Describe the way each film (My Brooklyn, Citizen Jane, Human Scale) and the lecture presentation (Healing Spaces: Marching On! Blackness and the Spatial Politics of Performance) discuss public space and its role in cities. Which notion of public space appeals to you? How to you feel about public space in New York City?

 

In the film Citizen Jane: Battle For the city, the conflict between power broker Robert Moses and author of ”The Life and Death of American Cities”, Jane Jacobs showed how capitalism contrives over public opinion and in terms vice versa later on. In 1934, Jane sees hope in the city and after envisioning a corruption of absolute power from Robert Moses throughout 1960, where thousands of New Yorkers living in the slums of New York are being removed from their homes to a more modernistic and idealistic approach of progression without the insight of the public and the life among the streets. It was not until 1954, where urbanism started to grow, and the system of order had started to modernize as well. It was not until Moses’ defeat in having a street through Washington Square Park where later on, the plan to renew West Village was given up showing the audacity that the people living in the area can strive for.

In the human scale, the representation of China, which is holding the fastest growing economy in the world, also focusing on agriculture, but with enough space to hold its citizens. Change can always meet with resistance.

In the lecture presentation, “Healing Spaces: Marching On! Blackness and the spatial politics of performance”, The Marching Cobras street performance shows the impact that public life can live on through traditional representation of different cultural movements, dances, and songs. The two films and the lecture showed that the life, history, and impact that different people who come together can make a “way of being” in the impacting area. Public spaces such as parks, or any form of landmass where a huge number of crowds can surmise by gathering together and perform by committing tourism, commercial, or just plain relaxing, unknowingly also perform in expansion to educational and/or beneficial to both the area and its citizens.

To answer the question, Which notion of public space appeals to me, parks are both recreational and gives a sensation of peace to both an individual or individuals. For an example given, Bryant Park, when getting out of work taking lunch there in a warm afternoon, seeing both tourists and residents is both comedically and positive to see that a person is engaging in New York City life.

To answer the question, How do I feel about public space in New York City, it depends on which borough of New York City I am in at the moment. In Manhattan, various public spaces are both a delight and a curse depending on the time of day. Queens and Brooklyn are nice, but I am only there for my own business, the Bronx and Staten Island I do not travel to. Overall, public spaces in New York City is highly beneficial since New York City is compact.