IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/cog/urbpla/v8y2023i4p42-51.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The Coining of Convivial Public Space: Homelessness, Outreach Work, and Interaction Order

Author

Listed:
  • Robin James Smith

    (School of Social Sciences, Cardiff University, UK)

  • Jonathan Ablitt

    (School of Social Sciences, Cardiff University, UK)

  • Joe Williams

    (School of Social Sciences, Cardiff University, UK)

  • Tom Hall

    (School of Social Sciences, Cardiff University, UK)

Abstract

This article engages with the “convivial turn” in writings about the city and offers a reorientation of sorts. Beginning with encounters, rather than particular spaces, we make the case that conviviality and its limits are realised in practices. Rather than starting in set piece urban spaces designed to foster conviviality we start out on the move, with frontline street-based care and outreach workers in Cardiff, Wales, and Manhattan, New York City, as they seek out and meet up with those sleeping on city streets. This provides a view of an improvised conviviality that makes the most of whatever the material affordances of a given city space happen to provide. Our research points to how these encounters necessarily take place in marginal settings and times due to the sorts of exclusions that can be built into contemporary city spaces that can at the same time be welcoming to the public, but hostile toward those most in need and vulnerably located in the centre of things. In this sense, we approach conviviality as a fragile interactional accomplishment and, in doing so, see questions of conviviality and conflict as less of a big-picture paradox of togetherness and distance, hope and hate in urban life, and more of a dynamic relation of co-presence and visibility. Public space, and indeed public life, might then be reconsidered not as a location but, rather, an active, shifting accomplishment, variously coloured by the politics of seeing and being seen.

Suggested Citation

  • Robin James Smith & Jonathan Ablitt & Joe Williams & Tom Hall, 2023. "The Coining of Convivial Public Space: Homelessness, Outreach Work, and Interaction Order," Urban Planning, Cogitatio Press, vol. 8(4), pages 42-51.
    • Handle: RePEc:cog:urbpla:v8:y:2023:i:4:p:42-51
    DOI: 10.17645/up.v8i4.6457
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.cogitatiopress.com/urbanplanning/article/view/6457
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.17645/up.v8i4.6457?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Mervyn Horgan & Saara Liinamaa & Amanda Dakin & Sofia Meligrana & Meng Xu, 2020. "A Shared Everyday Ethic of Public Sociability: Outdoor Public Ice Rinks as Spaces for Encounter," Urban Planning, Cogitatio Press, vol. 5(4), pages 143-154.
    2. Mervyn Horgan & Saara Liinamaa & Amanda Dakin & Sofia Meligrana & Meng Xu, 2020. "A Shared Everyday Ethic of Public Sociability: Outdoor Public Ice Rinks as Spaces for Encounter," Urban Planning, Cogitatio Press, vol. 5(4), pages 143-154.
    3. Elijah Anderson, 2004. "The Cosmopolitan Canopy," The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, , vol. 595(1), pages 14-31, September.
    4. Philip Lawton, 2018. "Situating revanchism in the contemporary city," City, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 22(5-6), pages 867-874, November.
    5. Naomi Smith & Peter Walters, 2018. "Desire lines and defensive architecture in modern urban environments," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 55(13), pages 2980-2995, October.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Mervyn Horgan & Saara Liinamaa, 2023. "Entanglements of Improvisation, Conviviality, and Conflict in Everyday Encounters in Public Space," Urban Planning, Cogitatio Press, vol. 8(4), pages 1-5.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Robin James Smith & Jonathan Ablitt & Joe Williams & Tom Hall, 2023. "The Coining of Convivial Public Space: Homelessness, Outreach Work, and Interaction Order," Urban Planning, Cogitatio Press, vol. 8(4), pages 42-51.
    2. Shirin Pourafkari, 2023. "Visually Impaired Persons and Social Encounters in Central Melbourne," Urban Planning, Cogitatio Press, vol. 8(4), pages 99-106.
    3. Fletcher, James Rupert, 2024. "Re-municipalising sociospatial infrastructure: A journeying ethnography of Greater Manchester's dementia (un)friendly buses," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 360(C).
    4. Lise Mahieus & Eugene McCann, 2023. "“Hot+Noisy” Public Space: Conviviality, “Unapologetic Asianness,” and the Future of Vancouver’s Chinatown," Urban Planning, Cogitatio Press, vol. 8(4), pages 77-88.
    5. Louise Sträuli, 2023. "Negotiating Difference on Public Transport: How Practices and Experiences of Deviance Shape Public Space," Urban Planning, Cogitatio Press, vol. 8(4), pages 89-98.
    6. Mattias Kärrholm & Sandra Kopljar, 2020. "Built Environment, Ethics and Everyday Life," Urban Planning, Cogitatio Press, vol. 5(4), pages 101-105.
    7. Carol Vincent & Sarah Neal & Humera Iqbal, 2017. "Encounters with diversity: Children’s friendships and parental responses," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 54(8), pages 1974-1989, June.
    8. Byeongsun Ahn, 2024. "The politics of living-with-difference: Local perception of diversity and coexistence around participatory place-making in a multiethnic neighbourhood," Environment and Planning C, , vol. 42(3), pages 458-475, May.
    9. Shirin Pourafkari, 2023. "Visually Impaired Persons and Social Encounters in Central Melbourne," Urban Planning, Cogitatio Press, vol. 8(4), pages 99-106.
    10. Sonia Bookman, 2023. "The Forks Market: Cosmopolitan Canopy, Conviviality, and Class," Urban Planning, Cogitatio Press, vol. 8(4), pages 31-41.
    11. Tauri Tuvikene & Wladimir Sgibnev & Wojciech Kȩbłowski & Jason Finch, 2023. "Public transport as public space: Introduction," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 60(15), pages 2963-2978, November.
    12. Robert Rosenberger, 2020. "On hostile design: Theoretical and empirical prospects," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 57(4), pages 883-893, March.
    13. Daniela Krüger, 2024. "Homeless Clients' Circulation in Emergency Care: Rethinking Poverty Governance as Urban Impasse," Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie, Royal Dutch Geographical Society KNAG, vol. 115(2), pages 221-233, April.
    14. Sonia Bookman, 2023. "The Forks Market: Cosmopolitan Canopy, Conviviality, and Class," Urban Planning, Cogitatio Press, vol. 8(4), pages 31-41.
    15. Moogoor, Adithi & Močnik, Špela & Yuen, Belinda, 2022. "Neighbourhood environmental influences on older adults’ physical activities and social participation in Singapore: A photovoice study," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 310(C).
    16. Mattias Kärrholm & Sandra Kopljar, 2020. "Built Environment, Ethics and Everyday Life," Urban Planning, Cogitatio Press, vol. 5(4), pages 101-105.
    17. Loor, Ignacio & Evans, James, 2021. "Understanding the value and vulnerability of informal infrastructures: Footpaths in Quito," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 94(C).
    18. Morten Nielsen & Jason Sumich & Bjørn Enge Bertelsen, 2021. "Enclaving: Spatial detachment as an aesthetics of imagination in an urban sub-Saharan African context," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 58(5), pages 881-902, April.
    19. Manisha Anantharaman & Marlyne Sahakian & Czarina Saloma, 2023. "Spatialising degrowth in Southern cities: Everyday park-making for (un)commoning," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 60(7), pages 1266-1284, May.
    20. Louise Sträuli, 2023. "Negotiating Difference on Public Transport: How Practices and Experiences of Deviance Shape Public Space," Urban Planning, Cogitatio Press, vol. 8(4), pages 89-98.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cog:urbpla:v8:y:2023:i:4:p:42-51. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: António Vieira or IT Department (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.cogitatiopress.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.