The Public Realm
POLICY EXPERT Owen Byrd wrote an interesting précis on why our society and the environment in which we live in are wearing down, and proposed what should be considered to arrest such erosion. Byrd used the tool that architects use in looking at the world, that is, by dividing space into two types: the private realm and the public realm.
The private realm includes the inside of the house, the car and the workplace, among others, and the owner controls how it looks. Investments are made on the private realm to make things comfortable. Technological developments are mostly geared towards addressing the needs of the private realm. Byrd gave some examples: “Beds are softer. Car seats adjust six ways. Workplace chairs are ergonomic.”
Most of the electronically operated products that are advertised on TV are for the private realm. We buy them even if we don’t really need them as most of what we have in our homes even before we were born can already perform their functions. But they have become necessities because their utilities are regularly upgraded to suit the pace of time and the demands of the consumer world.
Meanwhile, Byrd continued, the public realm includes everywhere else. “Schools, streets, parks, libraries, trains, buses, public buildings. Even retail stores, though they are privately owned and operated, are part of the public realm because they are part of the space we all share, where we interact with one another and where community life occurs,” he went on. American author James Howard Kunstler, for his part, defines the public realm as “that portion of the everyday environment that belongs to everyone and to which everyone ought to have equitable access.”
Unfortunately, the public realm suffers from neglect because we have stopped using it, and investments on it in terms of time, talent and treasure are nil. Byrd cited examples but let me substitute them with what we have near us. Take the case of the provincial library near ABS-CBN in Lapaz: How can we care about it when our kids don’t go there? And look at the overpass beside it: It has become a giant comfort room and no one is cleaning it because nobody is using it anyway.
The Jaro plaza is poorly maintained because we don’t value it anymore. Except for some joggers and couples who date there, not too many Jareños find it as a good place for leisure and recreation anymore. Worse, some enterprising individuals turned it into their own private realm, making money out of it when the Candelaria season comes. This made it less importance to others who see no more benefit from it.
Kunstler offered this thought: “The public realm is the physical manifestation of the common good, and when you degrade and devalue it, then you impair the ability of a group of people incorporated as a community to even think about the common good…”
The pollution of our rivers continues to worsen because we don’t benefit from them – no more swimming nor fishing. They are not even navigable anymore, as what they used to be more than half a century ago. Our streets are dirty because we don’t make it our business to keep it clean, believing that we don’t own them but the sidewalk vendors. Simply put, what we have stopped using has deteriorated.
On the contrary, we become furious at smoking in the malls or movie houses because we use them too often and we don’t want the air that we share contaminated with cancer-causing nicotine. The same is true with the jeepneys, even if these are not air-conditioned, because we are a society that is dependent on the public transport system. Our schools are secured because our children go there everyday. Our subdivisions are fenced and kept because it is there where we reside.
But the public realm is not just places that we share but abstracts too, like public service and good governance. In many Philippine cities and municipalities, public service is poor because those who were elected to govern us and most of those that work in government are more concerned of their private realm rather than the public realm. Papers that can be processed in hours remain at an official’s desk for days because there is no consideration for good governance.
To put premium on the public realm, Byrd proposed that we should expand the definition of the private realm by stretching it across into the bounds of public realm. Let us make public realm a part of our private realm by investing in it. We do this by keeping the streets clean, making public libraries more functional, bringing back life to our rivers or giving value to our plazas. If we invest in the public realm, we make sure that it will have returns.
To follow Kunstler’s analogy, giving priority to public realm is also to give priority to the common good. Its physical manifestations – schools, streets, parks, libraries, buses and public buildings – must be taken cared of so we can all live in comfort. Its abstract ideals must be nurtured so we can all harvest its fruits.
By Nereo C. Lujan
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