Conception and Function of Public Space Change

¶ … conception and function of public space change as historical shifts influence the delineation between public and personal rights and property. Boyer states that there is an underlying tension in the application of reference to historical styles present in the creation of public spaces, representing nostalgic yearning for past times remembered as greater than the articulation of the present. Boyer also references Walter Benjamin's theory that "all history writer in a story of triumph of bourgeois values and represents the posthumous reconstruction of fragmented events according to a completely fabricated structure (5).

One may conclude, then, that the use of historical motifs, styles, and events in public spaces favors the commemoration of a privileged historical canon and pre-modern public space designation did not have populist intentions. A public space constructed with historical references under the heavily economically stratified era of the pre-modern era served to cement the historical canon of the elite through the perceived permanence of public architecture.

The conception of the public space shifted in the early modern era, around the beginning of the twentieth century, when populist revolts in rapidly expanding cities against conspicuous wealth resulted in greater investment in civic resources, including housing and public buildings (8).

Boyer quotes a New York City Municipal Art Society Committee Report from 1905 which typifies the ideology that thoughtful infrastructural development was important to inducing patriotism in a populace with increasing democratic rights: "Adequate, dignified, beautiful governmental buildings will produce an effect on the governed with mere holders of office as individuals cannot do (9)." Boyer goes on the analyze another, more recent shift in the conception of the "public" in the post-war period, as government institutions have become more extensive.

Popular conceptions of bloated spending, corruption, and excessive taxation and regulation have soured the perception of public spending in recent years (9-10). Contemporary urban architects, Boyer concludes, have attempted to "retie 'knots' in the unraveling city fabric, reintroducing a human scale, a sense of place and traditions that the modern city destroyed (18)." The perception and construction of public space is, indeed, shaped by public sentiment, which is itself heavily informed by the sociopolitical and economic factors which influences a population's view of itself in relation to the space it inhabits.

Isfahan Square The Isfahan Square built in city center by Shah Abbas I of Persia between 1599 and 1627 can be viewed as an example of public space from the pre-modern era built to solidify a historical canon privileging the perspective of a ruling majority, Benjamin's "bourgeois." The Maidan-i-Shah Square in Isfahan is a tribute to the emerging dominance of this area of the Middle East in transcontinental trade -- ranging from Western Europe to China -- in textiles and gold.

The square represented the primacy of Isfahan as a center of economic proto-globalization in the seventeenth century, evident through the geographical range of the internationally-trading city distilled into the space of the square. The cultural and historical reflection of the city's role in global commerce, as depicted in the Maidan-I-Shah square, served two roles. Internally, the synthesis of cultural influences served to forge a collective urban identity of cosmopolitanism predicated upon the primacy of trade in the city's successes.

Industrialization played a significant role in the creation of collective urban identity in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries due to the interconnectivity and centrality of economic production within urban limits (5). The transient nature of trade inflects the relationship between commercial activity and collective memory differently; the grandiose nature of Maidan-I-Shah square instructs the populace that their city is defined by their relevance in trade.

This impels greater participation from those in the city and square in the trading taking place there -- further entrenching the primacy of a trade identity.

Boyer confirms the concept of public space as an embodiment of the ideals and idea of what a place represents: "…a wise leader…would architecturally embellish a capital city to visually demonstrate what the order and organization or a well-governed state or society should be (13)." Externally, the elaborate, ornate Square served to solidify Istfahan's role as a major, prospering economic and cultural hub in the world of global commerce.

It created strong, memorable, and impressive visual reference for those entering the city for trade and delineated a specific geographic and spatial location as a center within a center, a hub within a hub. As the city was a vital link, geographically and perceptually, in the international commercial trade of the seventeenth century, the square was the.