ancient cities

of the Law of the Indies issued by the King of
Spain in 1573, which was inspired by the Roman
tradition. In these cities, the rigidity of the street
plan was even more pronounced, and the square
played a key role as the focal point of the city. This
rigid street plan can be observed in most Latin
American cities and some in North America, with
the squares as focal points and the dominance of
religious and secular administrative buildings.
Later, the planned cities of the so­called English
Renaissance carried forth the role of the central
public square in the urban plan. In this context, it
must be noted that squares are to be found in
ancient cities in Asia, Africa, and the Middle East,
but most of those cities today bear the mark of
transformation through colonization and thus
imposed planning that adheres to the historical
lineage briefly sketched above.
In all the historic transformations of city planning,
the square played an important twofold role.
First, it was considered a place where the public
could meet and mingle; in a way, it was a commons
for citizens. Second, the square was the city’s
focal point, where commerce would take place;
most of the administrative functions of the city or
state, along with key religious institutions, would
circle it.
The square is part and parcel of the structure of
urban space, which in general dictates how we
move, thus structuring encounters and our lives.
The square is a site of cultural practices and geographical
knowledge. It is the terrain of social
encounters and contestation imbued with meanings
of liveability and social conviviality that it is
meant to foster. To reveal the latent politics of the
square, it is necessary to uncover how it was
designed and built, by whom and for what purpose,
and how it is being used. In other words, the
square conveys meaning of the greater forces at
large in every society and how these shape and are
shaped by people’s everyday lives. Placing a large
open public space in the center of the urban fabric
entails recognition that citizens and their activities
are central to the city and concerns about how
meaning can be conveyed to and inscribed by the
citizen. What is at stake here is how the democratic
citizen is constituted through progressive
politics based on interaction through being
together. The implication for public spaces is that
they should be maintained at all cost as a forum
Piazza
597
for this interaction. In these spaces, politics and
deliberations of matters, worldly or not, take
place, along with commerce and entertainment—
these are open marketplaces where people sell
their produce and interact.
Reinventing the Public
The square as public space has always existed in
one form or another, imbued with secular or religious
meaning, and it functioned as a place of
assembly for numerous purposes. Latin American
cities are a pertinent example; as a result of the
rigidity of their layout, the square has played a key
role as a site of gathering and social conviviality. In
modern times, importance has been placed on the
open square as it is conceived to foster democracy,
harkening back to ancient Greek times. This
conception rests on the idea that all people can communicate
in an unproblematic fashion, irrespective
of modes of expression, dress codes, languages, and
the like. This is the idea of communicative rationality,
whence emerges a romantic notion, or ideal, of
public spaces as a universal abstract sphere where
people freely interact and ideas are exchanged.
Thus, modern planners have started to view the
square as a living room, an unproblematic place of
rest and recreation for all, where all voices can be
heard; as such, it is necessary for the well­being of
the city. Hence, they plan for open spaces, where
cafés line the open expanse and events take over the
open space.
The city square is viewed as a forum for individual
or group interactions based on what
Habermas termed communicative action or deliberative
democracy. The model of deliberative
democracy states that the constitution of the democratic
citizen is best done through institutionalizing
debates on how to enhance democracy, a
debate that takes place through benign rational
reasoning and is thus based on communicative
rationality but, most important, takes place.
Space is never only abstract, however, or to be
managed by top­down planning directives. Avoiding
this spatial fetishism, the square receives a role as a
site where people can be present and thus seen, a
determinant of being heard. In this formulation,
democracy is forged in the square through confrontation,
where different groups confront as friendly
enemies or in agonistic ways. Many theorists,