Hello, and welcome back to the course. Today, we're going to cover an academic article by Kim Carlotta von Schonfeld and Luca Bertolini about street experiments. It's titled Urban streets: Epitomes of planning challenges and opportunities at the interface of public space and mobility. So what this paper presents in a nutshell is trying to figure out what streets are in terms of its functions for mobility versus its functions for public space and socializing. Then putting together those two functions in the framework of governance to see how we can use these functions and put them together in a more cohesive way when it comes to planning regimes. They quote that already in 1961, Jane Jacobs pointed at an ensuing challenge, how to accommodate city transportation without destroying the related intricate and concentrated land use. As I said, this paper goes in two parts, and they summarize these two parts. The first part goes into more details on the reasons why uniting the functions of mobility and public space, of static and mobile functions in urban streets is essential for healthy, equitable, and dynamic urbanities. The second part introduces each of the fields of study in which the planning challenges and opportunities is brings forth are discussed in more depth and identify these core questions as emerged from these fields. So I think the first part on trying to get a grasp between the streetscape as a place for mobility versus static functions is quite straightforward and I think you'll really enjoy that part of the reading. It's the second part that's a bit more challenging, the part on governance. This paper uses four different case studies to explore both the streetscape and the governance of that streetscape, taking us all over the world. The four case studies introduced are the Mental Chow in Sao Paulo, the Parklets in San Francisco, the Leafs fat in Ghent, and the Occupy Central in Hong Kong when that occupation movement was going on. As you can see, they went all around the world in search of examples, and these examples really do come in different contexts, both urban and slightly more suburban-rural and in terms of different cultural contexts. They went to South America, Asia, Europe, and North America. They really have the world map covered here. Now, I would encourage you to go to the article and look up these four highlight boxes where these pictures are described in detail. Even if you read those alone, they'll give you quite an insight into what the paper is about and what kind of the diversity of case studies that they're looking at. You'll find these highlight boxes around the pictures that we've just mentioned, and at other times, colliding. They are the meeting space of politics and culture, social and individual territories, and instrumental and expressive concerns. This definition brings in the physical character of public space, but also at the same time, the social character of public space. In terms of meeting place of politics and culture and social and individual territories, we can see that it's much more than just the physical design and just the way that people behave. Streets are where people contribute to the public discussion. Next, let's explore another quote from the paper. I think this also illustrates the tension between the public space as a place for flow and the place for social gathering. I quote, "urban streets are very particular type of public space. Next to a public space, they are also the main channels through which flows of people and goods that are essential for cities are facilitated to the point that they are often only perceived in relation to this mobility function despite also fulfilling multiple other functions as public space." That's modernism in a nutshell. Through the lens of modernism, I would say from the '70s onwards, we've actually start to forget, especially in the western world, that streets also have a function for social gathering. If you actually look at the example in the Sao Paulo and you see how that highway is being immediately taken over by people as soon as the cars are gone, it represents a latent demand there, an urgent demand for reclaiming that space as a place for social interaction. After all, in such a place designed for flow, you can see it's clearly of a highway character, it might be even surprising to you that people would seek to reclaim such a space. It's completely paved over with asphalt, has very few amenities, but despite that, people are coming in and making that space their own.
