John R. Parkinson
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- January 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780199214563
- eISBN:
- 9780191803321
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:osobl/9780199214563.003.0004
- Subject:
- Political Science, Comparative Politics
This chapter considers claims that spatial arrangements affect political behaviour. This matters for the overall project because it helps us to understand exactly what is at stake politically when it ...
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This chapter considers claims that spatial arrangements affect political behaviour. This matters for the overall project because it helps us to understand exactly what is at stake politically when it comes to battles over public space. The chapter begins by examining the micro-level claim, that physical form affects political action. The chapter argues that it does, but in nuanced ways that have to do with the distinction between ‘space’, the form itself, and ‘place’, that form filled with cultural, political, and historical associations, the form as used by people in a particular context. This then leads to the idea that form itself is structured by its processes of production, the political economy of space. It is argued that while different political economic structures are likely to deliver different kinds of public space, this matters less than believers might fear, and more than sceptics might think. The chapter concludes with a summary of the interpretive framework that will be applied in Part II to understanding particular cases, and in Part III to construct criteria for evaluating public space in democratic cities.Less
This chapter considers claims that spatial arrangements affect political behaviour. This matters for the overall project because it helps us to understand exactly what is at stake politically when it comes to battles over public space. The chapter begins by examining the micro-level claim, that physical form affects political action. The chapter argues that it does, but in nuanced ways that have to do with the distinction between ‘space’, the form itself, and ‘place’, that form filled with cultural, political, and historical associations, the form as used by people in a particular context. This then leads to the idea that form itself is structured by its processes of production, the political economy of space. It is argued that while different political economic structures are likely to deliver different kinds of public space, this matters less than believers might fear, and more than sceptics might think. The chapter concludes with a summary of the interpretive framework that will be applied in Part II to understanding particular cases, and in Part III to construct criteria for evaluating public space in democratic cities.
