Global Studies: Public Square Patterns

Global Studies Reflection: Public Square Patterns in High-density Cities Over the Fall semester of 2014, I had the wonderful opportunity of traveling across Europe for two months along with a group of 24 other architecture and interior design students as well as a Professor from DAAP. This was meant to be a travel and study abroad of sorts, where the cities across Europe became our classroom and our own curiosity for learning from different countries served as our coursework. As a final year architecture student at DAAP, I had begun to realize a growing interest in exploring scales larger than architecture, particularly those of urban public squares, and growing up in India had made me accustomed to settings of high-density cities, such that I had grown to enjoy observing the complexities of urban life in them. This trip then presented the perfect platform for me to create a Global Studies experience out of the Honor’s Program, that would allow me to launch my research and documentation of public spaces in some high-density cities that I would be traveling to during this trip, particularly Paris, Rome, Istanbul and New York City.

The inception and motivation for this experience also came to me in the form of curiosity generated from traveling, observing and being a global citizen. I have grown up in India for 18 years in a metropolitan urban environment, constantly observing the effects of congestion in cities. I have personally witnessed the problem that the lack of public space provides. Yet, I have also had the opportunity to travel and experience the impact of public squares here in America over the last three years of my education at UC in a way that allows me to very clearly see how much of a difference successful urban design makes to city life. I began my understanding of this research topic with these personal experiences that drew from opposites situations (ironically from two countries farthest from each other on the globe); I have lived the problem as well as the solution.

Driven by this intention of learning from one place to solve issues in another, I wanted my Global Studies experience to not only document these public squares, but to also take a close look at the impact that these public squares were having on the socio-economic wellbeing of their respective communities as a whole so that I could begin to understand how to adapt and apply them to settings that could benefit from them. To give this task some direction, I decided to take the help of an assessment tool developed by the NGO called Project for Public Spaces that emphasizes an evaluation of the key attributes of the Accessibility, Sociability, Activity, and Comfort and Image of any place in order to judge whether or not it is successful among its users. Each component then divides up into some intangibles that are further broken down into simple measurements or observations that can be made by anyone with an eye for people watching. At the beginning, there was a lot to take in at each of the squares I intended to document – observations about diverse and multiple components of what might make up a successful place in any given city – and I was excited to begin people-watching, photographing and documenting these new settings like never before.

Over the course of this trip, I was continuously strengthening my progress towards my UHP learning outcomes for a complete Global Studies experience. With case studies in cities that are geographically spread out from each other, I studied a lot about individual cultures in their respective locations, their history, their current socio-political issues and I also learned to read and feel the overall pulse of the city. At the same time, as I began my comparative and collaborative research documentation, this project provided me with a larger direction of how all of these different high-density cities approach and allow for public space design. I found, for instance, that Paris cultivates a strong recreational culture that encourages people to spend more time with family and friends, and that is perhaps why the Place de le Rèpublique is infused with different activities as part of its core program, apart from its role as a vast pedestrian space. New York City, on the other hand, provides a much busier, crammed and hectic urban setting so that the simple plaza of pedestrian space with basic steps for seating – as in Union Square - is more than effective in providing the required relief and promoting just enough recreation. Would all the strategies used in one square work in another? Most likely not, simply because the cultural contexts, lifestyles and backgrounds of the two squares, their cities and the people occupying them were so very different! And yet, both these cities shared a commonality in their core definition of these squares; both

Global Studies Reflection: Public Square Patterns in High-density Cities celebrated something of historical significance in their public spaces through statues of freedom and independence, and by hosting events there that promoted the same. With comparisons like these and many more, my research continued to help me carry through the first learning outcome in my documentation: I began to develop a fundamental understanding of how each of these cities (and subsequently, countries) shared similarities in their core intentions of what their public spaces meant to their people, and yet stood out with their differences in program and scale.

Another major outcome of my global studies experience was the understanding I gained of the dynamics and interdependence between the economies, political systems and built environments of the cities I visited. This was most starkly evident when I began my adventures in Istanbul. Turkey, as a country, is at a critical location on the border of Europe and Asia in a way that it displays some of the economic and political issues that are often characteristic of this part of the world, while simultaneously striving to achieve the level of lifestyle enjoyed by its European neighbors. The uneven distribution of wealth and power, also encouraged by a corrupt government, is promoting a growing polarization in the quality and type of environments built for people according to their economic class. With the global economy growing at a much faster pace than the local economy, the rich create massive developments that mimic the wealthy American quality of life – they aspire for large houses with sprawling lawns and swimming pools where as the poor classes in Istanbul cluster into urban slums as they still struggle to meet their needs in their rapidly transforming city. Rather than attempting to boost the local economy and quality of life for its people by providing comfortable and free spaces in the public realm, the Istanbul government wants to further privatize existing open spaces as well; Gezi Park, one of the last remaining green spaces in the city has been under heated debate as the municipality wants to turn it into a shopping mall and luxury residences, inviting huge civil protests from the local citizens of Istanbul who want to protect their local environment. These were the kind of situations, stories and resulting background knowledge I was able to gain while conducting my research on public spaces in the documented cities.

The whole process of closely observing and understanding some of these interrelationships and workings of the public realm of these high-density cities, made me feel a sense of belonging, ownership and responsibility for their present and future conditions. It made me question, assimilate and understand the crucial role of the global citizen in participating in a global society; in engaging in each culture as if it were your own in order to understand the nuances of how people think and function in different parts of the world, in integrating these experiences almost like a portal of sorts to comprehend the possibilities of solutions there are to each problem, and most importantly, to then actively gather solutions taken from one part of the world and adapt them to another so that we can start to share the things that each of us do right in our own part of the globe.

I had initially proposed that I would document some of the most effective public squares in four high-density cities that were foreign to me – New York City, Paris, Rome and Istanbul – and adapt what I learned from them to eventually come up with a solution to public space design in India. But when I found that Istanbul itself was lacking in its deliverance of public squares for its brimming population, I felt a strong sense of responsibility – perhaps generated from the bond I had formed with the city and its people during my visit – to further study the problems that it was facing and spend the same amount of time that I would in proposing public space designs for cities in India, to propose some solutions for Istanbul instead. That was the kind of global citizenship that this experience has brought to me. Before embarking on this journey, I felt that my participation in these countries was going to be limited to the role of a curious student tourist; to document what I saw from a distance and come back home to my country to apply what I had learned. Now, my sense of responsibility for bringing in positive change has extended to all the countries I have visited – and even ones that I haven’t – because I have had the chance to understand how similar we all are in what we essentially strive for as humanity.

Global Studies Reflection: Public Square Patterns in High-density Cities In conclusion, this Global Studies research experience has opened up the world to me. All the cities that I documented in my project are massive urban centers that cater to tourists and immigrants from across the world, and yet I was able to witness how each of them have their own distinct identities to show how tradition and globalization coexist beautifully. I was able to identify and study some of the issues that each of these places deal with, develop a sensitivity, empathy and sense of responsibility for them and begin to understand the power of impact that I am capable of generating in the future, no matter what I do. This way, my Global Studies experience from engaging in all the different countries I have visited this Fall semester has informed and strengthened my knowledge as an environmental designer, observer, traveler, student and global citizen, like never before.

Juhi Goel B.Sc Architecture University of Cincinnati Class of 2015