ancient cities

at the square sipping a cappuccino, basking in the
sunbathed living room that so many cities at high
latitudes try to emulate, how does one contribute
to politics? Many believe that the traditional role of
the square as a site of deliberation and confrontation,
thus forging the democratic ideal, has eroded.
One of the main erosion factors is that the commercial
role of public squares is disappearing from
many urban settings, and planning directives dictate
what belongs and what does not. Commerce
has been moved off the streets and squares into
designated buildings—for example, malls, where
real estate prices dictate the composition and
nature of commerce taking place. In addition,
many squares are designed and built with a very
special purpose in mind and thus with a very specific
set of uses in mind, most often suiting middleclass
standards of conduct and appearance. With
this, and for a host of other reasons, many squares
are left void of their publicness.
Earlier in the entry, it was argued that the world
is ceaseless and ongoing through the seriality of
confrontations. So although having settled into
balanced states, which need to be meticulously
mapped out in terms of their materiality and
struggles over use, squares need to be opened up to
future potentials. In other words, how can these
“sinkholes of stability” change and be reformulated,
but not necessarily according to the cognized
ideals or determinations formulated under the
terms of social power struggles or planning directives,
but also in terms of the space itself.
The piazza is, thus, not just a square, a mere
setting for sipping cappuccino and living the
Mediterranean ideal of unhindered conviviality, as
a blinkered view of ancient Greece might have it.
The square itself has a role to play; it is at one with
its own continual reformulation.
Edward H. Huijbens
See also Acropolis; Agora; Citizen Participation;
Citizenship; City Planning; Forum; Harvey, David;
Medieval Town Design; Mediterranean Cities; Right
to the City; Shopping Center; Social Production of
Space; Urban Planning
Further Readings
Agnew, John. 1988. Place and Politics: The Geographical
Mediation of State and Society. New York:
HarperCollins.
Placemaking
599
Amin, Ash and Nigel Thrift. 2002. Cities: Reimagining
the Urban. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press.
Canniffe, Eamonn. 2008. The Politics of the Piazza: The
History and Meaning of the Italian Square. Aldershot,
UK: Ashgate.
Cresswell, Tim. 1996. In Place/Out of Place: Geography,
Ideology, and Transgression. Minneapolis: University
of Minnesota Press.
Duneier, Mitchell. 1999. Sidewalk. New York: Farrar,
Straus and Giroux.
Favole, Paolo. 1995. Squares in Contemporary Architecture.
Amsterdam: Architecture and Natura Press.
Fife, Nicholas R., ed. 1998. Images of the Street:
Planning, Identity, and Control in Public Space.
London: Routledge.
Goss, Jon. 1996. “Disquiet on the Waterfront: Reflections
on Nostalgia and Utopia in the Urban Archetypes of the
Festival Marketplaces.” Urban Geography 17:221–47.
Habermas, Jürgen. 1985. The Theory of Communicative
Action. Boston: Beacon Press.
Harvey, David. 2000. Spaces of Hope. Edinburgh:
Edinburgh University Press.
Hillier, Bill. 1996. Space Is the Machine. Cambridge, UK:
Cambridge University Press.
Lees, Loretta., ed. 2004. The Emancipatory City:
Possibilities and Paradoxes. London: Sage.
Lefebvre, Henri. 1991. The Production of Space. Oxford,
UK: Blackwell.
Low, Setha M. 2000. On the Plaza: The Politics of Public
Space and Culture. Austin: University of Texas Press.
Massey, Doreen. 2005. For Space. London: Sage.
Mitchell, Don. 2003. The Rights to the City: Social
Justice and the Fight for Public Space. New York:
Guilford Press.
Pl a c e m a k i n g
The term placemaking generally refers to the processes
by which a space is made useful and meaningful.
This may include manipulations of the
physical landscape, including land development
and building construction, or the attachment of
meanings or sentiments to places through shared
understandings. These more or less tangible processes
usually occur in tandem, as dimensions of the landscape
come to be understood by residents and others
who interact with a place. Placemaking may reflect
the work of elites who steer the interpretations
and uses of a place to support their own financial