THE 14TH ANNUAL DUPONT SUMMIT ON SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY, AND ENVIRONMENTAL POLICY
Re-imagining: Policy, Governance and Thinking…As If Democracy Matters
Press Release:
Public space has formed the basis of democratic practice since the invention of democracy in ancient Greece. In the West, particularly in the US and the UK, we have seen the elimination of democratic public space through neo-liberalism and continuous privatization. The commercialisation of our city spaces has resulted in consumer citizens and a decrease in the physical spatial practices that build our communities and initiate democratic participation.
Paradoxically, according to research by Teresa Hoskyns and Claudia Westermann presenting in the Re-imagining democracy panel in the As If Democracy Matters stream of the 14th Dupont Summit on Science, Technology, and Environmental Policy in Washington, there has been an enormous increase in public space during the last 20 years in China – a huge-scale infrastructure for participation. The researchers found a large variety of cultural and performative practices taking place in public spaces in Shanghai and its surrounding cities, ranging from all kinds of play to community meetings, dancing, karaoke, martial arts, opera singing, and water calligraphy. In China city governments are required to make use of plazas, and open areas to provide space for cultural activities, managed by community volunteers.
The researchers claim that cultural public space plays a major role in the emergence of a spatialised model of democracy. They call for an immediate reversal of policy in the West and a focus on community-led new public space governed by the public and produced through local networks to encourage participation and active citizens.
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