Book Review: Philosophy and geography II: the production of public space

This second issue in the ‘Philosophy and Geography’ series is addressed to the problem of ‘public space’ and its prospects in post-industrial society. It is advertised on the back cover, somewhat grandly, as enhancing its readers’ appreciation of ‘the intimate connections between political principles, social processes, and the commonplaces of our everyday environments’, and it is potentially appealing to the very diverse body of people who claim an interest in the question of ‘public space’ and its future. Its particular claim is to provide a philosophical and geographical engagement with the recent flurry of prognostications on ‘the end of public space’. That the editors begin this book with an unfortunate metaphorical reference to the tension between (philosophical, ideational, abstract) thoughts, and (earthy, concrete, geographical) ‘clods’ should not put readers off the usefulness of this approach. The distance between concrete and philosophical approaches is daunting, and if philosophy keeping the ‘company of clods’ helps to bridge that chasm, it is very welcome. Unfortunately, this volume does not quite do this. It is, in the first place, largely directed by the editors at a confrontation of the ‘public space’ literature with the work of Henri Lefebvre – hence the title of the volume – but this direction manages to be both unduly constricting, neglecting other useful philosophical avenues, as well as inadequately policed, so that few authors direct their attention to the ‘production of public space’ in the Lefebvrian sense. In the end, therefore, it is a disappointingly mixed bag, a curious curate’s egg, and only spasmodically insightful. The organization of the book is certainly inadequate. The editors settle for what are virtually meaningless banners, such as ‘Beyond the public/private dichotomy’ and ‘Regional territories’, which have no relevance to the chapters and which are anyway promptly forgotten in the heart of the book, so that the chapters run one into the other to little good effect. The exception is the opening section devoted to Lefebvre, in which Edward Dimendberg and Neil Smith debate through Lefebvrian categories the ontological and historical significance of public space, and this does deserve some more sustained criticism. Dimendberg’s lucid analysis argues that Lefebvre’s conception of ‘abstract space’