Response to Blurring the Boundaries and Making Things Public

Response to Blurring the Boundaries

            “The public sphere is depicted as a ‘space of democracy that all citizens have the right to inhabit.”  Yet “women and workers… were excluded; they were not ‘citizens.’”  In some aspects I think that women are treated with a little less respect then men.  Women’s restrooms are suppose to be four times larger than men’s because we take longer, but still everywhere we go the restrooms can’t accommodate us.  I think that the idea around workers, otherwise known as blue-collar workers, is that most of them haven’t gone to a higher education school and aren’t capable of going to school to get a white-collar job.  But in all reality, all jobs are needed for the good of the public and a blue-collar worker could a very well have gone to school to get a degree.

Response to Making Things Public

This reading was very thought provoking.  The first quote is “Arcades, shopping malls, multiplex cinemas, leisure centres, multistory car parks, hotels, restaurants and bars have taken over their role as foundatioins of public life… these are often not publicly owned spaces… This means that the best part of our public space is located within the private domain.”  I think that this is completely true.  This also made me try to think of public areas that are used for private spaces every once in a while.  The one thing that I came up with was Farmer’s Markets.  These temporary spaces take over a public area or park for a day or two and sell their private goods.  This could also be considered a private vendor making a public appearance, but I think that it could also be a public space being taken over to sell private goods.