From the Piazza to the Internet: the shift from local public space to global public sphere.

• Author: Taipale, Kaarin

WHO NEEDS PUBLIC SPACE? Isn't private safer? And is it one space, or many overlapping dimensions, such as the physical three dimensions of urban space: time, the sphere of media and the realm of politics? We may need to look at a more complex and contemporary definition of public space than the ones still formulated separately by urbanists, politicians and journalists. Particularly from the points of view of

rapidly growing cities and public decision-making, it is important to be able to read public space in all of its manifestations simultaneously.

Richard Sennett has written about the changing forms of public and city life, trying to unveil what has led to "unbalanced personal life and empty public life". He has traced back the etymology: "The history of the words 'public' and 'private' is a key to understanding this basic shift in the terms of Western culture. The first recorded uses of the word 'public' in English identify the 'public' with the common good in society." Even today, the word "common" also means a piece of public land--an area available for anybody to use.

Public goods, common good, collective goods and global public goods are heavily contested concepts. Public goods are hard or impossible to produce for private profit. One cannot run out of them once they have been produced, and it is difficult to prevent access to them. Natural environment (common good), social policy (collective goods), knowledge (global public goods), national defense systems and systems of property rights (public goods) are typical examples.

The public sector can be seen as the dialectical opposite to the private sector. Organizational theory juxtaposes the non-profit versus the for-profit sector. However, defining the public sector as "not for profit" misses the point; rather, it should be understood as "not for private profit" or "for the common good". "Private" has the connotations of being personal and intimate. Speaking on a mobile phone in a bus or on the street is a rather new phenomenon that keeps irritating bystanders. It is a total, even if ephemeral, merger of the private and public realms, but also an intrusive act of private audio-exhibitionism in public space.

In the nineteenth century, the privacy and stability of the family became a protective shield against the traumas of early industrial capitalism. Sennet describes family as "an idealized refuge ... with a higher moral value than the public realm". Maybe there is a parallel to the...