‘Fourth places’: the Contemporary Public Settings for Informal Social Interaction among Strangers.

This paper introduces ‘fourth places’ as an additional category of informal social settings alongside ‘third places’ (Oldenburg 1989). Through extensive empirical fieldwork on where and how social interaction among strangers occurs in the public and semi-public spaces of a contemporary masterplanned neighbourhood, this paper reveals that ‘fourth places’ are closely related to ‘third places’ in terms of social and behavioural characteristics, involving a radical departure from the routines of home and work, inclusivity, and social comfort. However, the activities, users, locations and spatial conditions that support them are very different. They are characterized by ‘in-betweenness’ in terms of spaces, activities, time and management, as well as a great sense of publicness. This paper will demonstrate that the latter conditions are effective in breaking the ‘placelessness’ and ‘fortress’ designs of newly designed urban public spaces and that, by doing so, they make ‘fourth places’ sociologically more open in order to bring strangers together. The recognition of these findings problematizes well-established urban design theories and redefines several spatial concepts for designing public space. Ultimately, the findings also bring optimism to urban design practice, offering new insights into how to design more lively and inclusive public spaces. Keywords: ‘Fourth places’, Informal Public Social Settings, Social Interaction, Strangers, Public Space Design

Changing Places, Urbanity, Citizenship, and Ideology in new European neighbourhoods

This book investigates the process of change in some European neighbourhoods, either newly and purposely built, or redeveloped from ashes. The book tries to offer evidence of many varied and complex paths of change, far from the mainstream simplified models of general urban evolution. The piecemeal production of new additions to cities, as well as the process of incrementally reconverting old places and urban segments, we argue, proceeds in fact on twin tracts: structural change and internal evolution, therefore discourses and combined practices are to be considered together. Cases are taken from several countries in Western and Southern Europe (fig 1.) from among the latest developments. Euro-Mediterranée in Marseille and Parque das Nações in Lisbon are two monumental waterfront projects conceived as model intervention, design experimentation, and a cities strategic asset: yet, they present a consistent mix of uses, and a substantial number of new inhabitants. The combination of business activities, central function and proximity, though not usually connected to the idea of a neighbourhood, stands at the core of both Ørestad in Copenhagen and Ponte di Nona in Rome, and though the first results from an advanced design concept, the second is far more traditional. Hvidovre, again close to Copenhagen, and Afragola in the region of Naples, as well as Psiri in Athens, Niederrad in Frankfurt, and Bielany in Warsaw, are all areas in transition, through distinctive paths of change. To some extent, the collection of cases questions the traditional idea of the residential neighbourhood, partly secluded from the buzz and congestion of the city. Quite the opposite, the selection illustrates how cities are changing by way of reinterpreting the concept of the residential neighborhood, producing instead new urban “places”. “Changing places” is composed of a series of different case studies (table 1), all investigating the change of European neighbourhoods in the last twenty years[1]. The chapters assess the ideological discourses of change against the actual practices of production taking place in a few neighbourhoods. The research tackles such change in an explanatory way, from the neighbourhoods upwards, rather than ‘downloading’ frames and concepts from the general models of urban change. All chapters venture into the realm of discursive arguments, analysing visions and discourses elaborated to justify neighbourhood change, unravelling the tangle between everyday practices and ideological representations. Beyond celebration or slander, studying these narratives contributes to the understanding of places; even more, to the critique of both the design of physical spaces and the elaboration of policy actions. The chapters are based upon original research carried out by a group of researchers from different countries and backgrounds, reflecting a varied set of interests and cultural orientations, as well as the personal approaches of their respective authors[2]. The book’s selection acknowledges the diversity of the contributions, a diversity reflected in the table of contents, which alternates different approaches. Far from confusing, the contrast of more interpretative or more analytical views enriches the understanding of the way places change: moreover, it emphasizes through contrast the buzz of rhetorical arguments that weigh down the research on this subject. All the cases investigate places in a process of consistent transformation. The rate and nature of change, however, is diverse. The book focuses upon local change, while most of city transformations are due to non-local reasons. As is well-known, the restructuring of the economy has hit cities sparingly. Some cities are on privileged ground because of size and political weight, and have been able to develop independent development policies, often supported by ambitious strategic visions. Through overwhelming rhetoric, urban “visions” have lately gained influence on public opinion and policy making. But the research field seems marred by over-dramatization, and by an excess of generalist claims, generalisations that are far too broad to be effective in guiding cities’ policy choices. This is not the first time cities have been torn between fears and expectations, and have alternately claimed to have the key to both problems and solutions. Urban theory has in part touched on local change, but seems more attracted by epoch-making interpretations, as testified by the effort to provide models and shape narratives into a captivating label, adjectivating cities as global, post-modern, creative, etc. This collection of case studies questions the nature of urban rhetoric, and explores individual neighbourhoods through rich, “thick” descriptions of their present situation and their development story. In the following chapters, change is neither approached by recollecting empirical data only, nor by theorising on apparent (but often misunderstood) recurrences, but rather cautiously interpreted (though by different authors) by probing the context, undoing the often puzzling combination of social causes, and reconstructing the clash of representations. The storylines of neighbourhood development and redevelopment, though often showing argumentative loops, constitute the materiality of places. The aim is to reconstruct local development paths and specific trends of change, contrasting hurried generalisation. The expected result is a better understanding of the process of place making