If you visit a traffic island in the United States, where public space for assembly is a rare commodity, you are celebrating and participating in a history of gathering. We often imagine the great town square and dream of people laughing, discussing politics, trading, meeting strangers, sharing stories. Many bemoan the loss of these spaces and are nostalgic to reclaim public space. But do they long for what never existed? Women and minorities in public space in the past were often excluded (or their power was limited) as second or third class people. Unable to protest, they went elsewhere – fields, kitchens, porches, backyards. These were their islands of gathering.
Yet, the question of public space in the past for gathering and speech is more complex. The tradition of exclusion, for example, functioned to deprive certain people of the freedom to participate in activities that weren’t necessities to life, specifically, politics and art. Historically, freedom was not a question of economics, it was about the ability to participate in politics and art, those things that were not the necessities of life. Additionally, freedom was something that happened in public space not in private space. Today, both have flipped. When people think of freedom, many people think of economic freedom and of freedom in private space; this is particularly true in the United States. Related to the question of exclusion is the idea of who and what creates public space? Is it only by government decree as a result of urban planning, city meetings, discussions among architects or is it also created by everyday people? What is the relation between the media, the Internet, the public sphere and physical public space? And, is physical public space purely a material question of space or is it created by what happens there, raising the idea of public time?
In the United States, when we look for physical places where anybody can legally, safely gather at any time without an additional fee or permit, we think of our home, of private space (which is problematic if you consider rent and property tax plus it excludes those without a home). But if we look at what is right in front of us, we find the island: a publicly owned, public place we can visit for ephemeral activities at any time; the last remaining, publicly owned public spaces that is most likely protected under the First Amendment of the Bill of Rights for people to gather at any time without a fee or permit. This is Island Law in the United States. But the story of traffic islands as a site where questions about publicness intersect is global. In cities all over the world, traffic islands are public space imbued with surprising legal and/or urban stories – sites, hidden in plain view by the everyday happening – that you can visit and use.
To continue with this story, consider the legal complexity of peaceable assembly.
