How to behave in public (space)?!

Hello, dear member of society...! In this guide, weʼre going to learn how to behave in public space. Before we dive into the question at hand, weʼll need to define the term a little more precisely.

Because where exactly does «public space» begin and/or end?

And can the the answer to such a question the same for everyone?

Being in public can broadly be seen as being outside of one’s own, or others, private sphere.

For a space to be truly public, it needs to be freely accessible to all – and owned collectively by the people of a place –typically with the state or municipality as a proxy.

Laws apply, but everyone is welcome –it is free to enter, pass through or linger. Ideally, it is open around the clock, and is relatively unconstrained.

Are there many spaces such as this? Your answer is of course entirely dependent on where you find yourself residing! And on what policies are prevalent, or entirely dominant, there.

But between the intimately private, and the completely public, there are myriads and multitudes of amalgamations – variations, hybrids, liminal nooks and crannies, compromises and coincidences. In fact, most of our lives in public take place exactly in these many in-betweens, maybe’s, yes-and-no’s, both’s and neither’s.

Let’s start at home… In your apartment.

Maybe your living room window directly faces the windows of the police station canteen, or the city’s most popular playground, or a public square teeming with tourists. As a result your daily actions, your inadvertent butt-scratches and naked five-footstep-long journeys between your bedroom and bathroom, are somehow both private and public simultaneously. Do you feel your routines and basic bodily functions slowly adjust to an alien tempo, entrained, synchronized to the rhythms of police office lunch hour, playground high noon and tourist bus syncopation? Or do you just pull down your curtains, and pursue a life in the shadows – a never ending, self-imposed dusk?

Curtains or not, at some point, the summer heat forces you to open and keep open your windows for weeks on end – and in addition to hosting insects searching for love, sounds and scents effortlessly bridge the divide between the bustling street and all the rooms of your home. Your farts seated in the safety of your own bathroom are now a semi-public matter – experienced by commuters who travel to and from the adjacent bus stop. Drunken late-night kebab street bench conversations overlap with the climate crisis documentary, the chess championship commentary, the action movie one-liners, the weather report, the reality show flirting dialogue that lulls you to sleep on the couch when you thought you couldn’t, wouldn’t, fall asleep in at least another few hours.

Still, your apartment is not completely public, but neither is costly public transport, and public swimming pools cost even more.

And how do we compromise, attune to, make and hold space for each other, in public?

If every place we share is meant to be accessible to every kind of person, each with their individual needs and wants and sensibilities simultaneously, mightn’t that swiftly turn into a veiled tool of exclusions?

Libraries have opening hours, shopping malls are private property. The rich inhabitants in affluent waterfront neighborhoods use their influence to make bathing after midnight de facto illegal, and the piers are patrolled by diligent security guards. Angry apartment dwellers who live by the basketball court will call the cops on you if you bounce a ball even once after their kids have finally fallen asleep. The street might be wide, but eternal rows of privately owned cars stand along each side. Seven electric scooters protrude from a snow pile. A two-week-long beer-and-hotdog festival gets to borrow your local park for free from the municipality, but charges a hefty entrance fee – and thus the blooming of your favorite tree is enjoyed only by the most hardcore beer-and-hotdog enthusiasts.

Have you ever thought about arranging a picnic in the waiting room at your doctors office – or to even just spend some time there reading a book, borrowing the toilet, calling your parents, without waiting for an appointment?

Oh, and if you’re looking for public toilets – good luck!

And if you happen to find one, good luck yet again…

– Of course we have some rules, we need some rules. And systems. We just have to try our best to accommodate each other. But how do our needs differ?

The idea of what constitutes a public nuisance is generally tailored to protect a certain kind of supposed, stenciled, perfect model citizen. Nuclear families and dutiful daytime office workers who own, or safely rent, comfortable places to live; who have access to private bathrooms; who buy tickets, bottled water, and can afford to abide by inpublic alcohol consumption bans by drinking in bars. Who have time to sit on a bench while the sun is still up, or energy to jog through the park after the evening news.

Those who won’t, or can’t, fall in line with the demands of the near-dominant fog of the normative capitalist hetero-patriarchy, are easily othered, subtly ostracized or even have their mode of living made illegal or near-impossible-to-survive-without-breaking-the-law-legal.

Certain common, universal silent agreements prevail – are learned and enforced uncritically by normal people: the state of one’s clothes; the smell of one’s body; the amount of personal matters – problems, issues, conditions – one displays, divulges, should, can or can’t keep hidden.

To smell like that… in the newspaper reading lounge at the local library?

To sleep right there… on a bench in full view of the kindergarten?!

To wash a dirty foot… in a drinking fountain!

To ask strangers for help, to tell them of their ailments and wring their sympathy for cash – cash that they’re anyway only going to use to feed their illegal addiction!

If one doesn’t follow the rules – one has oneself to blame for all the ill that befalls one, right?

…Sorry – What was I trying to teach you again?

Oh! Right! How to behave in public space!

Maybe we just need to jump into it, even though I’m not sure we even managed to properly define its bounds.

Ok!

So…

To behave in public space, you need to acknowledge our many differences, and understand which systems, whatever their form, are put in place to divide us, and which are there to help us thrive –collectively!

To behave in public space, you need to ask yourself why you are behaving the way you are in public space – and whether that is the way you want to behave in public space. And to ask yourself, and others, how you want others to behave in public space, and why, and whether your wishes are worthy of attention or if you should somehow work on yourself, unlearning ingrained thoughts and toxic reactions.

To behave in public space, you need to assess your society – how safe it is, for whom, how dangerous it is, for whom, how accessible it is, for whom, how big, how large, how free or constricted, how fun or depressing, for whom.

To behave in public space, you need to think about what you are bringing to the table, what you are being afforded and enjoying by the table, and what you are being served at the table that you do not want.

To behave in public space, you need to understand who public space belongs to, who it is needed by – and you need to know who it is controlled by, engineered by, defined by.

To behave in public space you need to reflect on our differences – our varying levels of access, power, influence, freedom, mobility, healthiness, happiness, needs, demands.

To behave in public space, you need to understand that many of the problems that can be observed in public space generally have less to do with individual transgression, and more to do with societal failure in trying to take care of all citizens.

To behave in public space, you just need to try to be the least bad that you can.

Good luck!