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Catie Marron Biography

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“This deeply free and public space plays a vital role in our world, equally important in our digital age as in Greco-Roman times, when they were marketplaces for goods and ideas. As common ground, squares are equitable and democratic; they have played a fundamental role in the development of free speech.”

DemocracyCommon GroundPublic Space
Book:City Squares: Eighteen Writers on the Spirit and Significance of Squares Around the World
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“Feeling in the middle of things, at the place to and from which streets flow, where people come not to escape the city but to be inside it: This us usually what defines a successful square. It is a space around which the rest of a neighborhood or town or city tends to be organized [Michael Kimmelman, "Culture: Power of the Place"].”

Public Space
Book:City Squares: Eighteen Writers on the Spirit and Significance of Squares Around the World
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“What do we mean by a public square? For starters, it is rarely square. . . . It may be a quadrangle or rectangle or circle or pretty much any shape, and it can be open or closed. It might even be a park . . . through which people pass, going from one place to another, not simply a retreat. A square is porous, balancing its porousness with some focal point, like a fountain or a reliable patch of sun with some benches that marks a break from the cars and streets and invites people to stop, look, exhale, find one another [Michael Kimmelman, "Part One: Culture: Power of the Place, Introduction"].”

Public Space
Book:City Squares: Eighteen Writers on the Spirit and Significance of Squares Around the World
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“Squares have defined urban living since the dawn of democracy, from which they are inseparable. From the start, the public square has been synonymous with a society that acknowledges public life and a life in public, which is to say a society distinguishing the individual from the state [Michael Kimmelman, "Culture: Power of the Place"].”

DemocracyPublic Space
Book:City Squares: Eighteen Writers on the Spirit and Significance of Squares Around the World
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“In newer countries, you often find two types of public square: one that is older, organic, chaotic, and populated; and one that is recent, planned, orderly, and deserted. The first type predates the nation-state and accretes over time to accommodate the habits and needs, mainly commercial ones, of ordinary city dwellers. Its names are maidan, souq, bazaar, market. The second is constructed according to a master plan to embody the idealized qualities of the nation, often with grandiose results. The first thrusts people together in a public space, a hive if activity. Its essence is accidental and spontaneous. The second leaves nothing to chance. It tells people that they are subservient to the state and, in a sense, irrelevant to it [George Packer, "History: Influence on Humanity"].”

OrderChaosTypesPublic Spaces
Book:City Squares: Eighteen Writers on the Spirit and Significance of Squares Around the World
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“Is there a civic purpose for city squares where people are already free? Hannah Arendt described freedom not as individual free will but in terms of acting and associating with others. This kind of freedom requires public space. In What Is Freedom?, Arendt likened politics to the performing arts, for "both need a publicly organized space for their 'work,' and both depend upon others for the performance itself" [George Packer, "History: Influence on Humanity"].”

PurposeFreedomPublic Spaces
Book:City Squares: Eighteen Writers on the Spirit and Significance of Squares Around the World
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