The following is the first sentence of six, describing on a poster, a
recent scholarly conference on "The Politics of Public Space". Emphasis
of the caps, mine.
"PUBLIC SPACES ARE NO LONGER DEMOCRATIC PLACES WHERE ALL PEOPLE ARE
EMBRACED AND TOLERATED, but instead centers of commerce and
consumption."
I pinch myself, and find that I AM awake.
This was a conference at the Graduate Center of CUNY, the City
University of New York, this week. On the theme of the shrinking /
privatization of public space. "Co-sponsored by the Public Space
Research Group of the Center for Human Environments, the Center for
Place, Culture and Politics, and the Van Alen Institute Projects in
Public Architecture."
"Organized by" Setha M. Low, prof. of environmental psych. &
anthropology (director of first listed co-sponsor), and Neil Smith,
distinguished prof. of anthropology & geography (director of second
listed co-sponsor), both at CUNY Grad Center, plus the respondents seem
to all be from the "politics of public space CUNY network" of 19
professors of mostly sociology, but also anthropology, history, urban
affairs & planning, art history, English, social / environmental
psychology, geography, social work, English, art history, drama and
communication...... one of whom is also director of a "program in public
policy".
The conference had its ups and downs as they all do, and had trouble
sticking to its topic, so that nearly every political topic from a to c
and e to z got mentioned if not discussed.... even so, the one omission
was the D-Word. It was conspicuous in its absence, as the phrase goes.
Only one speaker used it, to say "I suffer from the disabilities of
being a philosopher, so it's actually hard for me to think of physical
space." (Nancy Fraser, of New School University, coincidentally where
activists including myself just finished negotiating a couple dozen
barrier removals.) Four other speakers used disability-related words as
pejorative metaphors. Otherwise it never came up, in nine hours of
presentations.
Our part in the history of public space (in the U.S. there were actually
at least five municipal laws for most of the 20th century banning PWD's
from even existing in public space), was TOTALLY ABSENT from the entire
program -- six lectures (one -- a no-show), and the remarks of twelve
Respondents, and the approximately twenty questions and comments from
the floor, and the panels' responses to them.
Except that, during the last Q & A period, I read that astonishing quote
from the event's poster, and then proceeded to quickly summarize some of
the more shocking highlights of the overlooked history of our struggle
for equal access to seven kinds of public spaces. I spent the previous
break making a whole list / chart to use for these two or three minutes
of remarks, and I think I got the job done. I could have heard a pin
drop in this auditorium as I spoke, and everyone I saw seemed to be
really paying close attention, gasping or jaws dropping at appropriate
moments, etc. I made sure to throw in a few footnotes to give the kids
something to go find in the library.
I shudder to think how much the aggregate cost was of all the graduate
degrees that this group of scholars have, which generated that
incredible sentence that starts off the conference's poster. "PUBLIC
SPACES ARE NO LONGER PLACES WHERE ALL PEOPLE ARE EMBRACED AND
TOLERATED......" I've heard of "The end of history", but this is
ridiculous.
------
This is the graduate center that the great historian Martin Duberman
retired from a few years ago.
I'd say the most interesting presentation to me was Dolores Hayden's on
the first big step in the shrinking of public space in the U.S..... the
corporate political history of grabbing federal funding for the postwar
boom in suburban single-family housing "planned" with little or no
public space included. This lecture also helped inform my activist
efforts (Co-Chair, Public Facilities Accessibility Committee of Disabled
In Action of Metropolitan New York), by including the history of the
leading anti-disabled corporate lobby in the US, the National Assn. of
Homebuilders which I was recently doing battle with as a DR activist
when they weakened the New York State housing accessibility code. (We
got it restored.) This NAHB, which I learned from Hayden was what
happened with the old National Assn. of Real Estate Boards lobby split
into three pseudo-separate lobbies, so that they could all tell Congress
the same thing -- the other spawn of that unholy parthenogenesis being
the Urban Land Institute which I was actually taught to revere in
architectural school.
And the hands of the Regional Planning Assn. (influential - many or
maybe even most professional planners in local, state or federal
government are members) which I was also taught to trust, are apparently
also quite dirty in this sleazoid & discriminatory housing policy
history. (I'm dealing with that organization RPA right now, to get
disabled-community public-input to be part of the mix, regarding
planning for the reconstruction of Lower Manhattan after the destruction
of the World Trade Center September 11th.)
------
So, this conference was yet another page in which one experiences the AB
world's fiction that people with disabilities and our issues are an
utterly invisible "new" thing. Where you can't delve into the thick of
the subject, because it seems like few if any in the room have ever
heard even the most basic introductory information. So, I was teaching
these teachers things they should have heard in their high school
history courses.
The CUNY system of many colleges, at one time had two people teaching
DS-related courses, one who quit and another who recently died. I don't
know if CUNY's Hunter College has found anyone else to teach those
courses.
We've got to get the material of DS out to a larger world. And not just
as "special" niche teaching, but push its integration into general
history, for example. SInce the next year's conference that these
groups at CUNY are planning doesn't seem to lend itself to asking them
to incorporate any material I could offer them (they're tackling
"imperialism" next), I don't have any immediate thoughts on what I can
personally do with CUNY. Having decided to go ahead and publically
ruffle a few feathers by deconstructing the conference poster's first
sentence, I think I'll wait a while before offering to help plan a more
inclusive "public space" conference some day in the future.
Jim
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