Public space serves an essential role within civil society, and even in its classical form, it holds promise. Yet it is currently mutating into something monstrous, turning against the public it was designed for. And while the commons claims to provide for both itself and for others, it also risks to legitimize neoliberal precarity as policy. This leaves the public vexed, but not ignored. The commons should be believed in, just not depended on. What lies in between the history of public space and the notion of the commons is a frontier in the struggle for political equity and social equality. In order to imagine tomorrow, we should ask ourselves how is this struggle is being fought today, and where its battlefields lie.
Editors
Nick Axel
Vere van Gool
Joseph Grima
Nikolaus Hirsch
Anton Vidokle
Future Public is a collaboration between the New Museum’s IdeasCity initiative and e-flux Architecture for IdeasCity New York, 2017.
Rahel Aima is a writer and editor based between Brooklyn and Dubai, and a contributing editor at The New Inquiry.
Interboro Partners is a New York City-based architecture, urban design, and planning office led by Tobias Armborst, Daniel D'Oca, and Georgeen Theodore. Interboro’s participatory, place-based approach builds on what's there and deploys simple, resourceful design solutions to create open, accessible environments that work for everyone. Their new book The Arsenal of Exclusion & Inclusion is available from Actar Publishers.
Anna Puigjaner is winner of the 2016 Wheelwright Prize and cofounder of MAIO, an architectural office in Barcelona with an interest in flexible systems, including notions such as variation, ephemerality, and ad hocism.
Michael Stone-Richards is Professor of Critical Theory at the College for Creative Studies, Chair of the Committee on Critical Studies at CCS, and most recently founding editor of the journal Detroit Research. His book Logics of Separation was published by Peter Lang in 2011. He is currently completing a book Care of the City: Ruination, Abandonment, and Hospitality in Contemporary Practice.
