Contested public spaces: a Lefebvrian analysis of Mary Fitzgerald Square
Date
2016-03-01
Authors
Nkooe, Ernestina Seanokeng
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Abstract
Mary Fitzgerald Square is an iconic public space in Newtown, Johannesburg. In spite of
its iconic status, prolific social history and commercial role in the city, there is very little
that is known about it and its users. In 2009 and 2010 I undertook an ethnographic
exploration of the public space using Henri Lefebvre’s (1974/1991) conceptual spatial
triad, the Right to the City and Elements of Rhythmanalysis frameworks. Through
informal interviews, unstructured participant observation and exploration of archived
newspaper articles, public space governance by-laws, published urban literature and
research, I managed to situate this public space in urban geographical discourse as
contested public space. By means of conceptual analysis, this research found Mary
Fitzgerald Square to be an important public space that is dominated by neoliberal politics
that create struggle for inhabitants to use it meaningfully in the context of everyday life.
The proliferation of neoliberal relations of urban governance have led to a situation
whereby the public space is subjected to private management practices that encourage its
elitist uses and thus prioritizing its commercial exchange-value over its use-value. This
process as the research uncovered, undermines the public space’s use-value and
consequently leads to a subliminal marginalization of ordinary inhabitants who require
and desire it for their varied practices in the context of everyday life.
Urban management strategies like human surveillance, Public Open Space by-Laws,
architecture and planning design, public-private partnerships, and the removal of the
television monitor, discourage creative African youths, skateboarders, the urban poor and
elderly in the city from appropriating Mary Fitzgerald Square. Inhabitants using Mary
Fitzgerald Square manage to do so by overriding and transgressing existing spatial
prohibitions by conducting their social practices in the contested space outside official
policing times. Other inhabitants, through play and creative expression, have devised
alternative means to challenge their marginalization in and uses of the public space in
spite of existing by-laws, changing architecture, and visible human surveillance including
law-enforcement that are conceived in an effort to deter their social uses of it. This
research proposes a return to Mary Fitzgerald Square that warrants a critical discourse
analysis of the public space in an effort to gain a better and deeper understanding of
inhabitants’ everyday life experiences and their political situation in the current city
through the public space. This should enable a sound critique of the production of Mary
Fitzgerald Square in the African metropolis where the abstract struggle between private
interests and public need for the public space materializes.
Key words: Mary Fitzgerald Square, Henri Lefebvre, Johannesburg, Geography, South
Africa.
Description
A degree submitted for the requirements of Masters of Arts in Geography
School of Geography, Archaeology and Environmental Studies