divided spaces, parallel places

Backlash and panic over what have come to be perceived as pockets of exclusion created by the erection of isolated, high rise social housing estates has sparked a new wave of urban design policy in France. In an attempt to create a more balanced society, "la mixité" is an approach that seeks to bring together a diverse range of housing types into one space - from private, to public, and everything in between.

It's a great shift in thinking about how to design spaces that seek to unite, rather than divide, an increasingly diverse range of individuals - to create communities that reflect all walks of life. Yet I also feel that care must be taken to avoid simplistic solutions as a kind of silver bullet for the inequalities facing society today. Whilst critical, planning solutions alone are inadequate to seal the cracks that divide our societies. To some extent, spatial proximity can be entirely irrelevant when it comes to bringing people together; multiple worlds can co-exist right along side each other, even within a common space. An aeroplane might serve as a good analogy - passengers may share a pilot, an engine - in fact, an entire aircraft - yet there is a world of difference between the curtained-off journeys of first and economy class.

This notion of "parallel places" coexisting in close proximity is poignantly illustrated in yet another excerpt from the book, Space and Place: The Perspective of Experience, by geographer Yi-Fu Tuan. Tuan offers the example of different workers within an office building to elucidate this point:

People may work in the same building and yet experience different worlds because their unequal status propels them into different circulatory routes and work areas. Maintenance men and janitors enter through the service doors at the back and move along the 'guts' of the building, while executives and their secretaries enter by the front door and move through the spacious lobby and well-lit passageways to their brightly furnished offices.

With its multiple entrances and passageways, this one building in effect harbours multiple worlds, within which workers can go on co-existing without ever crossing paths. After reading Tuan's comments, I started to think about how these divided spaces and parallel places are everywhere - even right in our own neighbourhoods.

My husband and I live in an area comprising largely of privately-owned, semi-detached housing (where we rent), touched on all sides by various social housing estates, ranging in size from clusters of tall high rise buildings to smaller, more discrete blocks of apartments. Having arrived here a few years ago, we moved in, and to this day have considered all of these residences as part of our neighbourhood. We have had the fortune of making friends who come from all the various types of dwellings.

But discussions with different residents made me realise that they don't necessarily see each other that way - or see each other at all. One experience that really marked me was when we went to visit a house for sale a few blocks away. As a sales pitch, the owner went out of her way to assure us that she didn't even notice the high rise buildings that tower over the neighbourhood, and that the people there never bothered her. I suppose as prospective property owners, she assumed this would offer some reassurance to us.

At first I was kind of astounded at the sheer absurdity of the notion that these dominating, towering edifices could be rendered invisible to residents living a mere few blocks away.  But I guess this absurdity gets to the heart of the matter. Blocking them out requires some kind of dismissal of this place and the people living there.

It also made me more conscious of the different worlds within our neighbourhood, both of which - by some good fortune - we were simultaneously experiencing. In addition to their perceptions, peoples' experiences of these common places vary greatly - much like the first class/economy flight. Their taxes might finance a shared road, but while some of them will experience it as being too narrow from behind their steering wheels, others will experience it as that dangerously bumpy surface you try not to trip over while running to get your train in heels ... (at least, that's my experience...).

All of this seems to suggest that genuinely open places of meeting are about more than the physical sites, even though such sites are undoubtedly a good starting point. A meeting place is a mindset. Who we see as belonging where, and who we include as being part of our space, or who we exclude, whether consciously or subconsciously, reflects the way we relate to different members of our neighbourhoods.

Tuan rightly notes that neighbourhood as a concept is highly subjective. Who it includes depends largely on boundaries that we, as its residents, create:

The street where one lives is part of one's intimate experience. The larger unit, neighbourhood, is a concept. The sentiment one has for the local street corner does not automatically expand in the course of time to cover the entire neighbourhood. Concept depends on experience, but it is not an inevitable consequence of experience.

So the emergence of true places of meeting that welcome an increasingly diverse range of people depends more than anything on the will of those people. Governments can provide social centres and parks and strive for 'le mixité' - and governments should keep doing these things. But uniting people spatially is just the first step in overcoming the divisions within society. Truly uniting people depends most critically upon their ability to see each other as one human family, to see past man-made perceptions of our supposed places in the world. It depends upon the recognition of a fundamental truth: that humanity is one, as captured in the following Baha'i writing:

Ye are the fruits of one tree, and the leaves of one branch. Deal ye one with another with the utmost love and harmony, with friendliness and fellowship...So powerful is the light of unity that it can illuminate the whole earth.