Public Space..?

Fiske’s essay, "Shopping for Pleasure: Malls, Power, and Resistance", and Davis’s essay, "Fortress Los Angeles: The Militarization of Urban Space," both discuss the value of public space. Fiske proposes the comparison of “consumerism to religion”. In Fiske’s essay, he talks about the “unemployed youth”, who are the common crowd at the shopping malls, compared to attending church. Although, his comparison is interesting, I want to disagree for some reason. The mall is not made for just shopping. It is meant to be a social scene, an eating place, and more. He also talks about the unemployed crowd as the uninvited guests, and that to me, is not a fair accusation. Why would a mall have unvited guests? Since when was anyone given a special invitation to visit one of the most public places in a town or city?

Davis talks about how in a city they are trying to make the streets as unlivable as possible for the homeless and poor. He also talks about getting rid of the public lavatories in a certain city. How is doing any of this, or discriminating about who walks into a mall, being considering a public space? If you are trying to control what kind of people are in a certain building or on a certain street, why is it being considered PUBLIC space. To me, that is far from public.

Both of these articles bring up good points throughout them, but for the most part I did not enjoy them. This is probably because I disagree with a lot of the topics they bring up to support the idea of public space. Both Fiske and Davis seemed to see a lot of problems with public space. However, if it's supposed to be public, then let it be public.