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Where, Why and How?

The case sites have been selected mainly for their potential richness and diversity of the socio-material exchanges I set out to study. They have not been chosen primarily for comparative reasons. The chosen sites are also interesting from clustering and collectivising perspectives, since they con-stitute intense gatherings of people, doing things together and individually in close proximity to relative strangers. I have chosen case sites outside of my own regional and national context (Sweden) to avoid biased and pre-conceived opinions on the actions and events I was to observe. Although I am unsure of how this affected my ethnographic integrity in reality, it seemed important while planning the studies. I prefer to be detached and fairly new to a case site, although a cultural familiarity to the place may be an advantage. I consider the urban cultures and concepts of public space in

the UK, the Netherlands and France as rather similar to the Scandinavian and therefore possible to understand.

Another important reason for choosing the sites I did was to study spaces about which I am truly curious and that I find exciting; it helps to motivate long hours at the sites – sometimes in miserable weather – ob-serving repetitive everyday life, without losing attention or genuine con-cern.

When planning the field studies, I decided to choose urban settings that represent various types of public spaces, characterised by different ac-tivities and with multiple and varied driving forces. The open-air markets in London represent consumption spaces in, or in close proximity to, ma-jor public spaces. When I decided to put the first case in a consumption context I had not yet determined the contexts of the other two. The play-grounds in Amsterdam signify public spaces for play and leisure. The third case, Les Berges de Seine in Paris, represents an emerging public space that is heavily managed and explicitly materially programmed. Les Berges is primarily a leisure space, an urban riverfront exploited for new public uses.

It could also be labelled as an event space, where event refers to multi-scalar managed and curated activities.

The data collection process commenced in each city with a preliminary mapping and a tour gathering brief observations at different predefined locations, with the aim of selecting primary sites for closer inquiries. In the London and Amsterdam cases, these exploratory studies led to an under-standing of different spatial typologies regarding the chosen themes of ac-tivities; i.e. spaces for consumption, leisure and play. The typological clas-sification can be regarded as a lateral finding, which is accounted for but neither elaborated nor commented on in any depth, nor included in the final discussion. In the Paris case, the exploratory tour encompassed spaces of different kinds, regarding themes related to use and activities; hence the completion of any theme-based typological sorting was impossible.

Since the three main sites differ from each other in several aspects, such as location, scale, primary function, etc., the field studies could not be carried out in precisely the same way, nor is their presentation in the thesis strictly symmetrical. The lack of symmetry between the field study chapters can also be attributed to a successive progression in the method-ological approach.

In addition to the major field studies, I have completed a number of minor studies at incidentally encountered sites. These lateral sites are not described or analysed in any depth, but some notions and phenomena observed in these minor site studies are included in the thesis to signify additional examples of observations made at the main sites. The fieldwork

strategy was to be an active and passive observer alternately, focusing partly on strict observation and partly on observation by participating in activi-ties and utilising the space as a regular visitor.

Field study design: Open-air Markets in London

The choice of a consumption space as such is motivated by its historic as well as contemporary significance as an urban public domain (Habermas 1989 [1962]; Madanipour 2003). Open-air markets can be found in many cities; London was chosen since the city offers a great variety of market types in different social-, material- and geographic settings. I had previous, brief experiences of these markets and therefore an easy access to the milieus, but my experience was not so comprehensive that it would risk I would presume anything about their detailed workings.

The main studies at the London market sites were carried out during five days in March and April 2012. Additional visits to Borough Market, Portobello Road Market and Petticoat Lane Market took place in October 2012 and in October 2013. In total about 50 hours were spent in field observations and 1900 photographs were taken, of which about 700 were at Borough Market. The second and third visits were brief and carried out as short stays at each market; during these, further observations were made that were included in the empirical data collection. During the first and main visit to London, I studied seven open-air markets, some of which I was somewhat familiar with, whilst others were completely new to me. The ambition was to include markets with distinctive spatial and architectural prerequisites, situated in varied urban contexts. After a first reconnaissance I planned to concentrate my studies on a few markets, preferably just one.

After conducting a survey of the seven markets, I decided to focus on four of them (figure 41, p.132 – in Chapter 4). The markets chosen for extended examination and more intense analyses were selected for their typological diversity and since they appeared to constitute interesting examples for each market type. Each day, several hours were spent at the different market sites;

a predetermined schedule was followed to ensure that all four markets were observed on different weekdays and at various times of day. A more thor-ough micro-study was carried out at a part of Borthor-ough market; consequent-ly, more hours were spent there.

Field study design: Playgrounds in Amsterdam

When I decided to study spaces for play and leisure as socio-material urban cultures, I chose Amsterdam because of the city’s historic concern with play-grounds and the tradition of using playplay-grounds as neighbourhood meeting places (Lefaivre 2007). Aldo van Eyck’s famous playgrounds from the 1950s,

‘60s and ‘70s, as well as a number of contemporary themed playgrounds, illustrate the importance of the playground typology for the city of Amster-dam. Some of the modern playgrounds in Amsterdam still are planned to fulfil aspects of neighbourhood community and act as public centres for so-cial interaction (Lefaivre 2007; Blitz, Elger. Personal interview. Amsterdam, 2 April 2013).

Spaces for play and leisure frame an important spatial typology, not least because it includes, or rather focuses on, children’s and teenagers’ presence in the public domain. An additional motive for choosing playgrounds as study sites was their explicit dependency on material agency to make sense as an urban spatial category.

The playground study was carried out in early April 2013. The primary site, van Beuningenplein playground, was visited a total of seven times, spread out over six days. Each daytime visit lasted between two and four hours, and evening visits about 20-30 minutes. Slightly more than 55 hours were spent in field observations, distributed among the different playgrounds, and one thousand photographs were taken, of which about 450 were in van Beun-ingenplein. The design of the study followed the same basic outline as the study of open-air markets in London. I set out to visit three contemporary playgrounds, designed between 2008 and 2011, and five of the Aldo van Eyck playgrounds, established in the 1940s, ‘50s and ‘60s. My objective was to eventually focus on one major location in which to complete a main site-study. Consequently, I made a basic survey of the eleven (figure 125, p.168 – in Chapter 5) playgrounds I had chosen to examine. After a brief analysis of each setting, I chose to focus on van Beuningenplein as my primary site and to use the others as reference spaces. The choice was motivated by its size and spatial variation, which implied the possibility of a complex internal public life and an anticipated territorial complexity. As a result of extensive walks through the city, I came across a number of additional playgrounds, of which three are included in my list of reference site studies. Although most of my time was spent at van Beuningenplein playground, I visited all reference playgrounds on least at three occasions during the field studies, on different days and at different times of the day.

I also conducted spontaneous, unstructured interviews with profession-als connected to van Beuningenplein playground, such as the owner of the bistro and one of the employees there, random visitors to the playground and two women working at the youth centre located in the playground area.

I completed two planned interviews with Elger Blitz, the co-owner and chief designer at CARVE.8

8 CARVE ontwerp en ingenieursbureau in Amsterdam. The engineers and designers in the design office are specialised in playgrounds and play artefacts, skateboard facilities and similar public leisure spaces.

Field study design: A Leisure Riverfront in Paris

The studies in Paris were initially more tentative and not predetermined regarding a particular spatial theme. In a pilot study executed in Septem-ber 2014, I set out to examine two sites that could be labelled as par-ticipatory neighbourhood commons: Agrocité9 and Passage 5610 in central Paris, both initiated and managed by aaa (atelier d’architecture autogérée).

Both projects aim to explore models for socio-ecological sustainability in local urban contexts. Anne Querrien, a former co-worker at aaa who is well informed about the projects, graciously and thoroughly presented the sites to me. At Agrocité I met Doina Petrescu and Constantin Petcou, the founders and directors of aaa. I also got the opportunity to meet and talk to people tending to their garden ‘parcelles’ at the site.

As an alternative site, I included a newly established public space, Les Berges de Seine, which is characterised by an extensive management of activities and a custom-made urban design that includes furnishings that encourage social gathering and interaction. I concluded that Les Berges de Seine constituted the most interesting setting for a primary case, consid-ering the objectives for my research approach; i.e. to study socio-material exchanges and heterogeneous clustering in public domains. Les Berges also offered a setting, and a complexity, congruent with my two other cases, and perhaps most importantly, it is publicly accessible. Agrocité and Pas-sage 56 showed interesting aspects with regard to my objectives, but the spatial and social settings appeared to me as too secluded and well estab-lished for my intentions of studying emerging clusterings in urban public contexts. I decided, however, to make use of Agrocité as a reference case because of some interesting notions on the role of materialities in social exchanges and their stabilisations. Other aspects of particular interest are the managing of the Agrocité and the curating of events, actively consol-idating the heterogeneous collective. This will be further discussed in the concluding section of this thesis.

The site observations at Les Berges de Seine were made during two days in September 2014 and seven days in May 2015. In total, 75 hours were spent in field observations; of these, almost 50 of them were at Les Berges de Seine. At the Paris sites 3350 photographs were taken, the vast majority of these were at Les Berges de Seine.

In September 2014, the Les Berges site was in full use and the material set-up was configured according to the original project design. On the

9 Agrocité is a pilot ‘civic gardening’ facility that forms part of the R-Urban project in Colombes, initiated and supervised by aaa. See also Chapter Five.

10 Passage 56 is a local eco-garden and community space located in an interstice site in St. Blaise area in the Eastern part of central Paris. It was initiated in 2006 and has now transformed into a collectively self-managed space.

second visit in May 2015, the material conditions were changed as prepa-rations of the site for the summer season were underway, and consequently not all artefacts were in place yet. Though the site is open throughout the winter months, most artefacts are piled up for storage and secured in fenced areas on the site as a precaution in the event of flooding. During the field study week in May 2015, almost all of the artefacts were gradually put in position according to the design blueprints; a special system of wooden logs for seating (Mikados) was arranged, ground paintings were repainted, planting boxes were reconfigured and containers for various uses opened.

The management staff was starting up the information centre, as well as kicking off various curated activities.

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OPEN-AIR MARKETS IN