The challenges we face as citizens and as professionals from the field of outdoor art overlap a great deal. What influences the lives of people equally influences the efforts and creative processes of the arts community. At the same time, artists have their own unique way of approaching and dealing with these challenges, but often collaborating with locals and residents, because the two are inseparable - people and their everyday habits and actions are what makes public space come alive.

Some challenges I’m mentioning here are universal and stay the same over a longer period of time, and some are provoked by unique inputs of socioeconomical situation of today.

I am, of course, the most familiar with the challenges of public space that I inhabit with activities of my daily life, whether it's my free time, my architecture business or my performance art professional life, but I believe as globalized as the world is right now, some issues transcend geographical distances.

The public space I’m writing about here is in Split, a Croatian city on the coast of the Adriatic sea with a mix of Balkan and Mediterranean vibe, where it's common for life to extend to the street. In that sense, the public space in such cities changed a long time ago with the development of technology, and the motor vehicle industry has led to the modern city being primarily devoted to the movement and storage of automobiles, instead of movement of the pedestrian traffic. The street no longer has the meaning it once had, transforming over time from the essential public space of the city where mostly only pedestrian traffic and public life took place, into the fastest connection for automobile traffic, regardless of the cost in social terms.

In the context of challenges of today, I feel we’re dealing with the same issues as we did 50 (or more) years ago, if we rewind to the biggest wave of motorized vehicle industry expansion which happened after World War II, in the 1950s.

Looking at historical models from more different perspectives, we can notice that the profile of the Renaissance city is usually low, horizontal, with a closeness of life in buildings and activities on the street. With the invention of the mechanical elevator and new construction technologies, the modern city has become an environment in which instead of horizontals, verticals dominate - tall skyscrapers, which do not participate in street life.

Furthermore, the slow and continuous spatial expansion of the city also often entails social segregation in space based on origin and property status. The division into groups arising from a culturally heterogeneous environment is a negative consequence of urban growth that threatens to nullify perhaps the greatest value of urban life, which is the cosmopolitanism of the city. The city should be a place of diversity of lifestyles and diversity of individual types.

For example, the high cost of property in the city center transformed these parts of the cities into almost non-democratic areas where not everyone is welcome, for different reasons. For example, the center of the city of Split became inaccessible or uninteresting for its (former) residents because of incredible, fast and unsustainable development of tourism. Facilities transformed swiftly, and the habit of living in the city center switched places with short-term rentals which suddenly bring substantial income to renters, which subsequently makes the real estate prices skyrocket. What is this space when it’s no longer a place of living, spontaneous encounters, and collective identities of its citizens?

The emergence of shopping malls has also spilled trade and entertainment from the street, which no longer serves as a gathering place, to a controlled, artificially created public space. The inhabitant of the modern city is forced to achieve social life on a personal or controlled territory instead of engaging in the communal coexistence that takes place on the street.

The modern city shapes our behavior, which results in a changed collective awareness of the meaning of public space. Shopping centers, squares in front of corporate headquarters and similar places create the illusion of public space, from which the risks and uncertainties of everyday life have been carefully removed. There is no freedom of expression in these spaces, no street musicians, no atmospheric conditions, it is simply a pseudo public space. The same applies to marginalized individuals in society, and thereby creates what Trevor Boddy (1992.) calls an "analog city" - a city of artificial public space devoid of the poor, problematic, undesirable stratum of society.

Another issue I would like to point out is the lack of democratization of urban development. There is great importance in participation in the procedures, how resources are distributed in the city and who has the right to vote in that process. Urban planning and management of the physical space that is not transparent is a big issue because it influences where people live, how communities are formed, what is their access to facilities like, how much time they spend in transport etc. which are all incredibly important features.

All in all, to end on a more optimistic note and look at it from the brighter side - to be familiar with challenges of our world, and our public space, is the first step to deal with them.

Photo: © Damira Kalajzic

Dora Komenda

Dora Komenda is a Croatian architect and circus artist. Co-director of Cirkus Kolektiv, association for contemporary circus and related artistic practices, and co-owner of Kolektiv tri the architecture office, she creates in both fields simultaneously.