss. Occasionally, a whole team of people works to define a situation (the author provides an example
of bank employees’ typical behaviour). According to Goffman, we reflexively try to decode another person
quickly. The need for this arises precisely in a public space, where we are surrounded by strangers about
whom we know nothing and where there is no possibility to learn much about them quickly. The mechan-
ics of this definition of a situation greatly simplify this task. Goffman has also analysed the behaviour of
people in open public spaces, where he conducted this research among the com- munity of a psychiatric
hospital (on the assumption that violating appropriate behaviour allows us better to know its rules), or in
the small-town atmosphere of the Shetland Isles. His more interesting conclusions can be summarised in a
few points: 1) Each culture has various definitions of appropriate behaviour in public, and appropriate dress
and outward appearance belong to the behavioural canon of Western culture,79 along with peaceful, non-ag-
gressive behaviour. 2) We are obliged to display a minimum of engagement with a situation, i.e. reacting to
sig- nals from others as well as focusing on doing something while being observed by others.80 Similarly,
we are obliged to remain silent when we are not taking part in an interaction, even if there are others taking
place all around us, for silence shows respect. 3) Looking at someone can be seen as assessment, even if
that is not our intention; the author recommends so-called civil inattention81—ini- tially noticing someone
and then diplomatically not paying attention to him or her. 4) The author calls circumstances accompanying
what is taking place on the street, such as smoking tobacco, or the kind of outfit we are wearing and so on,
“subordinate involvement.” Here, history recognises a series of restrictions connected to this, for example
limitations on a woman’s freedom to walk along streets in the nineteenth century, depending on the time of
day and the company, while at the same time permitting spitting in public…82 5) Generally speaking, wom-
en to this day are bound by greater formality and decorum on the street, which appears in more complicated
dress and less public leeway for the outfit (or hairstyle) to be in disarray.83
Later in the book, Goffman describes the conclusions drawn from an analysis of the circumstances of
the spontaneous starting up of conversations on the street and the terms of their development. Thanks to
this, we can understand that even something supposedly so incidental and spontaneous as behaviour in a
public place is limited by unconscious rules, which other passers-by can easily see us breaking. Summing
all this up, at issue is the comfort of a safe participant in a city’s public life, where everyone has the right
not to be needlessly pestered on the street.
The issue of the “performative turn” in historical studies is linked to research into behaviour in public
space. This line of inquiry is an attempt at a scien- tific study of the “unpolitical” aspects of a town or city’s
79 E. Goffman, Behavior in Public Places. Notes on
the Social Organization of Gathering (New York
1966), p. 25.
80 E. Goffman, Behavior…, p. 56.
81 E. Goffman, Behavior…, p. 84.
82 E. Goffman, Behavior…, p. 49.
83 E. Goffman, Behavior…, p. 204.
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public space. Based on Goffman and others, we can study the influence of a great city on human behaviour,
as well as the changing norms of public behaviour in a city, based on a new, more detailed analysis of ex-
isting historical sources.84
Urban Space in Sociological Research
Sociology too studies urban space and its inhabitants. Within the framework of this relatively recent sci-
ence, a special branch devoted to the city arose at the start of the twentieth century. The early days of this
science were associated with the “Chicago School”, including Robert Park, William Burgess and Roderick
McKenzie, one of its most important works being Park’s The City in 1915. These scholars treated the city
as a natural space; a place for communal living, as well as for the rivalry of representatives of the human
species. The line of inquiry that they created has been called social ecology, or urban ecology.85 Given
that these scholars were the pioneers of mature sociological thinking about the city, their school is also
occasionally called the classical school of urban ecology. In their theories, the city is a constantly-growing
human population, where there is an endless battle over centralised space arranged in concentric circles.
Simplifying things, we might say that a city’s inhabitants split themselves into groups linked by the biolog-
ical principle of symbiosis. These groups are in competition with one another (although there are fleeting
moments of co-operation) for the best space, of which there is not too much in a city. The objective is for
one group to take and hold a space, and then repel a rival group. This leads to spatial segre- gation. These
writers also described the mechanics of territorial invasion by an outside group leading to the expulsion, or
absorption, of its current inhabitants (“succession”).
As can be seen, this vision was strongly inspired by social Darwinism and was well adapted to the
reality of the American capitalist economic model. However, it was quickly realised that the judgements
passed by the Americans were too simplistic and tendentious. Hence, the “culturalistic school” was formed
before the war,86 its main proponent being Florian Znaniecki. It was a humanist school. The city, according
to Znaniecki, lay in the sphere of people’s joint experience and should be studied as such. This was in direct
contradiction to the Chicago School’s ideas: the city should be looked at through the eyes of its specific
inhabitants; their backgrounds and views should be studied, not only the envi- ronment and the space itself.
Further lines of enquiry into urban ecology focused on the work of these two schools, detailing the
results of their studies and developing ever more complex theories. Thus, Louis Wirth and Amos Hawley
of the neo-classical school87 did further research into population density, as well as symbiotic and commen-
sal behaviour. Gideon Sjoberg88 created historical types of cities (the pre-industrial city, the industrial city,
etc.). I have already written about Henri Lefebvre. Here it is worth focusing on the work of Manuel Cas-
tells. This sociologist, who is con- sidered as part of the structural-functional school, remarked in his book
84 An example of this new approach is Peter K.
Andersson’s recent work Streetlife in Late Victorian
London. The Constable and the Crowd (New York
2013).
85 B. Jałowiecki, M. S. Szczepański, Miasto
i przestrzeń w perspektywie socjologicznej
(Warszawa 2002), p. 16. I have taken from these
writers their rankings of schools of urban ecology.
86 B. Jałowiecki, M. S. Szczepański, Miasto…,
p. 20.
87 B. Jałowiecki, M. S. Szczepański, Miasto…,
p. 22.
88 B. Jałowiecki, M. S. Szczepański, Miasto…,
p. 25.
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The Urban Question that space is an “expression of the social structure”, and that every society can be seen
as several methods of production’s historical way of expressing itself. Castells called the arrangement of
the basic elements of social structure methods of production, and he listed three basic ones: economic, po-
litico-institutional, and ideological. “The economic system”, writes Castells “is organised around relations
between the labour force, the means of produc- tion, and non-labour”,89 and based on property relationships
and the process of labour. The politico-institutional system is based on relationships: domination— regula-
tion and integration—repression. The ideological system “organises space assigning it a network of signs,
whose signifiers are made up of spatial forms, and whose signifieds are ideological contents.”90 To put it
another way, each his- torical urban society is characterised by conflicts and transformations based on those
three relationships with the economy and division of labour, with legal regulations and spatial domination,
as well as with a system of spatial signifi- cance. These relationships are useful for studying space in the
present-day US city as well as the centre of Warsaw during the Partitions.
Writing in The Social Creation of Space (Społeczne wytwarzanie przestrzeni) (1988) Bohdan Jałow-
iecki drew inspiration from Castell’s and Lefebvre’s ideas. This book is in some ways a continuation of
Lefebvre’s sociological thinking. It is obvious to Jałowiecki that space is a social product and that each era
creates its own space. The creation of space is of course constrained by specific barriers such as established
social relationships, the level of technology available at a given time, and natural barriers, as well as value
systems and cultural categories; in other words, ideology. Thus, space is created (not without conflict) by
certain people within the reality of a specific era. It is the “creation of a living structure, a social group,
which treats it as a means of preserving its structure.”91 Space created in this way “becoming a material
setting of life and in turn conditions people’s behaviour by means of the quantity, quality and accessibility
of places, where they can satisfy their needs.”92 Summing up, a city’s space does not develop automatically
and is not merely an indifferent backdrop to social events. Its development is conditioned of course by the
system of government and of polit- ical control, but—and this is different from Lefebvre—this space is
not above all a tool of this dominance. These relationships are, in the writer’s opinion, “neither simple nor
unambiguous.”93
Specific spatial behaviours are also linked to space. Jałowiecki includes here: creating space, which I
have already discussed; designating space, examples of which could be the style of a building being con-
structed and the use of existing space; and assimilating space, e.g. adapting space to new needs. We can also
find in Jałowiecki a classification of urban space, which is interesting in the context of this book. Depend-
ing on the level of assimilation, he distinguishes: personal space, e.g. a home where we can interfere at the
individual level; living space, which is the space in which an individual moves on a daily basis, in other
words public space where there are few opportunities for interference; and finally eco- logical space, which
is untamed, endless natural spaces which actually generate a feeling of danger. The degree of freedom of
89 M. Castells, The Urban Question: A Marxist
Approach, trans. A. Sheridan (London 1977)
(originally published in 1972), p. 126.
90 M. Castells, The Urban Question…, p. 127.
91 B. Jałowiecki, Społeczne wytwarzanie przestrzeni
(Warszawa 1988), p. 36.
92 B. Jałowiecki, Społeczne….
93 B. Jałowiecki, Społeczne…, p. 53.
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behaviour represents another cat- egory. Here we can distinguish: private space with great freedom; public
space with various restrictions; and organisational-political space, where behaviour is strictly controlled
and where we find mainly prohibitions, e.g. military land, or certain land controlled by the state. The sec-
ond category is of particular interest and brings into my deliberations one of the elements of the definition
of public space, namely the issue of freedom of behaviour.
A more traditional classification can be found in Alexander Wallis. In his book City and Space (Mi-
asto i przestrzeń) he divides space into open and closed, and almost the same division into institutional (in
other words de facto private) and public space.94 In the context of this book, the description of the processe
taking place in the city centre appears to be of particular interest. The centre is an exceptional place, an
indispensable space which emphatically distinguishes it from the rest of the city, precisely as a result of
these processes. In addition to the exchange of information, formally in government offices and informally
in clubs, we need to include the following processes: cognitive (interpersonal; important in times past, in an
age of limited communications), the choice of values and de- cision-making (forming views, contact with
other people’s activities), social iden- tification (a sense of community), social integration (of various social
groups), and the social staging of prestige. I shall quote in extenso a description of the last of these: “The
prestige of individuals, groups and great gatherings is staged in the centre in the most intense and compre-
hensive manner. This takes place daily and on special occasions through participation in encounters, walks,
personal contact, meetings, through participation in premières, inaugurations, concerts, commemorations,
festivals of thanks, processions, military tattoos, funerals, and public holidays. The city centre does as a
rule have the best conditions for the successful staging of social prestige. Its architectural dimensions create
a very meaningful setting for these processes.”95
It is also possible to follow the course of these processes using the example of the nineteenth-century
city. Just as the outskirts of a city are often called “dormitory towns”, “workplaces” and so on, so the cen-
tre, in the light of ear- lier comments, could be called the “city’s living room.” Wallis also points out
another aspect of the centre, although in my view this is also a feature of public space: “the city centre […]
releases the individual from over-rigid social structures. It allows us for a moment to shed the role of family
member, worker […] or other formalised roles in favour of an anonymous role in a city square, a cinema
or a department store. It permits the role of a neutral viewer, observer, lounger, passer-by, or merely a man
at a window.”96
Monumentality and Transcendence in Public Space
Returning to urban space as a stage, we should point out not only its theatri- cality, but what is connected
with it: representativeness. The efforts mentioned above to beautify a city’s appearance also possessed this
dimension. As early as in antiquity the rulers of a city tried, through work on beautifying central space, to
94 A. Wallis, Miasto i przestrzeń (Warszawa 1977),
p. 97.
95 A. Wallis, Miasto…, p. 213.
96 A. Wallis, Miasto…, p. 218.
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leave some trace of their glory. Let us recall the Roman forums constructed by successive emperors: Julius
Caesar, Octavian Augustus, Trajan, and Nerva. Their beauty and monumentality mirrored the dignity of
their founders’ posi- tion; their size thus corresponded to the power of their founder. This space represented
the ruler’s splendour before his subjects, and after his death recalled his achievements for all time. During
the Middle Ages and the modern era, a ceremonial space also developed in the city, in which something I
would call “the performance spectacle in praise of the ruler” took place. The route along which the ruler
would travel through the city walls to reach the palace or the cathedral was called a Via Regia or Via Imperi-
alis.97 Its route was strictly laid down. It was decorated specially for such an event. An example is the route
from the Floriańska Gate through the market square to Wawel Castle in Krakow, or the “Royal Route” in
Warsaw. The central section of that route was often dec- orated with triumphal arches and called the “Fo-
rum.” Such a route’s specific function was limited to the stretch between the castle/palace and the cathedral,
and was the setting for the heir to the throne’s procession on foot to his corona- tion. The space changed
for the occasion to a space sanctified by the ceremony of the coronation (Via Sacra). This staged spectacle,
often based on a religious sub-text, was meant to arouse deep feelings of reverence for, and attachment to
the ruler—God’s representative on Earth. Examples of such routes can be found in Regensburg, Augsburg,
Frankfurt am Main, Prague, Bratislava and Vienna.
Here it is worth turning to an anthropologist. Space is not homogenous,98 claimed Mircea Eliade, who
studied space perceived by religious people from different cultures throughout the world. He argued that
there are numerous “interruptions and breaks”, which connect the world of transcendence (the spir- itual
world) with the temporal world. In the writer’s view, establishing points of contact with transcendence in
this way, whether with the help of holy sites, places of worship, or totem poles—the famous axes mundi,
equates to an act of orientation in the formless space of the world. “The unknown space that extends beyond
his world—an uncosmicised space because it was unconsecrated, a mere amorphous extent into which no
orientation has yet been projected, and hence in which no structure has yet arisen—for religious man, this
profane space represents absolute nonbeing.”99 The sacred space of homes and towns thus defined becomes
on each occasion the centre of the world for the one establishing it. There can be a great many such centres
and they allow us to find ourselves in the world.
The door that opens on the interior of the church actually signifies absolution of continuity. The thresh-
old that separates the two spaces also indicates the distance between two modes of being, the profane
and the religious. The threshold is the limit, the boundary, the frontier that distinguishes and opposes two
worlds—and at the same time the paradoxical place where those worlds communicate, where passage from
the profane to the sacred world becomes possible.100
According to this, certain buildings in a city acquired different meanings and values for people. The
public space at the heart of a residential town during a corona- tion procession became just such space.
97 See J. A. Chrościcki, “Przestrzeń ceremonialna w
nowożytnym mieście”, Kwartalnik Historii Kultury
Materialnej (1993), vol. 41, No. 2, pp. 213–224;
idem, “«Viae Regiae» w środkowowschodniej
Europie w XVII I XVIII wieku”, Rocznik Historii
Sztuki (1987), vol. 16, pp. 267–282, on the subject
of the role and appearance of this kind of public
space.
98 M. Eliade, The Sacred and the Profane; the
Nature of Religion, trans. W. R. Trask (New York
1959), p. 20.
99 M. Eliade, The Sacred…, p. 64.
100 M. Eliade, The Sacred…, p. 25.
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We know this kind of sacred public space, sacred irrespective of what took place in it, from ancient Egypt
(for example, the space between Luxor and Karnak101), and Greece (the sacred land in Delphi called the
“navel of the world”).102 During the first half of the nineteenth century, religious belief was still so strong
that the sacred space in a city was visible and deeply-felt. An example from Warsaw are the various Roman
Catholic rituals in open public spaces. These include the procession on the feast of Corpus Christi and
funeral processions. The space in front of churches was also treated as something quantitatively different
from its surroundings. Despite the fact, as we shall see, that sacred space was also used for demonstrations
of a political nature, in the Warsaw of that time we can see the junction of immanence and transcendence.
The Problem of Representation in Public Space
This does not change the fact that over the centuries, the transcendent aspect of urban space became less
important. The authorities’ religious dimension was disappearing due to changes in thinking, a trigger be-
ing the new philosophy of government during the Enlightenment. The monumentality of the trium- phal
routes of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries (the Viae Triumphales of absolutism)103 no longer repre-
sented divine harmony, nor a return to the splendour of ancient times (as in the Renaissance), but the clear,
naked power of temporal authority. This type of process could be already seen at the court of Louis XIV. It
was acknowledged then that French achievements, including in science, had overtaken the achievements
of antiquity. The greatness of Versailles was the embodiment of, if I can put it like this, the private power
and greatness of the king, whether or not supported by the Glory of God. The goal of its con- struction was
“to give expression to the idea of a great monarchic state, at the height of its fame and development, and to
the representation of a great French monarch.”104 This ruler, this “Sun King” was to receive homage in this
temple. Another example, taken out of context, is the rectangular Place Vendôme (for- merly the Place de
Nos Conquêtes) in Paris, whose initial purpose had been to crown the route from Versailles to Paris, as well
as an architectural setting (emphasising the splendour of the ruler) for ceremonies involving ambassadors.
A hidden function for this space was to draw the diplomats’ attention away from the real centre of Paris, so
disliked by the king.105
Here we arrive at yet another important aspect of public space. This is the issue of representation. As
we can see from the statements above (see section 1.6) each public space has its creators whom it usually
glorifies. The streets of medi- aeval and Renaissance self-governing Italian urban communities were the
apple of the local authorities’ eye for that reason. The impression that the town centre made, its main streets
and squares (public space today), was a testament not to the people nor to the leaders with whom those
communities fought, but to the city élite and the patricians. The reason for this was that these social groups
were the creators of public space; they constructed splendid residences in the best parts of town; they were
101 W. Ostrowski, Wprowadzenie do historii budowy
miast. Ludzie i środowisko (Warszawa 2001),
p. 131 nn.
102 W. Ostrowski, Wprowadzenie…, pp. 60, 272.
103 J. A. Chrościcki, “«Viae Regiae»…”, p. 279.
104 T. Tołwiński, Urbanistyka, vol. 1: Budowa miasta
w przeszłości (Warszawa 1948), p. 283.
105 R. Ziskin, “The Place de Nos Conquêtes and the
Unraveling of the Myth of Louis XIV”, The Art
Bulletin (1994), vol. 76, No. 1, pp. 147–162.
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able to dominate this space and thus control its appear- ance, if only by means of established law; and they
were the ones who actually gave the most money to the construction of the public buildings that contributed
to creating public space. They promoted themselves through public space. Given that people have an innate
tendency to present themselves in the best possible light, we can say that public space served to display
either collective (as in the case of the quasi-democratic urban communities), or individual (as in the case of
the ruler and benefactor) splendour, glory and wealth.
An article by Christopher Mead, inspired by the work of Habermas discussed earlier, describes further
changes in the question of representation.106 Paris, which in the Middle Ages was vast, underwent an espe-
cially large number of changes over time. As their strength grew, the French kings tried to put their stamp
on the city, funding monumental and unified façades on sites that created public spaces. This process began
as early as the sixteenth century, and inspira- tion was drawn from Italy. Between 1508 and 1512, unified
façades of bourgeois houses, underpinned with ground-floor arcades, were built on the Pont Notre- Dame,
leading to the Île de la Cité.107 The years 1552–1554 saw similar invest- ment on the bridge at the south-
ern end of the island. After these beginnings, the seventeenth century saw an explosion of royal funding
and investment in public spaces, starting with the Place Royale (the Place des Vosges today, 1605–1612),
where the king stipulated in legal terms the appearance of the façades of the newly-developing regular city
square using a rectangular template. This law was the beginning of a parting of the ways in the develop-
ment of building exteriors and their interiors, and different laws began to govern each of them. The uni-
fied construction of the two city squares developed during Louis XIV’s reign—the previously mentioned
modern-day Place Vendôme and the circular Place des Victoires—also covered private apartments. Firstly,
both were supposed to glo- rify the person of the king, and for both of them the architect, Jules Hardouin-
Mansart, used the “royal” approach to the façades. They consisted of an arcaded plinth, the central section
decorated with high pilasters rising to a height of two stories (the so-called giant order), a composition
known in Paris from the recently-completed eastern façade of the royal residence, the Louvre. The fate of
the buildings around the Place Vendôme was rather complex; they eventu- ally became residences of the
bourgeoisie. In this manner, a façade representing and assigned to some extent to the highest orders (the
king), was somewhat democratised, enriching the portfolio of Parisian architectural forms.108 To com- plete
this picture, it is worth recalling that the rebuilt Place des Vosges (thus without colonnades, among other
features), designed originally for middle-class dwellings, eventually became an aristocratic haunt.
The next stage in this development took place in the nineteenth century. The royal giant order had
not been in use for several decades when, in 1853 and 1854, during the great rebuilding of Paris, a
façade of this type was used by the architect Jacques Ignace Hittorff to decorate the buildings flanking
the enormous circular Place de l’Étoile. A few years later, in 1858, the all-powerful préfet of the Seine
approved just such a (formerly royal) style to be used in middle-class, bourgeois apartment blocks
106 C. Mead, “Urban Contingency and the Problem
of Representation in Second Empire Paris”, Journal
of the Society of Architectural Historians (1995),
vol. 54, No. 2, pp. 138–174.
107 C. Mead, “Urban Contingency…”, p. 157.
108 C. Mead, “Urban Contingency…”, p. 160.
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around the Place Saint-Michel. Then it was a simple step to using such a façade along the Avenue de
l’Opéra in 1860, and then to make it a permanent motif when applying the finishing touches to apart-
ment blocks along Parisian boulevards. Hence, the façade became a part of public space, and thus in-
dependent of the private space of the apartment within. This phenomenon grew during the nineteenth
century throughout Europe; beautiful façades con- tributing to the beauty of city streets developed
independently of what lay behind them. By the twentieth century Tadeusz Tołwiński was complaining
about this, describing nineteenth-century façades as “shining masks behind which nestle the same
domestic poverty and narrow stuffiness of the workshop as in the rest of the city.”109
Summing up, we need to ask ourselves if only great, monumental buildings, beautiful apartment blocks
and statues create public space. They provide it with its distinguishing features and they come to mind
whenever we try to recall a city that we have visited. However, we should be aware that city space is also
created by “ordinary”, simple buildings. They often do not imprint themselves on the col- lective memory,
but they can in fact be important to the identity of some groups and individuals. They are the ones quickest
to fall victim to the wrecking ball during intensive urban renewal, yet they can live for a long time in the
memory of their residents, and if only for that reason they are worth remembering.110
Public Space in the Light of Urbanism
Finally, it is time to quote what urbanism—the branch of science that devised the concept—has to say about
public space. The actual concept of “space” takes on different meanings in different contexts. Space can
be mathematical (abstract), social, cultural, natural, material, lived in, or also absolute in the philosophical
sense. Here I would emphasise a basic distinction between abstract space—the idea that develops in the
human mind—and real space in its physical embodi- ment (i.e. everything that exists objectively). Other
attributes of space derive from this main distinction. Space in terms of urbanism is definitely material space
and is divided into types, depending on its features. Thus, there is a divi- sion by function (living space,
work space, etc.), and by accessibility (private space, public space, and also semi-private and semi-public).
According to Jan Maciej Chmielewski, urban space is “an arrangement of public, communal and pri-
vate spaces […]”, in which private space is the preserve of the family, communal space of a specific social
group, and “public space can be described as space that creates conditions for and encourages indirect in-
terac- tion between individuals and social groups.”111 He goes on to add that communal space is the preserve
of defined social groups, and public space is the preserve of the city authorities.112 This definition inevitably
contains expressions and aspects that I have already quoted when describing the adjective “public”: general
acces- sibility, communality, and connection with the state.
109 T. Tołwiński, Urbanistyka…, p. 28.
110 See D. Hayden, The Power of Place. Urban
Landscapes as Public History (Cambridge 1977).
In this book, Hayden tries to recall the life work
of ethnic minorities and its material vestiges in a
city or town. However, her arguments can also be
applied in the context of vestiges of the nineteenth
century.
111 J. M. Chmielewski, Teoria urbanistyki
(Warszawa 2001), p. 28.
112 J. M. Chmielewski, Teoria…, p. 29.
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In its urbanist sense, public space:
• is material (as opposed to idealised) space;
• is man-made natural space, hence anthropogenic and cultural space;
• is space that has been developed as a result of the social creation of space (see section 1.6.); in other
words, it is space created by humans with an aim in mind in an urbanised setting, usually in town;
• is man-made economic space (it required money to develop), hence an eco- nomic category;
• represents a public benefit, hence is subject to different laws from private ben- efit; this benefit has to
be considered from the perspective of consumption (usage) and not the laws of private possession;
it cannot be excluded in terms of consumption (usage), i.e. it is accessible to all; and uncompetitive
in that economic rules do not apply, thus costs incurred in terms of its consumption do not cover
development costs;
• is an optional benefit in terms of consumption; in other words, a benefit which we use when we want
(at least in theory);
• is space whose usage is linked to the development of external effects and whose social expression are
a city’s image or its inhabitants’ identity; also, the cultural benefits of material heritage (monuments,
etc.) are located in this space;
• is space of inter-personal contact and interaction, as well as a place that attracts people from out-
side.113
Urbanism adds something to my conclusions. Here the emphasis is on the cost of creating public space,
on the different laws that govern its development and its changes, as well as on its salutary influence on the
community that, often through the state, decides to create such space.
Summing up these introductory thoughts, we need to point out that research has viewed public space
differently. The lines of inquiry and examples of thinking about space, about the public as well as about
zones and public space mentioned here are, of course, simply subjective choices on the part of the writer.
Those lines of inquiry that emphasise that urban space is social, not neutral, space at- tract our attention. In
particular, urban space as a place where political rivalries (in the widest sense of the term, as Carl Schmitt
and others have defined it) play out, as well as access to it and the actions of various social actors, have
transpired to be key in these deliberations. Another approach to the issue is the interpre- tation of space
in terms of its form (aesthetics) and artistic connotations, hence the research carried out by art historians.
These aspects will be taken into ac- count in this work, although they will be somewhat less important to
the central argument. Finally, these lines of inquiry, whose goal is to discover answers to questions on the
interpretation of space and its influence on people’s minds and behaviour, are also interesting, but require
a different type of research and a dif- ferent approach to the sources.
113 T. Markowski, “Przestrzeń publiczna wobec
procesu metropolizacji”, Urbanista (2007), vol. 51,
No. 3, pp. 10–15.
|
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| institution | Digital Library of Periodicals of National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine |
| issn | 2616-4280 |
| language | English |
| last_indexed | 2026-03-20T00:44:20Z |
| publishDate | 2020 |
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| spelling | Łupienko, A. 2026-01-03T16:38:31Z 2020 Definitions and Theories of Public Space / A. Łupienko // Місто: історія, культура, суспільство. — 2020. — № 8(1). — С. 97-116. — Бібліогр.: 113 назв. — англ. 2616-4280 https://nasplib.isofts.kiev.ua/handle/123456789/211477 94(438) 10.15407/mics2020.08.097 The part of the book ‘Order in the Streets. The Political History of Warsaw’s Public Space in the First Half of the 19th Century’ Detailed information is here https://storage. googleapis.com/flyers.peterlang.com/ March_2020/978-3-631-80070-6_normal_English. pdf en Інститут історії України НАН України Місто: історія, культура, суспільство Переклад Definitions and Theories of Public Space Article published earlier |
| spellingShingle | Definitions and Theories of Public Space Łupienko, A. Переклад |
| title | Definitions and Theories of Public Space |
| title_full | Definitions and Theories of Public Space |
| title_fullStr | Definitions and Theories of Public Space |
| title_full_unstemmed | Definitions and Theories of Public Space |
| title_short | Definitions and Theories of Public Space |
| title_sort | definitions and theories of public space |
| topic | Переклад |
| topic_facet | Переклад |
| url | https://nasplib.isofts.kiev.ua/handle/123456789/211477 |
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