Shifting the Threshold of Public Space in UK, Algeria and Mexico during the COVID-19 Pandemic

Abstract

Through its worldwide impact, the on-going Covid-19 pandemic has fundamentally affected the way people live and experience the built environment in every country. Starting to spread in late January 2020 in Europe and in the Mediterranean Region, the threat of viral infection with the Coronavirus led to several phases of lockdowns from mid-March on until now. The limited accessibility and the safety measures during this last year have challenged dramatically the perception and the use of public space thresholds between private, semi-private and public conditions, creating new forms of temporary appropriation. The consequential paradigms of household isolation and social distancing have also contributed to the augmentation of the public space, now swinging between digital and analogue possibilities. In opposition to the former wide range of possibilities of space uses in everyday life, being subject to restricted spatial conditions under the current situation leads to new challenges on a cognitive level: the resulting change in the perception of proximity and distance, indoor and outdoor, private and public, implies an expanded use of both spaces introducing many opportunities of colonisation of private, public and semi-public appropriation creating new forms (and sometimes also old ones) of resilience. Algiers, Portsmouth and San Francisco de Campeche have been selected as case studies to observe how the lockdown was organised from the same time on in different places with distinct political approaches and public control measures, and the impact this had on the community and the use of public space in the three cities.