Writing my public space

"There are three classes of people: those who see. Those who see when they are shown. Those who do not see." - Leondardo da Vinci

Johannesburg was my first city. Vanderbijlpark was my first town. London was my first metropolis. Cambridge was my first home. These places are all integral to who I am; their grid lines, their street names, their dead ends and their hidden buildings, their territorial boundaries, are as much a part of me as the fact that I have brown, chestnut hair, that I always have my toe-nails painted red, that I'm never without a book. Pemberley, Derbyshire is where I first fell in love. Molching, Munich is where I learned a love of words as freedom from the oppressive political climate in which I lived. Long Island and New York are where I learnt the fallacy of wealth and obsession. They may be fictive, but these geographies and their associated memories, learnt from Austen, Zusak and Fitzgerald, are no less constitutive of my identity nor less real to my sense of public space than Joburg, Vanderbijlpark, London and Cambridge. Because my perceptions of space and place aren't objectively granted, and neither are yours. They're written. By you, by others, by me. 

Geography is, linguistically, about writing the world. Geo-Graphy. Earth-Writing. It's inherently subjective and situated. Geography, at heart, is a personal interpretation, shaped by personal experience and perception. My geography of London is not the same as yours, or anyone else's, for that matter. Let's go beyond the gridlines and the barriers, the street names and the territorial boundaries, to the emotional and the psychological constitution of space in its identity as place.

Geography is as much an art as a science. You can get a sense of a space physically by analysing the geomorphological make-up of the rocks, or the biodiversity of its biomes, or the pollution of the air. But you cannot get a sense of place that is objective, scientific. It is, by trite definition, subjective. That's what makes it a place. Calling a space a 'place' gives it an identity. And this identity is unique to each person.   

Geography is about defining, as much as it is about being defined. The imperial maps that hang in my room are not objective definitions; they define the landscape in colonial terms, in a discourse of power hierarchies and relations, implemented through obnoxious lines and new 'place' names, and underwritten by an attempt to define an imperial power. Imperialism defined the world as it wrote its own place in that world. The British Empire wrote its public space as a global power as it defined colonies in subjugated geographies of servitude, rule and Otherlyness. My parents grew up in a country reconstituting its geographical identity in the wake of apartheid. In South Africa, space was used to define and to separate: Net Blankes, White Only. Strand & See Net Blankes. Public Swimming Pool: Whites Only. Antsundu, Kleurlinge en Asiers. To whom does public space belong? To Us? Or to Them? Apartheid, in its extreme expression of geography as a tool to define, shows how the very notion of public space, of 'place', is written by and for. As a young white man, my dad's geography of Vanderbijlpark in the 1980s stands in stark contrast to that of the family's black maid, Victoria. As he walked down the street, his geography of the space would have been informed by the implicit knowledge of power, of freedom granted by his race, of privilege. In contrast, Victoria's geography of the same space would have been construed by oppression, Net Blankes, by a double power hierarchy that, as a female and a black, would have situated her as lesser, Other, and by the overhanging presence of threat and danger. To him, Vanderbijlpark in the 1980s as a place was, in this sense, freedom; to her, Vanderbijlpark in the 1980s as a place was oppression and threat. But it's the same public space. Physically, it's no different to either. But psychologically, emotionally, subjectively - when we imbue the physical space with the identity of place, it transmogrifies into a multitude of different interpretations and realities. 

It's the same in Cambridge - in so many different, interwoven ways. How does my experience of being an undergraduate in Cambridge, as a female, differ from others? Am I filled with the same sense of place and power as male peers when I sit in an old hall surrounded by paintings of famous alumni? Given that the pictures show famous old, white, male alumni: no. This space has been male for the majority of its time and my perception of place is, therefore, intrusive. And as an applicant who was pooled from her first choice of college? Does having this heightened sense of Imposter Syndrome, this sense of not really belonging, of feeling the need to prove my worth academically, mean that I walk the cobbled streets and wander through the archaic corridors with the same sense of belonging as those who were offered places by their first choice college? No - because my geography of this public undergraduate space is inherently shaped by the sense that this place is not as mine as it is Theirs. That is, to Them it is public space by rite of passage; to me, a pooled applicant at a modern, all-girls college, it is a place that I merely trespass on the back of my university card or the college card of friends who actually belong. This sense of geography goes beyond me. How do the geographies of Cambridge of a student from a prestigious private school and a poor public school differ? Does the privately educated student, having come from a geographical background of old buildings, of tails, of Latin grace and old masters in gowns, define Cambridge as a place of familiarity, of belonging, of ownership, whilst the publicly educated student construes a geography of Other and a sense of dislocated place in this overwhelming space? Is Oxbridge your public space - your inherent right - given your educational background? Class, gender, race - all inform and define space as place. The transformation and interpretation of a space into 'place' rely contingently upon circumstances of (perceived) power relations. In (the old) Cambridge colleges, you aren't allowed to walk on the grass unless you're a fellow, just as you are unable to enter the college, without paying, if you aren't a member of the university. So, whilst my imaginative geography of Trinity College, for example, is construed of the time I posed with friends around the fountain at the end of term, the laughter shared in the old hall, or the ball I went to at the end of first year - that is, memories of access, belonging, joy - the imaginative geography of the same space for a tourist unable to enter through the old gates and only able to experience the college through pixelated captures of its exterior on their phone, may on the contrary be construed as a place of exclusion, privilege and romanticised wonder. Or, their sense of Trinity College as a place may be informed by the facts they've read and the stories they've heard told about the space. 

New York, New York. So good they named it twice. New York is a concrete jungle lined with canopies of high-rise buildings, grey facades glistening as the sun catches them twice a day, and the scurrying of millions of people crawling amidst the predatory yellow cabs. Endless avenues; endless possibilities. Bright lights, big sights. A future. If I can make it in New York, I can make it anywhere. New York is the promise of possibility, of recreation, of anonymity and fame. Nothing is ever as real or vivid as it is in New York; the food, the voices, the tangibility of dreams. I love New York. It's the very definition of a city, a world city. 

I've never been to New York. 

But I have a geography of New York. New York to me is a place, it has an identity; it isn't just this mass of space way over there. Because unlike with Cambridge, where my experience of the place informs my perception of it, my perception of New York informs my experience of it (from a distance, for now). The way I imagine New York is crafted by the books I've read and the movies I've seen where New York isn't just the setting but the protagonist - the reason she lands that dream job, the reason he finds the love of his life, the backbone to the American Dream - and the discourse that I've perceived of it through the images people upload, the stories they narrate, the gifts I have from my dad from when he went there. I've been to New York and back a million times, in my mind. Does the tangibility of my imaginative geography of this place hold ontological weight in the face of my lacking physical experience of its space? Say I had been to New York - when I stepped off the plane and found my way into The Big Apple, wouldn't my physical experience of the space be inherently shaped by the expectations I carry with me? Won't I be disappointed if I don't feel liberated and able to do anything, if I'm swallowed whole by the masses and underwhelmed by the sights, smells and opportunities, if I don't land the dream job, find the love of my life and realise my American Dream? Equally, take someone who has lived in New York their whole life - a true New Yorker (said in a thick, slightly cocky, Brooklyn accent) - and hence has a very physical experience of the space. Did the events of 911 do nothing to shape their perception of the space? Did their notion of the place as safe, free, theirs, suffer no trauma from the emotional effect of that attack on the identity of place? Of course it did. Even if implicitly and unconsciously so. A perception of place is not static, objective. Place is identifying space. It's always being rewritten. Reworked.  

"People move to New York from all over the world, drawn to what it stands for: work, success, freedom, acceptance, glamour: give me your tired, your poor, your ambitious, your determined. To approach the city from somewhere else amplifies its power. There are so many viewpoints on the city that 'New York' - the idea - is filtered in the imagination through millions of tiny windowpanes." - Lauren Elkin

"I had that experience with New York. I had a perception of it fuelled by film and literature, and when I arrived there for the first time, every preconceived notion was shattered. It became a different place. From, 'I wouldn't want to go there', to, 'this is one of my favourite cities in the world'. I've been back five times, and each time it has been transformed by different preconceived ideas - informed by the changing world. Terrorism. Romance. Events. Personal ambitions. Dreams." - my dad   

I've defined myself with the geography of Cambridge. The dusty libraries lined to the core with books are as much my spine as the archaic, chateau-like buildings are the cadence of my voice, and the very heart of fierce academia my sense of self. I know the city like I know exactly how I take my tea: teabag and sugar in, water on top, squeeze the bag, dash the milk in until it's creamy, stir. I can walk the city in my mind: a geography of physical buildings and places yes, but also space constituted by places of dreams, memories, hopes, faces, words. My geographies of Cambridge are always changing. Last year I walked and ran everywhere; this year I have a bike. Last Michaelmas I'd never read/seen Harry Potter, so my imaginative geographies of formal halls, matriculations, and other traditions weren't informed by Hogwarts and Rowling's related spaces; this Michaelmas I go into my first formal having marathoned both the book and film series, perceiving the space of formal hall as not just quaint but Hogwarts-esque, the gown as not just Medieval but Granger-like, and the experience as not just Oh So Cambridge, but Oh So Harry Potter. 

Geography is not just about physical spaces. Geography and place are as personal as identity is to oneself. My geography is shaped by the films I've seen, the books I've read, the places I've been, the experiences I've had, my background, my future, my imagination, my gender, my education, my language, my privilege, my race - by me. In her amazing, amazing (so good I had to reiterate it a lá New York) new novel, Flâneuse, Lauren Elkin writes that 'environment is determinative, constitutive; it makes you who you are, it makes you you do what you do'. But environment is also written - determined, constituted - by someone for someone. And you, in turn, make your environment who it is, what it is, to you.

How can we define public space? What, who, defines it? 

What makes a space, place? 

"It is only in becoming aware of the invisible boundaries of the city that we can challenge them. A female flânerie - a flâneuserie - not only changes the way we move through space, but intervenes in the organisation of space itself. We claim our right to disturb the peace, to observe (or not observe), to occupy (or not occupy) and to organise (or disorganise) space on our own terms." - Lauren Elkin

"When we 'see' a landscape, we situate ourselves in it." - John Berger