Hello, stranger? How attraction trumps interaction in ‘new’ public space

Abstract

Chance interaction among diverse strangers is a much-celebrated feature of urbanity. The rise in privately owned and managed public spaces, tending to displace people, activities and exchanges that may threaten business interests, has thus raised broad concerns. However, how such ‘new’, high-profile public spaces of the neoliberal or entrepreneurial city differ from ‘traditional’, everyday ones in terms of spontaneous encounters, is not well covered in the ever-growing public space research. Drawing on long-term ethnographic fieldwork in Oslo, Norway, this article explores the occurrence of peaceful chance interactions among strangers in ‘new’ public space. In the two examined urban squares, representing ‘traditional’ and ‘new’ public space, strangers interact on a regularised versus an episodic basis, reflecting major differences in ‘contact-supporting circumstances’. A close reading of the pertinent scholarly literature indicates that these findings have a broader significance. The article’s key contribution is the detailed documentation and conceptualisation of basic circumstances that distinguish a ‘new’ from an ordinary, everyday public space with regards to chance interactions. Herein, the study points to an important shift in urban governance and planning since the 1980s. A market-led notion of attractiveness in the physical and social environment takes centre stage in prestigious urban developments, at the expense of the disordered exchanges of everyday life.