Spaces & Flows: Ninth International Conference on Urban and ExtraUrban Studies

Abstract

This research focuses on how the animation of public space—“the deliberate, usually temporary, employment of festivals, events, programmed activities, or pop-up leisure to transform, enliven, and/or alter public spaces and stage urban life” (Glover, 2015, p. 96)—represents not only a physical transformation to the built environment, but a social transformation that enables urban inhabitants to lay claim to their right to the city. In doing so, it demonstrates ways that groups are making new demands on the uses of urban public space by defending and/or extending opportunities for leisure in political environments where a community-centred and participatory public sphere is increasingly being eroded. Even so, while the insurgent possibilities associated with animation practices make the transformation of public space a potentially emancipatory practice through the complex re-coding of social space, the same practices can just as easily devolve into newer, albeit different, forms of discriminatory practices that privilege the exclusivity of group membership by restricting the flow of users, thereby constricting public space instead of loosening it. These and other related themes are discussed in this study.