Department of Public Space

Ed Wall initiated a new collective manifesto for public space in London using Twitter.

The Department of Public Space is a manifesto to define future public spaces in London. Conceived by Ed Wall and his graduate students on the Landscape Architecture and Urbanism  programmes, the project aims to encourage a rethinking of what public spaces could be and who is able to define them. Ed describes that “digital forums like Twitter can be useful platforms to collectively share and debate ideas – this manifesto is a site for opening up the possibilities of public space in London”,

The  public space code is inspired by visionary urban designer Michael Sorkin’s book  Local Code  (1993), a set of written instructions for a future city. This most recent  public space code is being authored by designers, urbanists and planners – or simply anyone with a Twitter account. Both utopian and pragmatic concerns have been proposed and discussed so far, with Catalina Turcu (@CatalinaTurcu), programme director at UCL The Bartlett retweeting “Public space is where people do their own private things” while Lesley (@SeeHearLive), a graduate student from Greenwich proposes that “All public spaces should be BBQ-friendly”.

The premise of the manifesto is that London’s public spaces across the city’s 32 boroughs  are  loosely coordinated in access, use, ownership, design, production and operation. Despite central government policy initiatives (Towards and Urban Renaissance) and metropolitan scale agendas (Manifesto for Public Space)  the potential of these spaces for actions, events and discourses is left unfulfilled. Other infrastructures of water, energy and transportation are coordinated and supported by government agencies or are overseen by regulators. But in the context of contrasting forms of public space,  from civic squares to privately owned parks, the Department of Public Space (@DeptPublicSpace) questions whether the Greater London Authority, the local councils, commercial developers or other agencies are the appropriate custodians of London’s public spaces? 

To contribute to the manifesto, follow  @DeptPublicSpace, read, write, tweet, retweet or reply using  #PublicSpaceCode or #LondonPublicSpaces.